The National Poetry Library and the South Bank Centre

Regular readers of Rogue Strands might recall my post last September (see here) about the National Poetry Library's attempt to charge for membership, an attempt that failed on the back of petitioning from throughout the poetry scene.

Well, the situation has now worsened, not only with the temporary closure of the entire South Bank Centre due to Covid (which means no one could access the Poetry Library anyway) but also with the Centre's consequent aim to make mass redundancies and shift to a far more commercial model. The question at this point, of course, is how the change will affect the library in both the short and long term.

I'm not against the idea of seeking out new revenue streams for arts ventures and venues through the use of their premises, so long as that's combined with sensible public funding. However, this commercial process often seems to provide an excuse for ludicrous salaries in senior posts rather than making the most of those extra funds to generate high-quality, free artistic content for users who might otherwise be excluded.

Moreover, I do get extremely concerned when marketing people start producing word salads like the following quote from an excellent New Statesman article on the issue:

“When we talk about ‘start-up’ we mean a ‘mind-set approach’: being agile, adaptable to change, moving fast, risk-taking, innovating, constantly learning, changing the status quo, learning from failure, for example. We are not re-modelling operationally as a start-up.”

This is just empty fluff. Of course, everyone's aware that the South Bank Centre's income will have dropped hugely and will remain at a low level for the foreseeable future. Neverthless, the current crisis shouldn't be allowed to offer a perfect excuse for a permanent change in approach and the loss of one of the nation's key cultural assets. In this context, central government must step up to the plate for once.

We need the National Poetry Library, we need its excellent staff and we need free access to its unique collection. Once again, we're going to have to defend it...!