Building excellence in the cultural sector: Storyhouse

Concerned about the long-term health of the city centre, Cheshire West and Chester Council were looking for solutions that would bring visitors to the city for leisure, retail, food and tourism. They set an ambitious vision for the role of culture, with a significant capital and revenue budget commitment. This allowed the 1930s Art Deco Grade II listed Odeon cinema site to be refurbished and extended to house two theatres (one transforms from an 800-seat proscenium and a 500-seat thrust), the cinema and the re-located library service.

Project overview

The council, including their predecessors at Chester City Council, have been working since 2006 with combined arts producers Chester Performing Arts Centre, a charity established with the local authority to develop the project. Their partnership has survived a change to unitary authority status and a number of changes in political leadership.

The charity changed its name to Storyhouse, in line with the name also chosen for its new home, in 2017. Together, the partners worked closely with the borough’s library service to maximise the value of co-location, particularly through the programme but also with operational features such as the longest opening hour for a UK public library. In fact, the two are not housed in separate parts of the building, but the design physically interweaves the elements, with no doors between. The building is run seamlessly, without the normal distinctions that might normally exist between a library and an arts charity. Since re-opening, the building has become a focus for meeting and activity of all kinds for the local community, extending to a much wider range of people than previously. 131 community groups organise at least one activity each month reaching over 100k particpants directly, whilst overall, Storyhouse welcomes over 1 million customer visits per year, becoming one of the UK’s most visited cultural venues.

Facts and figures

Total capital cost:  £37 million 

Funding: £33 million from Cheshire West and Chester Council; £3 million from Arts Council England;£1 million from fundraising including £600k from MBNA 

Project team: Cheshire West and Chester Council / Storyhouse (Client); Bennetts Associates (Lead architect); Kier Group (Main contractor); Charcoalblue (Theatre consultant); WYG (Planning consultant); WSP (Structural engineer); Ellis Williams (Delivery architect); Foreman Roberts (Mechanical and engineering services); Tweed Nuttall Warburton/Peter de Figueiredo (Heritage consultant); Cheshire West and Chester Capital Delivery team (Project management); BuroFour (up to construction) (Strategic project managers)

Project timetable 

2015: Construction commenced in February

2017: Practical completion in March and doors opened in May

General description of the works: The shell of the original 1936 Art Deco Grade II listed Odeon cinema was refurbished and opened out onto a newly built extension. The work involved: the demolition and removal of the 1936 Odeon stage house areas; building a new theatre, studio and support areas; installation of a fly tower; removal of a balcony; installation of a mezzanine level and central staircase; and the creation of a new foyer.

Placemaking and culture

Concerned about the long-term health of the city centre, Cheshire West and Chester Council (CW&CC) were looking for solutions that would bring visitors to the city for leisure, retail, food and tourism. Challenges they faced included a declining high street, falling tourism and a loss of sense of place and identity. The city’s producing theatre, the Chester Gateway, closed its doors in April 2007, partly to make way for the retail development in which it was to be replaced. Also, the city’s last cinema, the Odeon, on the edge of that development, had closed a year later in 2008, leaving Chester without either a theatre or cinema, both proud traditions in the city. The city library, like so many, was open for restricted hours and as a result was struggling to attract younger customers.

CW&CC produced an ambitious ’One City Plan’ for the period 2012-27 which describes ‘a mosaic of opportunities, which when brought together should deliver so much more as a coherent whole than individual interventions will ever achieve independently.’ The plan took a district approach and set out goals for the area known as the Historic Core, including the Northgate area within which the Storyhouse building now sits, and where the Council were looking for a major turnaround in retail and visitor offers.

Culture was seen from the beginning as a key driver in achieving social and economic change. A bid was made for City of Culture 2017 and although that bid, together with an initial bid to Arts Council England for capital support in 2012, was not successful, the vision for culture remained strong. Plans for developing a replacement theatre for the Gateway, for its inherent benefits as well as its contribution to the night-time and visitor economy, continued to be strongly supported by the public within the consultation process. 

Storyhouse the charity (then operating under the name Chester Performs) had, in the intervening years, become a respected combined arts charity, producing theatre, music and literature festivals, also site-specific community and installation projects; also it had become a national portfolio client of Arts Council England. It founded Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre (now one of the country’s leading open-air theatres) in 2010, an important precursor to the development, not least in establishing the confidence that substantial theatre production could eventually return to the city.

Matching resources with vision

The change to the plans that the partners developed were not for the fainthearted. Councillor Louise Gittins, now Leader of the Council, said, ‘Bold decisions were taken about the location, design and function of the new cultural centre. This required creativity and a willingness to take risks, as well as political and substantial financial backing from Cheshire West and Chester Council, and support from other public, private and community sector partners.’

The Council matched their vision with resources in a number of key areas. The funding allocated to the capital project to refurbish and extend the Art Deco cinema which became today’s Storyhouse was huge at £33 million; this made it the largest scheme in 50 years in the city.  Financial services provider MBNA contributed £600k and Chester Performs raised funds from individuals, also from trusts and foundations, towards the project. 

The Council were the project client, appointing Graham Lister as a project manager in 2012. Storyhouse’s founding Chief Executive, Andrew Bentley, who had run the charity and worked on the project since 2006, also its founding Artistic Director Alex Clifton, who had founded Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre with Andrew, worked alongside Graham to shape the building and, ultimately, the operation that we see today. 

Together, the two partners submitted a revised capital bid to Arts Council England in 2014, outlining a remarkably ambitious vision to create the highly successful combined cultural venue we see today.   

There was also a commitment from Cheshire West & Chester from the earliest stage of planning to supporting the elevated revenue needs of the charity in running such a large facility.  Chester Performs brought their reserves, customer base and revenue funding into the project, however the cost of running their new home was significantly higher, so a significant increase in revenue investment from Cheshire West & Chester was provided.

A peppercorn lease for 20 years was signed by Storyhouse, and the partners agreed to a a rolling three-year funding cycle agreement over the same period.

A significant building 

As the largest public building ever built in Chester, with 7,500 square metres of public space across four floors, critical mass must be a factor in Storyhouse’s contribution to the citizens’ sense of place. In a city-centre location, the building brings together: 

• an 800-seat proscenium arch theatre, convertible to a 500-seat thrust stage located within a copper and glass clad extension building
• a 150-seat Garret Theatre located above the auditorium, offering a flexible events/studio that doubles as a rehearsal space
• a boutique 94-seat cinema housed in a glass-clad ‘lightbox’ and suspended on the first-floor mezzanine
• library ‘wrapped around’ the cinema, theatre, and food and drink spaces
• a children’s library located downstairs, with a storytelling room
• a ground floor restaurant and fourth floor bar with panoramic views of the city

The decision to use the Art Deco building over other options was driven by many factors beyond the Council’s ownership of an empty listed building. It was also suitable because of its landmark presence, design features, proximity to the high street with high footfall, scope to extend by demolishing the neighbouring building and the fact that it was known by citizens as a cultural space. 

Community use at its heart

Notwithstanding the economic benefits envisaged in the plan, Storyhouse and CW&CC set clear objectives and priorities to establish the building as a community-focused centre (rather than a visitor-focused one) from the outset, and to ensure that it offered something to residents and communities across the whole area through its programmes and activities. Louise Gittins explains, ‘It is the community’s space, not ours. That was very much what we wanted – that this became a place for the community. We just look after it for them…It’s for ensuring that communities that haven’t been able to access libraries and the arts can access it.’

Storyhouse describes itself as a progressive business whose activities include theatre production, library management, site specific productions and festivals. Most of their output is made with or by communities and volunteering is at the heart of their operation. 

In their pre-opening open call to the community to be part of Storyhouse, Alex Clifton, the Artistic Director said, ‘Our aim is for the entire building to be brought to life by the local community; to be used by groups and individuals to meet, connect, share, learn, play and create.

Library and cultural services together

For now, the building is one of a kind in the UK (although it took some inspiration from Europe for its design), with the library integrated throughout the building, not simply co-located. The decision to bring the library and cultural services together in one building was made in 2013. It has meant that:

•  the public has access to library books as long as the building is open for performances, and this is far longer than library service normal operating hours. The library is open when the building is – from 8am when the restaurant opens to 11pm when the theatre closes. There are no lockable doors in the library, which is operated by 23 city librarians through its core hours, with assistance from Storyhouse’s 180 volunteers and 106 permanent staff, who also run the library outside these hours. As one user explained, ‘One of the tremendous things is having a library in the building, and not just in one bit but throughout the space. There’s a reason to go in there all day long’
• bringing the library, cinema and theatre into a single building has created unique opportunities for joint cultural ventures such as Storyhouse Languages – a festival celebrating the diversity of languages spoken in the district that featured Syrian storytelling and Hungarian folk artists – and a three-day event, Love Later Life, which looked at loneliness and isolation, and offered performances, talks, digital workshops, yoga and art 
• there is a wider range of community use of the whole building than one might otherwise find in a theatre or cinema

Achievements

Storyhouse has welcomed over one million customers in each of its first two years of operation, equally split between people attending events and festivals, library customers, and those taking part in other activities. There have been substantial achievements for the library services – with membership increasing by 6 per cent – up 11 per cent among teenagers – and book borrowing is on the rise. The development has also had an impact on library services across the wider locality. Of the 16,500 total new library members, 1,514 have registered at services outside the city. 254,972 tickets were sold for events in 2018-19, 212,942 books were borrowed. 100,577 took part in structure participation sessions and 202,000 simply came to work, study, and find companionship and support.

The organisation has won a raft of awards – it was the overall winner in the 2018 Guardian Public Service Awards, RIBA national award, RIBA North West Award, Special Award for Community Impact and Engagement from the Civic Trust, a LABC Building Excellence Award for the Best Change of Use of an Existing Building or Conversion, to name just some. It has rapidly become one of the country’s most respected new theatre producers and Storyhouse was announced the UK’s Most Welcoming Theatre at the UK Theatre Awards in October 2019.   

Her Majesty the Queen and the Duchess of Sussex opened the building officially in June 2018. Its Chief Executive Andrew Bentley, along with its long-standing Chair through the development of the project, Geoff Clifton, were both recognised in the 2020 Queen’s Birthday Honours list for their long-standing work on the project.

Storyhouse contributed an estimated £23m to the region’s economy in 2018-19, including £1.9m spent on local production alone, and supported 156 fte jobs. The estimated value of tourism in the Cheshire West and Chester area has risen to £2.12 billion. Chester accounts for £0.7 billion, which is an 11.6 per cent increase from 2015 figures. A 15 per cent increase in footfall in a key location in Chester city centre has been attributed to the Storyhouse opening. One of the organisation’s current corporate sponsors has said, ‘Storyhouse has become an exemplar of a new type of facility and it has already changed both the perception and experience of visiting Chester city centre’.