INDEX
Creative Report # 5 | January 5, 2011 | investigating regeneration through art
1. Working Together? p. 2 CONCLUSIONS
FROM OUR closing conference by Monika Vykoukal
2. Activities Overview p. 5 WHAT’S HAPPENED
IN November and December (so far),
including people met, information gathered, places
seen.
3. Monika Vykoukal p. 6 INTERVIEWS
[CONTINUED FROM Report # 4]: Graham Peet
Colophon:
EDITOR: Monika Vykoukal
CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE: Cody Lee Barbour,
Céline Siani Djiakoua, John Dummett, Neil Gray,
Maureen Neal, Heather Ring, Leo Singer, Suzan
Spence.
1
4. Investigations and Findings:
SOME CONCLUDING PRESENTATIONS, as prepared
for, presented at, and/or written up after our
conference.
- John Dummett p. 10 Pretend the Public.
- Leo Singer p. 14 Serco contract as the
‘zeitgeist’ of austerity governance
5. Suzan Spence p. 17 BLACK COUNTRY STREET
6. Illustrations p. 18
- Maureen Neal St Michaels and All Angels
- Heather Ring Proposals for a mile-long
green corridor.
CONTACT: Monika Vykoukal, t 07967230880,
e: m.vykoukal@wlv.ac.uk.
GRAPHIC DESIGN: Jens Strandberg and Pål
Bylund.
PHOTOS AND OTHER IMAGES: Courtesy the
contributors.
 WORKING TOGETHER?
Conclusions from our closing conference by Monika Vykoukal

THIS IS THE PENULTIMATE newsletter of the two-year arts project ‘Black Country creative advantage’.
The project is an investigation into ‘regeneration’ and focused on the centre of West Bromwich. As
curator, I am working with a lose group of artists and researchers to try and find ways to explore the
processes that come together in regeneration. This report is here to make our activities public and to
invite further contributions.

This issue focuses on the conference, which concluded our investigation in early October with a focus
on what had emerged as a central issue in the course of our investigation: the effect of partnership
working on ideas and practices of democratic decision-making (or otherwise) and the pursuit of
the public interest (or not). Anna Minton, who presented her recent book ‘Ground Control’ at our
first event in November 2009, highlights, fhow the notion of the public good is being redefined, for
example in planning legislation, to ‘emphasize economic growth over community benefit’1.

In West Bromwich the partnership ideology is manifest in the slogan ‘Working Together’ on the
hoardings of many construction sites that form part of the regeneration scheme. ‘Together’ in this
are local government and large corporations2 as well as charities and other voluntary and non-profit
bodies, as has become typical across the UK and beyond in a development most recently captured in
the new government’s notion of ‘Big Society’.

It seemed, in researching aspects of regeneration, our investigation had effectively ultimately been
an attempt to construct an understanding of the impact of this partnership form of governance on
urban development and (our own) cultural work under those conditions. It had also attempted to

2
look at both concrete, local, particular experience(s) and wider issues and at the relationship of
developments and experiences on those scales.

The conference day itself started with a walk around key regeneration sites in the town centre,led by
local historian Robin Pearson, which provided the concrete experience of this particular place. This
was juxtaposed by an introductory talk by Stephen Connelly, Professor for Town & Regional Planning
at the University of Sheffield, which outlined the wider landscape of how regeneration partnerships
work, how much input various groups and individuals have, and what this means for democracy and
legitimacy. In his talk, Connelly raised basic key questions, such as: “Do we need to be democratic?
What does it mean to be democratic? How democratic are partnerships?”3. He also looked to the
likely near future with “Local Economic Partnerships” (LEPs), which will have no third sector
representation on them at all, replacing “Local Strategic Partnerships” (LSPs) to continue their aim
to ‘rebalance’ local economies towards the private sector.

Leo Singer’s contribution to our investigation

provides a case study of such partnership
working, with a focus on the partnerships
of Sandwell Council with Serco in waste
management, as well as some consideration
of the council’s partnership with BT Liberata.
Under the motto ‘More with Less’, a neat
summary for what appears to be the admonition
of this time, Serco took over waste management
at the end of October under a partnership
agreement set up for 25 years. In his essay later
in this newsletter, Leo Singer, goes on to reflect
in greater detail on what this means for public
services and workers.

Anna Francis and Michelle Letowska presented

their work, which has been documented in
Reports # 3 and # 4, David Berridge gave
a reading of some of his writing in Report
# 2, Céline Siani Djiakoua presented a
short documentary film and leaflet on her performance, and Heather Ring proposed a (somewhat
tongue-in-cheek) redevelopment of West Bromwich centre based on her perspective as a landscape
architect concerned with issues of sustainability4. In her presentation Heather analysed The Public as
displaying the designed ‘wackiness’ of a particular time, now a few years back, and as a failed utopia,
proposing to repurpose the building as a picturesque, overgrown ruin, suggesting that such a change
would ‘free’ us to move on from what one may see as the ‘follies’ of a recent fervent belief in cultural
regeneration. My extensive interview with Graham Peet on The Public, also in this report, provides
further perspective on the history and present of The Public. Heather’s conclusions are also captured
more substantially in her essay in the pamphlet Legacy, a contribution by Urban Research Collective
(URC) to the investigation.

Our concluding discussion was co-chaired by URC with Karen Leach from Birmingham-based
campaigning group Localise West Midlands, who aim to get local authorities to change towards more
sustainable development, for instance with more local procurement,. Localise West Midlands also
advocate for the economic multiplier effect that small local businesses bring, i.e. the money stays in
the area, to counter the self-perpetuating monoculture of big corporations such as Tesco.

3
Neil Gray’s film Palimpsest focused on the Tesco development and its relation to the other main
developments in West Bromwich, the housing schemes on The Lyng and The Public, as ‘uneven urban
(under) development’, and thus ‘part of a wider process of neo-liberal urbanism’. His suggestion that
the regeneration process can be understood as deliberate destruction having left the town a wasteland
led to an impassioned debate with local writer and actor Suzan Spence, who challenged this reading
from the perspective of the day to day experience of local residents, which is not entirely dominated
by developments in this manner. Or, to put it more simply ‘How dare you rubbish my town?’ A similar
counter-point was offered by Maureen Neal, who brought me a drawing of one of her favourite places
in the town, a few days after the conference.

This tension, or perhaps even incommensurability, of a more generalising critical analysis and the
particulars of specific experiences, also informed our closing discussion, this time focused on the
field of arts practices and their potentials to provide a critical foil in relation to regeneration. Céline
Siani Djiakoua, whose performance Sinkhole: measuring Tesco site perimeter with a string explored
the physical presence of the Tesco-site, in particular, argued for the importance of the non-verbal
experience provided in art. Others, such as Neil Gray, argued instead for the need for a more critical
and theoretical reading and awareness of the circumstances works are produced and presented in.
Perhaps we ought to want to have it both ways, “the poetics and the politics of representation” 5?

-Monika Vykoukal

(1) Anna Minton. Ground Control: Fear and happiness in the twenty-first-century city. Penguin: London 2009, p. 22
(2) Sandwell Council’s response to our Freedom of Information request about the financing of the Tesco-site
hoardings, published in Creative Report # 2, provides a small, but salient example of this.
(3) For a more substantial essay of his on such matters, see Steve Connelly. “Constructing Legitimacy
in the New Community Governance,” Urban Studies, 16 July 2010, http://usj.sagepub.com/content/
early/2010/07/15/0042098010366744 [accessed 28/12/2010]
(4) Manu Luksch, who developed the short animation blue-sky blueprint, and John Dummett, whose presentation
materials are included in this report, were unfortunately unable to attend the conference.
(5) Stephen Greenblatt. “Resonance and Wonder.” Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum
Display. Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine, eds. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press 1991, p. 54.

Images:
Page 2: Eastside Sustainability Advisory Group, Postcard
Page 3: The Public Cost of Private Contractors, Services to Community Action and Trade Unions,
London 1985, p. 8

4
 ACTIVITIES OVERVIEW
Meetings, research, discussions

15 October Meeting with Suzy Fitzpatrick WATCH OUR FILMS ONLINE

16 October Last Day of Zast Real Estate
Project YOU CAN WATCH the films produced for Black
18 October Research Centre (Stall 42, New Country creative advantage by participating
Market Hall, West Bromwich) artists and researchers online here: http://
clear-out vimeo.com/multistory.
11 November Meeting with Chloe Brown, Dr.
Dew Harrison, Andy Hewitt Céline Siani Djiakoua, Sinkhole: measuring
19 November Cody Lee Barbour research Tesco site perimeter with a string, West
visit: distributing carrier bags Bromwich 2010
and maps in the New Market
Hall; e-mail exchange with Neil Gray, Palimpsest, West Bromwich 2010
Kathrin Böhm of the art and
architecture practice Manu Luksch, blue-sky blueprint, animation,
Public Works for the Longhouse West Bromwich 2010
blog, now available here:
http://www.longhouse.uk.com/
blog/2010/11/658/
1 December Meeting with Dr. Dew
Harrison, University of
Wolverhampton
8 December Meeting with Chloe Brown,
Multistory
14 December Meeting with Suzy Fitzpatrick,
Manchester Céline Siani Djiakoua
Sinkhole, West Bromwich 2010
OUT NOW: Legacy. The End of Regeneration

LEGACY IS A 20 PAGE, full colour pamphlet by

Urban Research Collective, with a guest article
by Heather Ring and photographs by Dave Gee .

Order the pamphlet (£2.50 plus postage) at

www.lowwintersun.info/legacy.html, or contact:
e jonathan@lowwintersun.info, t 0161 20 999
41, OpenSpace, Unit 1, 41 Old Birley Street,
Manchester M15 5RF. Manu Luksch
blue-sky blueprint, animation, West Bromwich 2010
Download a free electronic copy here: www.
scribd.com/doc/44395979/Legacy-The-End-of-
Regeneration

5

I DECIDED TO INTERVIEW some
individuals and people from
the range of organisations I
had come across in my research
and who seemed to me to be
central to regeneration in
West Bromwich and in some
cases beyond.
I THEN EMAILED them a set of
questions, and gave them the
option to answer the questions
in writing, over the phone or
in a face to face conversation.
See Creative Report # 4 for
further interviews.
E-MAIL RESPONSE FROM
Graham Peet, 22 July 2010:
Graham Peet is an artist
and photographer who
has worked in Community
Arts for over thirty years
in this area and beyond.
He has been working on
the development of The
Public since 1995. For more
information see his website,
www.grahampeet.com.
Monika: What is your role in
regeneration?
Graham Peet: I see The
Public, and therefore my
role as about making West
Bromwich a better place to
live and work. This involves
being positive about the place
and its people, making positive
stories which show the vibrant
intercultural community.
Monika: How do you define
‘regeneration’?
Graham Peet: About making
Monika Vykoukal
a place a better place, both
culturally and economically.
Monika: Most important
thing for the next few years?
Graham Peet: That the rest
of the planned building in
West Bromwich takes place.
Monika: Biggest challenge
for the next few years?
Graham Peet: The impending
cut backs. We have already
seen the Building Schools
for the Future programme
scrapped by the new coalition
government.
Monika: Hardest decision
you had to make?
Graham Peet: In a way the
decisions that were hardest
were made for us - the
decision to put The Public into
administration, the decision
to put The Public Gallery into
administration.
Monika: What is in your
view the legacy of the last
10 years of regeneration and
what legacy do you hope to
eventually leave?
Graham Peet: The Public
Building is an amazing
testimony to the many people
who worked on it and the idea
that a group of creative people
in the community can really
make a qualitative difference
through imagination. It will
only really become fully
realised when it is the centre
piece of the new buildings in
West Bromwich. It will have to
face the economic realities of
6
the next decade with realism
in order to be sustainable.
This means that it will have to
continue to evolve. However,
so long as it can manage to
maintain its unique possibility
to become a public building
dedicated to socially engaged
arts it will have succeeded.
The measure of that will be
when enough local people
benefit from its fantastic
spirit. That ultimately is about
visitor numbers.
Monika: What would you do
if money was no object?
Graham Peet: I would employ
more artists on the project
and fix some of the aspects of
the building which are not as
convenient as they might be.
[Interview continued face
to face on 17 August at The
Public]
Monika: What is happening
now and how do you see
the way forward for The
Public and its role in the
regeneration of the town?
Graham Peet: It’s all going
ahead in a sensible way now.
We need to treat this as a new
project because decisions
over years have been made
by new people, again and
again. There is a sense of
progression, but this is also
partly the reason why the
initial situation developed
to some extent. The building
is so unusual, it is difficult
to think of another use for
it other than the creative use intended. In
many ways this is what has stopped it being
turned into offices for commercial lets. If
the building had been more conventional, it
would most certainly not be an art centre now.
Alsop said in the early days of the design that
artists should not say they can’t respond to a
space.
Monika: Who was consulted, and how, during
the initial planning?
Graham Peet: Consultation happened mainly
with members of the Jubilee Arts Team, and
they also ran workshops with ca. 40 artists,
mainly in West Bromwich, but some in the
North of England.
Monika: How did the building come about
and who initiated it?
Graham Peet: In 1993/94 Jubilee Arts was
working on a plan for the organisation’s future
and invited - this was not common at the time -
some US consultants to facilitate the process.
They put one question to Jubilee Arts: What
will, in your view, Jubilee do in 20 years time?
This was a very hard question for workers who
were used to annual funding. One answer was
a lot of small shop units on the High Street
would be arts spaces. Another answer was that
there would be one big building.
I think Sylvia King took that idea of the one big
building and spoke to someone at the council.
There was about 35K for a feasibility into the
commercial viability of the idea. It was already
obvious this would have a big impact on the
town. Probably this is why the council funded
it. At the time the site under discussion was the
car park in Reform Street. The feasibility study,
which involved leisure consultants, architects
and business consultants immediately said that
to be self-supporting in this area one needed
to think very ambitiously: a cinema, hotel, arts
building, new square and multi-story car park
were suggested. The estimated cost at the time
was _70 million.
Sylvia started to look for funds. This was in
1995. Millennium money became available
almost immediately after the study. We applied
7
but did not get it. But from this we had a fairly
well-developed application, which we put in
again to the Lottery and other funds. We were
successful, in my view, because we were seen
as a grassroots initiative and outside London.
Towards late 1996, early 1997 the building was
put out to competition. Mostly people who
were associated with Jubilee Arts projects were
aware of and took part in discussions around
this plan locally.
The change of the site from the Reform Street
car park to the eventual one where the bus
station used to be located came quickly, in
line with planning changes the council were
pushing. The bus station was moved to the site
next to the Metro. The decision to change the
site for the building was made within a few
weeks. The architects were quite influential in
this: the Reform Street site was seen as rather
peripheral to the town. Around this time the
Tesco plan started. The council had been trying
to redevelop the Cronehills Area for around 25
years and the retail in the town suffered from
competition, in particular from Merry Hill and
the Bullring in Birmingham.
We only had a few months to apply for European
funding. This is when Alsop produced plans for
a building on stilts, similar to the one eventually
built in Toronto. The design process was in
stages, initially with little detail about the inside.
The building had a lot of input from community
and access groups. They found the design on
stilts a bit too weird, and there was also an issue
with the potential cost. Then there followed a
long process of design and redesign, with around
20 versions, all started from paintings. This was
the process of the organisations involved. Alsop
was challenging Jubilee to find ways to use the
spaces. In parallel Jubilee was growing as an
organisation: before the process started there
were 12 people, eventually 80.
Monika: What changes in staff were there?
Graham Peet: After the development stage when
Alsop was appointed, changes in staff started,
also with the separation into two organisations,
one working on the building headed up by Sylvia
King and one continuing to run the arts projects,
lead by Bev Harvey and Brendan Jackson. In
some ways this was problematic: two offices in
two areas of the town caused a division, which
was not resolved until the two sides came back
together in a larger office.
Monika: Was this project conceived as a
regeneration project from the outset, and how
was it seen to relate to the wider developments
in the town?
Graham Peet: Without a doubt this project
made regeneration a reality. The council had
been thinking about it for years, but when
something as significant as this building
happens, it provides an impetus for other
development. Ironically other developments
are now being realised much later. At one
point we worked closely with the planning
department on presentations on how the whole
town would be regenerated.
We were very good at new technologies and did
very elaborate multimedia presentations of the
project. We ran a three day event on what we
would produce at the Council House in Oldbury
and presented this with a tower of TVs set-up in
the centre of the council chambers. This was
really the launch of the developments.
Monika: Who informed the public about the
building’s development and how?
Graham Peet: This was really down to Jubilee
Arts, although there was support for it at Chief
Executive Level. I think a lot of the rest of the
council did not believe it would happen.
Monika: How was the press about the building?
Graham Peet: The local press only became
negative when the building opened and the
gallery was not finished. This was an appalling
PR mistake, and we have still not recovered
from it. There were about 8000 people at the
opening and it was on all four national evening
news bulletins. The only other time this
happened with an arts building was with Tate
Modern. The building was hugely anticipated.
Monika: What was planned in terms of the
relationship of The Public to Tesco?
Graham Peet: At the time the plan was for
8
Jubilee Arts to also produce a programme for
the Square between the two developments. At
one point the plan envisaged mobile workshop
units by Atelier Van Lieshout.
Monika: How and where did things go wrong,
in your view?
Graham Peet: The first catastrophe was when
Alsop went bust: this caused a big delay to the
building at a time when the team had grown
to around 80 people. This initially pushed the
project into administration. The council then
took over, but gave the responsibility for the
gallery to a separate company. This did not
work in practice, for lots of reasons. There was
a huge number of technical issues. When Alsop
went into administration, all contracts with the
companies involved had to be renegotiated with
new terms. The new terms for the company who
took over Alsop’s work were too high. At this
point mainly the fitting out of the building had
to be finished.
Monika: How did the name of and concept for
the activities taking place and art work develop?
Graham Peet: Initially it was called the ‘Digital
Theme Park’, then c/Plex to reflect the term
Multiplex and the C to suggest Creative, or
Community, or Communication or Culture and
so on. However, we could not get the domain
name for this, so we changed the title to ‘C/
Plex - a Jubilee Arts Project.’ Then we employed
Wolff Olins, a huge international firm, who e.g.
also worked on the London 2012 Olympics, to
brand the project. They came up with the name
‘The Public’ through workshops.
Monika: What do you think is the impact of
the project on regeneration here?
Graham Peet: The building set a standard for the
town. It has stopped it from becoming the same
as just any other development. It is pretty unique
to have a modern cultural building as the centre
piece of a relatively un-cosmopolitan area.
Monika: How were the gallery and the
programming developed?
Graham Peet: There was always pressure from
Arts Council England to make the business
case work. There was always huge pressure to
make the gallery a paying attraction, while
everybody wanted it not to be. It was only
when the gallery part went into administration
and the council took over that the business
case could be reviewed in such a way that the
gallery could be free.

Community projects are not as developed

as other parts of the buildings’ activities:
Multistory were set up as a separate
organisation when the building first went
into administration and the learning team
at The Public is very small. Now Multistory
are beginning to contribute much more to
the activities in the building, and The Public
have also started to develop a relationship
with the photography department of
Sandwell College. There was, at one point,
a long discussion with the college to be a
major tenant of the building, but this did not
happen.

The initial problems of getting the building

open were a huge distraction, now things
are settling down I hope that we can rebuild
much of the original intention of the project -
to work with local communities and artists to
make West Bromwich a vibrant place again.

9
 INVESTIGATIONS AND FINDINGS:
Some concluding presentations,
as prepared for, presented at, and/or written up after our conference.
John Dummett, Pretend the Public
[NOTE: THE TEXT and images here were prepared for
presentation at the conference, but due to illness not
presented at the event.]
THIS IS AN INCOMPLETE TEXT.
It’s not yet finished, not because of the pres-
sure of time or deadlines, but because I have
chosen to fix its duration; its time of writing,
to the regeneration of West Bromwich.
I wish this text, specifically the process of writ-
ing it, to come to a close at an as yet unfixed
point in the future. This uncertain moment will
be when the new buildings and spaces of West
Bromwich have made their transition from be-
ing ‘new’ to being familiar and ‘used’.
So I anticipate that at some point I will be figur-
ing out whether the Tesco car park which will
be at Hardware street is familiar or not. The
close of my writing will be a process of deter-
mining how I assess this condition, which may
be an implausible exercise.
In addition to being incomplete, this text is
10
also not coherent, it doesn’t have the neatness
of a well formulated idea or observation, it is in-
stead a set of loosely related notes, developed
through being here in West Bromwich and by
thinking about this place when being some-
place else.
Although the regeneration will have “innu-
merable beginnings, middles and endings”1,
it seems appropriate to begin here with this
building, the Public.
Relational Aesthetics a book written by the
French curator and art critic Nicolas Bourri-
aud2, in 1998 sought to establish criteria which
could analyse specific forms of art practice that
had developed through the 1990s. The artists3
he focused on shared a common approach in
that they created the conditions, through ob-
jects, installations or live processes, for actual
social environments in which people could
come together and participate in a shared ac-
tivity 4.
Claire Bishop in “Antagonism and Relational
Aesthetics” developed a critique of Bourri-
aud’s ideas using Laclau and Mouffe’s theory
of democracy as antagonism which I am going
to map onto this new public realm. The work
of two artists in particular; Liam Gillick and
Rirkrit Tiravanija present micro-topias of com-
munal life or togetherness. Their work seeks
to create convivial spaces which operate as a
“kind of asylum for everyone”. The results of
their methodology provide a model of the typi-
cal post-regeneration public space.
Their works are essentially non-antagonistic,
and address a community which has something
intrinsically in common among its subjects,
which in this instance is an interest in the con-
sumption of cultural experience, presented by
the gallery or museum. In the case of regenera-
tion this is understood to be a desire to partici-
pate in the consumption of goods and services.
This is an unsettling case of life and art mirror-
ing each other, in which the sets of relations
produced by the artworks and the public space
are seen as essentially harmonious – there is no
conflict, no division, no antagonism.
We all share and agree on the same things – why
we are here and what we want to do here. But
both the relational artworks and the new public
realm are “predicated on the exclusion of those
who hinder or prevent its realization”5.
Bishop describes “Tiravanija’s micro-topia as
giving up on the idea of transformation in pub-
lic culture and reduces its scope to the plea-
sures of a private group who identify with one
another as gallery-goers”.
If this is the condition of the new public realm,
then those who seek or desire transformation
are the excluded, unless the transformation op-
erates under the aegis of cultural activity;
“With the help of the audience as well as pass-
ers-by revolutionary moments are re-enacted in
an attempt to write ourselves into history. “
11
Gob Squad: Revolution Now! 24 - 26 Jun 2010
ICA, London.
Heres a snippet of a review of Revolution now:
“Their desperation and interactions with the
outside world are heartwarming insights into
the British people and lead us into cheers and
shouts of disappointment at those that stop
and then move on. Ultimately Gob Squad
play a difficult game in their interaction of
real people beyond a theatrical context, to
us within the context. They dance along the
slippery edge of performance boundaries
and create a performance truly unique and
remarkable as they coax us into joining their
revolt.”6
From this theatre of the public realm a dysto-
pia emerges; a bleak supervised kindergarten
where correct civic behaviour is institutional-
ized as participatory live artworks. In this play-
pen future we will pick our favourite soft toys
and safe costumes and perform as the public in
this role-play game that is the new civic realm.
This future emerges first in the distance with
the transformation of the urban skyline into a
facsimile of the Big City, and it is before this
horizon of rising shining glass towers that the
public realm is reborn. Reconstituted as an in-
fantile realm of managed desire, the new public
realm will be the cradle of a socially engaged
séance. With automatic writing and a carnival
of re-enactments the séance will exorcise the
ghosts of the old public realm, that linger “lost
in a deserted space where neither the public
nor the intimate find their place”
Welcome to the future.
With the future in mind I will quote from a well
known text by Walter Benjamin; On the Con-
cept of History, as an introduction to my notes
on Hardware Street.
“There is a painting by Klee called Angelus No-
vus. An angel is depicted there who looks as
though he were about to distance himself from
something which he is staring at. His eyes are
opened wide, his mouth stands open and his
wings are outstretched. The Angel of History
must look just so. His face is turned towards the
past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of
events, he sees one single catastrophe, which un-
ceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls
it before his feet. He would like to pause for a
moment so fair, to awaken the dead and to piece
together what has been smashed. But a storm is
blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in
his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no
longer close them. The storm drives him irresist-
ibly into the future, to which his back is turned,
while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high.
That which we call progress, is this storm”7.
12
This is a familiar quote, and perhaps almost a
cliché to use in this context, but nonetheless it
is the image I wanted to place here; the past as
wreckage, as an ever accumulating hill of bro-
ken stones.
But this wreckage is not just the broken stones
sitting behind the hoardings, the wreckage is
the fragments and moments left stranded in
memory. These strange objects can be brought
once more to the present by a little research.
And Hardware street provided a rich cargo of
moments, which Ishall list in no particular or-
der:
4 men from Hardware Street died on the Ti-
tanic
There was a bus depot here
The area was extensively mined. And the site of
the school was a pithead
Hilti industries who part funded Cronehill na-
ture gardens, whose motto is “building a bet-
ter future”, was started by two brothers in 1941
in Lichtenstein. The younger brother printed a
pro-Nazi newspaper and is suspected of money
laundering.
By digging a little, much is revealed. But does
any of this have any “meaning” within the con-
text of the present moment?
Now I wish to bring back the idea of antago-
nism;
“Conflict, division and instability do not ruin
the democratic public sphere; they are the con-
ditions of its existence”. Rosalyn Deutsche8.
and
“A democratic society is one in which relations
of conflict are sustained, not erased”. Claire
Bishop9.
In addition to being a useful critique of the new
public realm, antagonism is also appropriate for
memory, in that space and place is contested
within history; different versions emerge into
the public realm depending on particular agen-
das.
One event is recalled before others and some
are placed in the long grass.
The starting point for my interest in this overall
project was a sign which recorded a duration.
The commemoration of which was used as a
protest. And this approach is where the desire
to locate this act of writing within the ongoing
regeneration has come from.
But I do not wish to protest,
I only wish to mark the passage of antagonism
and to speak about its gradual exclusion.
To record how it moves from being here and
now, to being a possibility, to becoming re-en-
acted as an institutionalised rhetorical device.
Thank you.
13
(1) Peggy Phelan. Out of Now The Lifeworks of Te-
hching Hsieh. London & Massachusetts: Live Art De-
velopment Agency & The MIT Press, 2009, p. 342.
(2) Nicolas Bourriaud co-founded, and from 1999 to
2006 was co-director with Jerôme Sans of the con-
temporary art centre Palais de Tokyo in Paris. He was
also founder and director of the contemporary art
magazine Documents sur l’art (1992-2000). Bourri-
aud was the Gulbenkian curator of contemporary art
at Tate Britain and in 2009 he curated the fourth Tate
Triennial, Altermodern.
(3) Liam Gillick, Rikrit Tiravanija, Phillippe Par-
reno, Pierre Huyghe, Carsten Höller, Christine Hill,
Vanessa Beecroft, Maurizio Cattelan and Jorge Par-
do.
(4) These shared activities have been described by
Bourriaud as ‘microtopias’.
(5) Claire Bishop, “Antagonism and Relational
Aesthetics,” October Magazine 110, Fall 2004, MIT
Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, pp. 51-79.
(6) Jake Orr, “Review: Revolution Now!, Gob
Squad,” 25 June 2010, A Younger Theatre, http://
www.ayoungertheatre.com/review-revolution-now-
gob-squad-ica-lift-festival [accessed 28/12/2010]
(7) Walter Benjamin. On the Concept of His-
tory. 1940, translation 2005 Dennis Redmond,
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benja-
min/1940/history.htm [accessed 28/12/2010]
(8) Rosalyn Deutsche. Evictions. Art and Spatial Pol-
itics. MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts/London
1996, p. 289.
(9) Claire Bishop, “Antagonism and Relational
Aesthetics,” October Magazine 110, Fall 2004, MIT
Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, p. 66.
Leo Singer, Serco contract as the ‘zeitgeist’ of
austerity governance?
On Monday 15 November 2010 Sandwell Borough
Council signed a partnership with the company
Serco. The contract, signed for 25 years and
worth _650 million, binds Serco to deliver street
cleansing, waste collection and disposal and to
build a new waste transfer station. The underlying
ambition of the council is to ‘do more for less’.
But several questions remain to be asked...
In the middle of June 2010 Sandwell Council’s bin
men declared a work-to-rule, in protest against
the planned downgrading of their pay1. Work-to-
rule can be quite a powerful bargaining tool if you
are a bin man, as it in fact leads to a slowdown of
work and pilling up of street rubbish.
I happened to be in Sandwell when the industrial
dispute broke out, intending to interview people
from the Black Country Living Museum in Dudley
for my original research. But when I heard about
the work-to-rule, a walk-out of the staff from
Sandwell College and a protest of the NHS workers
against transformational plans for the hospital, all
happening in the last week of June, I decided to
re-focus my research in another direction.
Sandwell’s bin men are sustainable regeneration
workers par excellence. Every morning, from
6 o’clock, they fill the European Directive on
Sustainable Waste management with real content
– with thousands of bags full of rubbish. Suddenly
this end link in the commodity supply chain - so
crucial in the Black Country’s (post-)industrial
landscape dotted by motorways, logistics parks,
warehouses, present and just built shopping parks
– got partly blocked.
I decided to focus my research on this topic: how,
in the middle of the era of urban regeneration,
does the character of work of the employees
change? And a bit more specific: how does the
character of the waste collection work change?
14
The mega-partnership with Serco
British trade unions, especially Unison, are critical
of the partnership model because it typically leads
to worse working conditions. In 2003 the Centre for
Public Services carried out a survey among frontline
council staff employed in 5 different joint ventures
in different UK cities. Workers in each case study
were given the same questions on the following
issues: the two-tier workforce, job satisfaction,
security, consultation, training, health and safety,
equal opportunities and service quality2.
Sandwell Council worked hard on getting the
trade unions’ support for the idea of contracting
the waste out to a private bidder. During the
procurement process (Council decided for
an EU favoured method called ‘competitive
dialogue’) both unions representing the bin men,
Unite and GMU, went along with the Council
representatives to site visits, e.g. to Milton Keynes
to see Serco’s waste contract, to the Wirral (Biffa)
and to Liverpool3. In the end the union officials
agreed to a transfer of all 300 staff across to Serco
(under TUPE protection levels) and gave up the
alternative of secondment. When contracting
out, the option of secondment is prefered by the
unions in general, because it doesn’t involve a
change of employer for the seconded staff4.
The _650 million contract with Serco involves
running the council’s household waste and
recycling collections and street cleansing services
and is also set to involve the development of a waste
transfer station at the proposed Pikehelve ‘Eco
Park’ in West Bromwich. The contract is intended
to deliver the council’s ‘Waste Improvement
Plan’. Sandwell claims that the contract will help
it to achieve its target of recycling 60% of its waste
by 2020, turning 35% of it into energy and sending
less than 5% to landfill. ‘It plans to continue its roll
out of blue wheeled bins for kerbside commingled
recycling collections, allowing residents to
recycle more materials including plastics and
cardboard, as well as introducing a food waste
recycling service during 2011.’5
Serco is a multinational service company based in
the UK, with an unusually diverse, ‘post-modern’
portfolio. They run services or provide operations
for the following industries: transportation,
defence, local governments, IT, aviation,
health, education, leisure, prisons, detention
centres and ‘welfare to work’ programmes6. 90%
of its clients are from the public sector. On 31
December 2009 Serco’s value on the London
Stock exchange was £ 3,970 billion, with the
profit after tax at £ 130,20 million (in 2000, its
value was ‘only’ £ 770 million). Its shares’ price
shot up immediately after the Sandwell Council
announced Serco as the preferred bidder for
the contract on 12 August 2010: from £ 540 to
£ 625 per share7. In 2007 Serco North America
became the fourth private contractor awarded
with management support and planning services
for the US Army in Iraq8.
Serco is one of the six global service companies
which dominate the world public services
market, the outcome of an intensive corporate
consolidation within the last 10-15 years.
According to Public Services International
Research Unit, service companies depend on
sources of cheap labour in order to make profits.
There are signs that providers of outsourced
contracts, especially catering, can no longer
generate large profits. Sodexho, Compass
and Rentokil-Initial have reported increases
in debt, with organisational restructuring and
some decreases in the number of jobs as a way
of dealing with the problem: ‘Several global
catering companies have therefore opted to
diversify and achieve higher economies of scale.
Serco represents such a new form of outsourcing
of administrative and technical services for the
public sector.’9
The 25-year deal with Serco represents what’s
called a ‘strategic service delivery partnership
(joint venture)’. It is by principle a long-
term multi-service and multi-million pound
contract between a public body and a private
contractor. They are financed from the public
authority budget, ‘Private finance may be used
to front load investment but this is usually only a
small percentage of the contract.’10 The services
provided are typically IT, HR, payroll, tax and
benefits, financial and legal services, property
management and other technical services. The
share of stakes held by the local authority in the
join venture compared to the private partner are
usually 20:80. The first SSP in the UK was signed
in 2000. Their number in 2008 was over 50 and
they are dominated by 11 multinationals11.
Private equity funds and the local government
markets
The scale of private investments in the public
sector is surprising. The new industry of private
sector contractors has been engaged to build
facilities, manage them and provide cleaning,
catering and other services,. The most advanced
areas from this point of view are IT, facilities
management and back office functions. The
most common justification for outsourcing these
functions is that they need huge investments that
the public budgets cannot meet. I found it very
surprising to realise that the most ‘human’ part
of local public services is the most commodified.
Social care became the market with the highest
share of private capital. Many care companies have
been bought up by global private equity firms.
Other sectors such as healthcare, leisure services,
waste management, school support, higher and
further education have a much increased scale of
private sector involvement as well.
Private equity finance has been heavily involved in
the buying and selling of the waste management
operators. Firms’ objective appears to have been
short-term ownership to cut costs, improve
operating margins and then to merge with
competitors to improve economies of scale and
market presence. According to analysis by PSIRU,
average private equity ownership of the waste
management companies has been a mere 2.3
years. Profits on the deals have been significant
for the firms – investments of €3.5bn have yielded
15
returns of €2.5bn, equating to average returns of 69% in less than two and a half years. Total returns
are underestimates as they exclude holdings retained by the private equity firm Terra Firma in part of
the Waste Recycling Group, which is estimated to be worth _900 million. If this potential profit is
included, private equity firms would have achieved an approximately 100% return on capital.

Seen from this perspective, the latest public-private contract with Serco is not really surprising. It’s
rather a typical illustration of a trend that’s just going to grow in the current climate, when councils,
stripped of cash, will have to compete for private investments. As council representatives in Sandwell
repeatedly said in the recent past, they see a major local potential for growth in green businesses, such
as recycling and resource recovery. These are industries typically run as the infamous PFIs, public-
private partnerships.

(1) The new pay scale means an average drop by £4000 a year for the refuse collection workers, for drivers even
£8000. It is an outcome of the Single Status Agreement the council introduced recently, in line with the UK-wide
implementation of such agreements. The bin men appealed it, but the council confirmed its decision
in June. This was the beginning of the work-to-rule. See also Creative Report # 3.
(2) See e.g. Germà Bel, Xavier Fageda and Mildred E. Warner, 2010. “Is private production of public services
cheaper than public production? A meta-regression analysis of solid waste and water services,” Journal of Policy
Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(3), pp. 553-577. Available online: http://ideas.repec.
org/a/wly/jpamgt/v29y2010i3p553-577.html [accessed 27/12/2010]
(3) Interview with Carrol Rowe, Sandwell Council, 7 October 2010.
(4) When asked why the council opted for the transfer of staff instead of seconding them, Carrol Rowe said that
the reasons were “costs of operating the contract,” easier management, and also that they tried to “make a sensible
solution” for the future private contractor.
(5) See Waste Improvement Plan, Sandwell Council, http://www.sandwell.gov.uk/info/200084/recycling_
rubbish_and_waste/491/waste_improvement_plan [accessed 27/12/2010]
(6) Serco manages two immigration removal centres in the UK and seven in Australia. One of them is the infamous
Yarl’s Wood, a centre for families in Bedfordshire, UK. Following a series of riots and hunger strikes of asylum
seekers, the Government decided in July 2010 to ban the detention of 2000 children in its ‘family unit’. See
e.g.: Emily Dugan. “Inside Yarl’s Wood: Britain’s shame over child detainees,” The Independent, Sunday, 26
April 2009, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/inside-yarls-wood-britains-shame-over-child-
detainees-1674380.html [accessed 27/12/2010]
(7) Serco Group Plc Ord 2p Interactive Chart, London Stock Echange, http://www.londonstockexchange.com/
exchange/prices-and-markets/stocks/summary/company-summary-chart.html?fourWayKey=GB0007973794G
BGBXSET1 [accessed 27/12/2010]
(8) Fourth Logcap Contract Split Among Three Companies, Professional Bulletin of United States Army Logistics,
PB 700-07-06 Volume 39, Issue 6, November-December 2007, http://www.almc.army.mil/alog/issues/
NovDec07/alog_news.html [accessed 27/12/2010]
(9) Jane Lethbridge and David Hall. “Municipal services: organisations, companies and alternatives.” Public
Services International Research Unit (PSIRU), London, October 2008,
www.psiru.org/reports/2008-11-munic.doc [accessed 27/12/2010]
(10) “PPP Briefing: Strategic Service-delivery Partnerships and Outsourced Shared Services Projects”, European
Services Strategy Unit, Unison Northumberland, Durham, Northamptonshire, July 2008, p. 4, http://www.
european-services-strategy.org.uk/publications/public-bodies/strategic-service-delivery-partnerships/ppp-
briefing-strategic-service-delivery-partne/ [accessed 27/12/2010]
(11) Ibid., p. 5.

16
 SUZAN SPENCE
Black Country Street

Tek a walk darn a Black Country high street,

an’ when yow think you’ve sid it all,
I bet yow aye noticed half on it,
if yowm less that eight foot tall.
Look up at bay windowed shop fronts.
Look up at murals in pastel shades.
Notice what usually goes unseen:
Edwardian shops, Victorian parades.
When Queen Victoria passed on the train,
It was one of the ugliest sights in all her reign.
She med sure they closed her curtains
‘cause her couldn’t bear to see,
the smog, the smoke, the blackened sky,
of our proud industrious Black Country.
But what her maj’ day realise
before ‘er started to sneer,
there wore ‘ave bin ‘alf the progress
if it woe for folk rowend ‘ere.
They built the cut through sheer hard work,
a dangerous way to mek a livin’,
Moving rocks and shifting dirt,
blasting tunnels, endless diggin’.
They med the nuts, the bolts, the nails,
That kept this country gooin,
with glass, saddles, chains, springs,
locks and weighing scales;
Precision engineerin’.
But look today the sky aye black,
the dirt and grime is all but gone,
if queen Vic passed this way again
she’d have a view to look upon.
No more smoke, that’s in the past.
No foundry ‘ommer’s crashing sound.
It aye like it was in olden times,
No pounding chest no shaking ground.
If yowed a sid it yonks agoo
Yow‘d know where the name came from,
But yow’d have a job convincing folk,
seeing what it has now become.
But if yow know’d the history,
there wouldn’t be no mystery
of why it’s still the Black Country,
they kept the name for posterity.

17
 ILLUSTRATIONS:
Maureen Neal, St Michaels and All Angels

18
 ILLUSTRATIONS:
Heather Ring, Proposals for a mile-long green corridor

19
20
21
 BLAZON
Absent shield and tincture Argent/transparent.
Rainbow motto , center cheif position.
withdrawn from context: content to enfold around.

22