Two photographs of Arc on Dovecot Street, Stockton c2013.
Photographs and details courtesy of David Thompson
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
Two photographs of Arc on Dovecot Street, Stockton c2013.
Photographs and details courtesy of David Thompson
What technical equipment wasn’t installed, I’ve taken shows into here and it’s amazingly kitted out and has totally regenerated that end of the town, it looks great, oh and it was 6million
I can never u/stand how this building rec’d Planning approval, or why anyone wanted to develop it in the position it was in. For such a purpose and use, you would have expected a dedicated car-park, but ‘No’ there wasn’t one at all, not anywhere near it. The fact that there is now, subsequent to the demolition of several adjacent buildings, is purely fortuitous.
At the time, there was plenty of land available overlooking the river at Teesdale, which would have made it an example of ‘showpiece’ architecture for the town, instead of which, it’s now on a street where every property seems to be vacated, or down-at-heel.
The other thing of course, was the peculiar way in which it was funded, with the original ‘Trust’ getting into financial difficulty almost immediately after the building became operational. Just how it cost over £9m to build, when most of the planned Technical equipment was never installed, is a huge mystery.
At the time, Stockton B.C. said they would not be ‘coming to the rescue’ of this rather mis-guided and mis-managed independent arts project. Thankfully they did, and purely by the hard-work of some very dedicated people, it still burns-bright as a small haven of artistic endeavours.