The Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (ACCA), previously the Gardner Arts Centre, is an arts centre, part of the University of Sussex at Falmer, Brighton and Hove, UK. Its public programme includes performance, dance, live art, film, music, discussion and debate. The building is mid-century modern Grade II* listed, designed by Basil Spence.
The venue operated as the Gardner Arts Centre from 1969 to 2007, then closed, was refurbished and reopened in 2016 as the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts.[1][2]
Public programme
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According to the venue's web site, its public programme includes "performance, dance, live art, film, music, discussion & debate and digital practices".[3]
The building
The building is mid-century modern Grade II* listed,[4][5] designed by Basil Spence in the early 1960s. Spence's design consisted of three windowless red-brick rings; the innermost ring formed an auditorium.[6] The concentric circles relate to the unity of all the arts.[7]
Its capacity is 350 (seated) or 480 (standing).[8]
Name
The venue's name is in commemortion of the University's former Chancellor, the late actor, director and producer, Richard Attenborough. It is also a memorial to Attenborough's daughter Jane, a Sussex alumnus, who died in the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.[1]
History
The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation helped to fund its construction, which started in 1966. It opened for use in November 1969.[6]
It operated as the Gardner Arts Centre from 1969 to 2007.[1] It was Britain’s first campus-based university arts centre.[9]
It closed at the end of the spring 2007 season, when money ran out. The building was leased from the University of Sussex and needed about £14 million of improvements. Also, in 2006 Brighton and Hove City Council withdrew its annual £30,000 grant in favour of other city centre arts groups; and in 2007 the Arts Council stopped its funding.[10][11][12] It was subsequently used as a storage space.[6]
Refurbishment addressed the building's previous shortcomings for contemporary use, making it an interdisciplinary space, in the following ways: the auditorium is flexible with end-stage, theatre in the round and thrust stage arrangement seating; rehearsal studios; specialist lighting, sound and audio-visual equipment; a gallery; rehearsal studios; and a new café and bar.[6][13] The building exterior remained the same.
It reopened to the public in 2016, renamed the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts.[1]
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