Rising East Online

Interviews

A Rich Mix of ideas

by Munira Mirza

Keith Khan, chief executive of Rich Mix, talks to Munira Mirza about art, participation and the absence of a ‘common culture’.

Rich Mix is a new and ambitious educational and cultural site scheduled to open in Tower Hamlets in spring 2006. A multifunctional centre in the heart of Brick Lane, it will house a range of artists’ workspaces, a large performance venue, three cinemas, and offices for community arts groups and training organisations, thus connecting local residents to a global cultural scene.

Rich Mix is expected to build upon East London’s reputation as a ‘creative engine room’ for London and capitalise on its cultural diversity. Significantly, Rich Mix is not only aesthetically innovative, but an experiment in mixed funding, seeking to raise £21m from commercial income and a range of statutory and organisations, including the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, Arts Council, England and the Millennium Commission. Through this partnership approach, Rich Mix will be invested with numerous interests and hopes for the economic, social and cultural regeneration of Tower Hamlets.

Keith Khan was appointed Chief Executive of Rich Mix in August 2004. During his career, he has led the production and costume design for a range of carnivals and major events, including the ‘Commonwealth’ segment of the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations and the opening ceremony of the Millennium Dome. His art organisation, motiroti (Big Sandwich) is famed for producing eclectic work and engaging with diverse audience.

Munira Mirza: What do you see as the main aims of Rich Mix, within the landscape of Tower Hamlets?

Keith Khan: It’s a fascinating project because it’s obviously come about because of the cultural shifts in the capital. I would never have taken it if it were simply a local community project. So my interest is that actually it has its roots in local community and in Tower Hamlets, but also has an international and national reach. I hope that it becomes the first building to house a different relationship between communities and culture, so that it ceases to be a passive, depository of objects and things and becomes a place that is about the interchange of ideas and people.

By this, I mean that we have a number of partners and Rich Mix is therefore not a defined cultural space. It’s not a theatre, it’s not an art gallery, and it’s not a museum. Whatever will emerge from this in 2006, it has never existed before. So it has the opportunity to open up and not be any of the above. And I think in time it will define itself and what it holds. It’s not a workshop space either.

So, in terms of the interchange of practice and culture, within the building there are a number of training organisations - Community Music, Asian Dub Foundation Education - but there are also a number of professional organisations - the BBC - and a number of spaces where creative people will actually have an opportunity to grow and develop their own projects. That could be a variety of stuff, from a film programme, to a virtual fashion show but done in a way that’s very high level and high status, as opposed to it being just like a community project. We’re not just a training resource.

The point is the advice that we give is to elevate people to another way of thinking and working, that will enable their work to hopefully have a much wider reach than perhaps even they expect. So part of our work is also brokerage in terms of trying to put people together and suggesting interchanges and crossovers.

MM: One of the reasons why local statutory agencies have funded Rich Mix is that it is hoped this project will have a social impact on Tower Hamlets, and possibly further afield. How do you feel about this agenda?

KK: Well, it certainly will have a social impact. It’s interesting, if you compare to Ocean, which was a major music venue in Hackney. When that closed down, there was a direct correlation, according to the police, in street crime going up. I don’t know what exactly happened with the building and the particular reasons for it, but there’s a direct correlation between activities like that and things happening in the society around it.

With all the projects that I’ve been engaged with, I’ve always tried to look at some form of participation, or some form of widening the reach to other people.

MM: You define culture in a very broad sense, and see participation as one of the most significant criteria. How do you explain the importance of participation in terms of developing an area?

KK: I don’t know, I suppose once we’ve done the analysis that may become clearer. That’s not our role though. That’s an outcome. We have an interest in that sort of stuff, in the idea of change. I think what’s interesting about the question of participation is that most institutions are passive.

For instance, if we take the current Turks exhibition at the Royal Academy, that’s a series of objects that somehow encapsulate a Turkish identity, or Turkish history. What I believe we’re doing which is fundamentally different is that we’re not necessarily going to have it in that order. There are different ways we can go about making projects that don’t have to be telling or teaching people. We will derive the content of culture from the people who come in, rather than telling them ‘this is a cultural object and you should receive this’.

And that’s going to be interesting because their approach to culture is going to be different and very informed by different choices and different methodologies, especially in this neighbourhood because it’s so varied. You’ve got the heart of the British fashion industry, in Brick Lane, as well as major leather manufacturers. It’s also the heart of all the creative industries, web graphics, and a huge nightclub circuit. It also has the Bangladeshi community.

But at present, there isn’t much of an interchange between those audiences anyway. Rich Mix may become the place that people end up sharing a space in, although I’m not yet sure that just by sharing a building together you begin to make those connections or whether or not you have to force them.

MM: If you want these different groups to connect, do you think there is a common culture that can do this?

KK: There’s no common culture, no. But that’s not what we’re trying to do. We’re actually trying to reflect the complexity of what’s around rather than trying to say there is a common culture. Because the logic of current cultural institutions is that there is a common culture, hence, you can build a theatre, which is a form of art, which you assume people will gravitate to. Well, if you accept that some people don’t have that relationship to theatre then they won’t gravitate to it.

MM: By comparison, the Whitechapel Gallery, which opened in the nineteenth century, was all about bringing high art to the East End. If you don’t feel there’s a particular kind of culture that is worth bringing to the area, but are instead deriving the content of the culture from the people who enter the building, what is the point of doing it? It would appear that culture is not the most important thing, but rather getting people into the building.

KK: The conversation is probably the most important thing. Rich Mix will be at the helm of experimentation. This has primarily an artistic, not a social purpose, but you cannot set the standards of what the art is until you’ve had the conversation. Because, we can’t do it until we set ourselves up in the right way, to be able to reflect what’s around us.

MM: In light of the closure of the play, Behzti at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre this year, due to protests from local members of the Sikh community, there is currently a debate about how cultural centres ought to engage with local communities and only put on art that it feels comfortable with. How willing will Rich Mix be to put on controversial work that might offend community groups or, at least, not have their full buy-in?

KK: That’s a fascinating phenomena because the opposition to the play assumed a singular identity, and with that particular example it assumed a singular Sikh identity. It’s the most challenging area and I don’t know how effectively we’ll be able to answer it or not.

We intend to engage with the local communities by setting up peer groups, and opportunities for people to come in and be spoken to and listened to. We will also do it through outreach and speaking to the key movers and shakers within the community. So we shouldn’t end up in that sort of situation because we would be involving people in our programme and decision-making.

MM: In the case of Birmingham, they did some community consultation beforehand and when the community leaders insisted the play be adapted to cause less offence, the company refused. Do you think it was right for the play to go ahead?

KK: You do have to listen to the community, but the play’s interesting because it is essentially told in the voice of a single person. So I suppose the argument for why they kept the play on is because the theatre is the place where you can hear the voice of a single person.

However, with the Rich Mix project, most of those projects will likely be collaborations between either individuals or organisations so we won’t ever necessarily be in a position where you have one voice in that sort of way. Because in theory, everything is always a partnership.

Munira Mirza lectures in Cultural Studies at UELn and writes about issues of race, culture and urban regeneration.

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