Naming Games

It appears from the resource consent application, that the Arts Centre has undergone a name change.  It is no longer referred to as the Arts Centre or the Arts Centre of Christchurch but the Arts Centre Campus.  Who authorised this change?  Is it an Arts Centre Trust Board policy? Where was the public discussion of the issue?   I wonder how the non-university tenants of the site feel about this name and were they consulted?   Does the Trust Board really want the Arts Centre to be seen as an outpost of the University, as the name suggests?  Taken alongside the claim which has been made and not refuted,  that the University has been granted first option on areas which become vacant within the complex, it strongly suggests a desire on the part of the University to reclaim the site, aided and abetted by Arts Centre management.  

This impression is reinforced by the recent renaming of the Great Hall as the College Hall. This of course, was its original function and not surprisingly Mountfort's plans give it this rather prosaic name.  The architectural model Mountfort was calling upon was the Medieval Great Hall and the building has long been known by this name.  Why the sudden change as evidenced in a recent Arts Centre advertisement?  It makes no sense today.  We no longer have colleges of a single University of New Zealand.   It looks like an attempt to downgrade the status of the building, which, let us not forget,  also contains an important war memorial window.  College Hall does not have the same resonance as the Great Hall, which is entirely  consistent with the apparent aim of the Music School building to subvert the heirarchy of the site, as I have pointed out in an earlier discussion.

All in all these changes are not reassuring. Added to the name changes, we have the recent, non-notified subdivision of the site, which allows the University to make the spurious claim that there are no heritage buildings on the proposed music school site, because these will now be on separate titles.  It is easy to see the subdivision as a precursor to further redevelopment on other separate titles.  A picture is beginning to build up of a Board and management which is intent on completely changing the nature of the Arts Centre as originally conceived.  If this is necessary in order to protect the heritage buildings, then they have totally failed to bring the public on side.  The Board and management of the Centre act secretively. They dismiss the legitimate concerns of those who value the Arts Centre.  Tenants complain of poor and disrespectful treatment by managment and unwillingness on the part of the Board to listen to their concerns and now we learn that their rental agreements are to contain a gagging clause. We also hear that many existing tenants including music teachers, and many community groups which have formerly used rooms at the Arts Centre,  have been pushed out by excessive rent increases or hire charges. Even the University itself has mentioned the high costs of hiring the Great Hall as one reason for a decline of concerts at the Arts Centre.

Does this drive to force out the smaller tenants alongside the renaming campaign signal that the  Trust Board  is aiming in the longer term to have just one large institutional tenant, the University, with the exception, perhaps, of the Court Theatre, for they would surely not be so foolish as to  try to push that out?  Or does it plan to go even further, and transfer control to another entity?