A short history of the Arts Centre

Just a year after the Boar was created and newly toddling, Warwick Arts Centre was opened in 1974. And it’s a privilege that we have on our university campus the largest Arts Centre in the Midlands; indeed the largest venue of its kind in the UK, excluding the Barbican. Not many universities can boast of having such a venue on their doorstep. Today it stands proudly in the shadow of the Koan, presenting all Warwick students with the opportunity to avoid their degrees in whichever artistic manner they choose. You’ll hopefully even graduate there in the Butterworth Hall one day. But how much do you know about this great Warwick institution?

The Arts Centre came about as a venture between the University of Warwick and a mysterious anonymous benefactor, who donated £400,000 towards its development.

The intention was to provide an arts resource to the local people of Coventry and Warwickshire in a green environment. Billing in at £1 million, in October 1974 the Warwick Arts Centre was opened by names like playwright Eugene Ionesco, actress Dame Peggy Ashcroft, West Side Story composer Leonard Bernstein and composer Sir Michael Tippett.

During the 1970s the Arts Centre set its precedent for being a platform for thought-provoking, quality material, challenging the boundaries of the arts. In the first few weeks, a double-bill of Tom Stoppard plays graced its stages, as well as the famous Amadeus Quartet performing Mozart, Bartok and Beethoven.

The Butterworth Hall, perhaps best known to students as the most daunting venue for exams, was completed in 1981. It had a further £6.9 million redevelopment in 2008/9. Its opening performance back in the 1980s was Warwick Symphony Orchestra and Chorus’ rendition of Beethoven’s IX Symphony, which cost 50p a ticket and sold out completely.

Later into the 1980s, the Mead Gallery was built, making space for the cinema, the University bookshop and a new restaurant. The expansion and improvement of the glass atrium, current cinema and Mead Gallery were then undertaken in 1997.

Former Boar arts editor David Levesley, now studying at Columbia Journalism School, fondly remembers using the Arts Centre dressing rooms as ‘private revision chambers.’ Because of the amount of time he spent there, he even got a special farewell from the Arts Centre café staff at his graduation.

‘It’s a weird, erratic family who know everybody… As proven when I was selected out of the blue by the music centre to impersonate David Attenborough for a Christmas concert voice-over,’ he said.