Jun 182011
 

Members of the City Square Board are currently scratching their heads as to a possible use for the large concourse space which will be created if Union Terrace Gardens is decked over. One possibility under consideration is that it could be used for a new conference centre. However, this does put into question the continuing viability of Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre (AECC) at Bridge of Don and the major problems which will come about if the AECC is shut down as a result.

Mike Shepherd highlights the problems that the Council is having with the AECC and what could happen next.

The AECC was conceived as a joint venture between Grampian Regional Council and Spearhead Exhibitions Ltd. Aberdeen City Council became its sole owner on the demise of the regional council, and now holds all its shares.
It was opened in 1985 by the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. The centre includes a 4800 seat arena, conference facilities and a hotel.

In 2003, the AECC was refurbished at a cost of £18m, with the conference facilities being completely re-built. A large viewing tower was also constructed, one of the tallest structures in Aberdeen.
The AECC is host to Offshore Europe, an event which brings millions of pounds into the local economy. Indeed, I have taken part in conferences and exhibitions there and there is no doubt that the AECC is a major boost to the local economy.

Three major conferences are planned for 2012 – the European Optical Society Annual Symposium 2012, The World Heavy Oil Congress 2012, and The Society of Core Analysts Symposium 2012. As a concert venue it has seen the likes of Bob Dylan and Neil Young play there.

However, the finances of the AECC are a mess.

Although the turnover is about £5M annually, The Press & Journal reported in November 2010 that the Council had provided loans of £28m to the centre in the last five years, as well as £8.85m in subsidies since 1998.
http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/2002662

Although the AECC has made losses, the Council justifies keeping it going on the basis that it brings a great deal of investment to the region.

Recent years have seen turmoil over audit reports, a restructuring of the Board and talk about receivership. One highly-controversial proposal was that the council should take over a project to build a four-star hotel on the site.

In February 2010 councillors approved plans to underwrite the construction of the hotel.

“AECC bosses have long believed the Centre cannot compete for important international conferences without such a hotel, and want one built in time for its flagship conference, Offshore Europe, next year. The hotel could then be sold for a net profit of between £14million and £20million, which would place the Centre on a firmer financial footing and help clear its debts.”
http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1594201#ixzz1Og7YQrIC

Later in the year, they had second thoughts. The Council website reported:

“The full Council meeting accepted that the intended financial package to deliver AECC’s proposed hotel development carried too much risk for the Council because of the current economic climate – and voted by 24 votes to nine that alternative financial structures to deliver the facility should now be sought.

“Aberdeen City Council Leader Councillor John Stewart said: ‘The Full Council today reaffirmed its support for the region’s major conference centre and its commitment to secure a four-star hotel at the venue. However, it has been necessary to re-work the hotel project to minimise risk to the council’.

“The decision follows four months of strenuous efforts to negotiate a deal to create a hotel, involving the City Council, AECC, financial institutions, a construction company, a hotel operator, and legal and technical advisers. The negotiations were carried out following an instruction to Council officers at the February full Council meeting to continue to work with AECC on its hotel proposal, subject to any agreement being acceptable to the Council.”

Many considered the idea of the City Council getting involved in supporting and building a luxury hotel to be somewhat bizarre, one councillor bemoaning,

“The people of Aberdeen will be horrified we are now not only a local authority, but a hotelier as well”.

However, the hotel proposal collapsed as a proposition.

In December 2010, The Press & Journal revealed the conclusions of a secret audit report on the performance of the AECC. Describing its lack of accountability to taxpayers and the City Council as a “critical” risk, the report discovered an unauthorised £1.3m overspend of public money on the failed hotel project.

“The auditors found:

Monitoring of the hotel project by the AECC Board was “weak” – the directors approved £1million but £2.3million was spent.

Only £184,000 of the total was subjected to market testing to ensure best value for money, and no contracts were in place with key parties.

Overall control of the AECC was “weak” and lack of accountability to the Council a “critical” risk.

The report also warned a “significant improvement” in profitability was needed for the AECC to repay £27.7m in loans to the Council in 2017 and 2021.”
http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/2043746#ixzz1Og7Oq2RA

Since then, attempts have been made to try to recoup some of the debt. Parking charges at the AECC are now £5 per car and £10 per coach.

The agenda for a Council committee in January this year also mentioned a report which recommended transferring all property and land assets currently owned or leased by the AECC to the City Council.

This would allow the Council to assume full responsibility for the future development of these assets and investigate the potential for developing the land and property assets through the creation of a joint venture development company charged with developing the assets.

The future of the AECC is moot. The big problem is the £28m debt owed to the Council. If the AECC is shut down, this debt will need to be transferred directly to the Council and I’m told it would be allocated to the revenue budget. Given the severe strain currently on that budget, this would cause major financial problems for the Council.

It seems odd, therefore, that the City Square Board is considering building a convention centre under the City Square (John Stewart, Footdee Community Council meeting, 30/3/11). This could easily bring about the demise of the AECC with the debt problems that would ensue.

Mark Edwards’ Hard Rain Project – Times Are A Changin’

 Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Environment, Events, Featured, Information  Comments Off on Mark Edwards’ Hard Rain Project – Times Are A Changin’
Mar 252011
 

By Suzanne Kelly.

Some 100 people of all ages and backgrounds packed an Aberdeen University lecture room on 22nd March; most of us were not entirely sure what to expect.

Mark Edwards – internationally known photographer, writer and witness to 40 years of global problems was there to deliver his ‘Hard Rain’ lecture and still photography presentation.

By the time he had finished it was clear that each person present had taken away food for thought on a host of global issues, however much or little they had known before they arrived.

Mark made a brief introduction explaining the Hard Rain Project’s genesis.  At the time of the first moonwalk in 1969, Mark was traveling in the Sahara desert’s unforgiving landscape, got lost, and was subsequently rescued by a nomadic tribe.  They offered him food, shelter and a fire to sit by, and then they produced a radio.  Bob Dylan’s ‘A Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall’ came out of it; a track inspired by the Bay of Pigs Cuban Missile Crisis.

Edwards considered his personal situation, the simple nomadic lifestyle, and the moonwalk and out of these events grew his idea of illustrating each line of this moving, evocative song.  Some 40 years on, the Hard Rain project was touring the world.  It features still photography taken from all quarters of our world, and illustrates the issues, which we have to face urgently.  Edwards took his Aberdeen audience:

“…on a journey through the past to a future which is ours to change.”

The photographs are as beautiful and as diverse a collection as you could possibly imagine – Edwards has captured virtually all aspects of humanity and of the earth.   These photographs and Mark both bear witness to the increasingly urgent issues we must solve now:  famine, destruction of habitats, human suffering, war, climate change, waste, disrespect and misuse of people, animals and the planet.  The things Mark has seen in his travels have not led him to despair; he retains faith in human initiative and human spirit, which he sees in the shantytown inhabitants’ resourcefulness.

As to the photographs:  there is a bulldozer in the Amazon cutting a scar through the lush jungle; there is a sea of ghostly, dead tree stumps in an arid wasteland; there are dead and dying women and children from around the world.  I am haunted by a photo of an oil-covered bird taken in Brazil, which is accompanied by the line from Hard Rain ‘I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans’.

This photo presumably was taken years ago, but it could have been the recent Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.   (You have to ask yourself why one oil disaster was not enough to ensure we never let it happen again).
But I am most haunted by (as were several of the students I spoke to including Deepu Augustine and Rita Lwanga) of a poignant image of a newborn baby lying on its side, small hands and feet visible, wrapped in a hooded garment, dead.  It was lying in a shallow, womb-like grave about to be buried.  The number of children who starve to death is legion.

As Mark says when addressing all the various issues:

“Perhaps our greatest mistake is taking our easy lifestyles for granted.”

Edwards explains that “we broke the first law of nature” – for instance how the death of a leaf and its natural decomposition create fertile soil on which new life will grow.  The problem is that we have created a host of chemicals, which do not break down. He does not bombard us with numbers and statistics, but those he does use are unforgettable.  In discussing our chemical dependence and proliferation of chemicals throughout the food chain globally, he says that any pregnant woman anywhere in the world today will have somewhere between 8 to 17 kinds of pesticides in the placenta.

Mark describes himself as a witness; he does not have all the answers.  But he will tell you that we urgently need to increase education around the world, end child labour (which is nothing short of slavery:  buyers of cheap imported goods and clothing please do take note), pay fair prices for crops, encourage family planning, and end extreme poverty.  Another statistic he has hit us with:  the GDP of the world’s 48 poorest countries is equal to the wealth of the world’s three richest people.

A series of photos taken in Haiti show the human impulse to slip away from rational thinking and regress to superstition (a ‘voodoo’ ceremony to pray for long-overdue rain is depicted), and later work shows a flock of brightly-clad Haitian school children.   Edwards then makes interesting comparisons between the 1930s American Dustbowl draught and Ethiopia’s similar situation today.  He compares Industrial age London’s shantytowns to today’s third world shantytowns, they both were born of similar circumstances and had similar problems and potentials.

“The past is not over and the future has happened many times”

– or put another way – those who do not know the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat its mistakes and tragedies.

His bleak, depressing photos of urban sprawl were based in Mexico City; but if we are not careful the same thing can easily happen in Aberdeenshire on a smaller scale.

The difference in the quantity of goods the Americans have is staggering and it does not make them any happier

We are, after all, getting rid of acre upon acre of (supposedly protected) green belt land to build hundreds of identikit houses, a 21,000 seat stadium where we currently have important wildlife and rare plants, and a car park/mall is planned for our only city centre green sink and beauty spot – Union Terrace Gardens.

Rather than increasing public transport, we plan to cut a highway through our countryside with the AWPR.  And we are going to shoot (sorry, cull) the Tullos Hill Roe Deer, as our elected officials have deemed that building fences or protecting saplings with plastic are more expensive options).  Mark makes a remark that some politicians are:

“…defending political positions they know are no longer appropriate…”

I think I do not need to look any further than Aberdeen City Council for an example of Mark’s assertion.  I get the feeling that 99% of Edward’s audience is receptive and probably actively concerned for our environment – I find myself wishing we could get the local Council to see ‘Hard Rain’.

Edwards shows us a family in Bhutan; they are outside their home and have all of their, not very many, possessions spread around them.  Next we switch to an American family of four – again in front of their home with all of their goods.  The difference in the quantity of goods the Americans have is staggering and it does not make them any happier:  Bhutan is, in fact, the country with the highest percentage of happy and satisfied people on earth.

Edward’s talk is part of the Aberdeen University Students’ Association Climate Change Projects.

Jamie Peters is the Climate Change Project Co-ordinator and he advised me that the Climate Change project has been packed full of events this past week including; tree planting, cookery demonstrations, gardening, meetings and discussions.  Reusable bottles and bags were distributed as well as bookmarks with tips on energy saving and recycling.  The Climate Change Project at Aberdeen University:

“aims to improve life around the campus, provide something fun for students to get involved in and at the same time save 1,000 tonnes of CO2.”

Fraser Lovie, a policy adviser at the University, congratulated the Climate Change Project for bringing Mark Edwards and his exhibition to Aberdeen and welcomed Mark’s hints that a new touring exhibition, based on Hard Rain, is in development, that will support the behavior change agenda in Universities and Colleges.

STOP PRESS:  At the time of writing, it is uncertain whether funding will be found to keep the Climate Change Project going:  I certainly hope they will continue their work.

After a glass or two of wine and a few words with Mark Edwards and others (he is affable and keen to talk), I made my way home.  Another Bob Dylan song came into my head – ‘The Times They Are A Changing’;

“… if your time to you is worth saving, you’d better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone, for the times they are a changing’.”

Change has never happened faster in human history than it is happening now.  But exactly what are we changing our world into?

Regent Walk is the scene of the Hard Rain Project outdoor exhibition, which accompanied this lecture; it will be up for a month.  I urge you –  go and see it.

SOME FOOD FOR THOUGHT:

Quotations from the Hard Rain Project Lecture

*     “In the next 24 hours deforestation will outweigh the carbon footprint of 8 million people”

*     “If forests are the lungs of the world, we have had one lung removed”

*     “All humanity is in trouble; time is the enemy; indifference is the enemy”

*     “We have Stone-Age impulses, Medieval beliefs, and God-like technology”

*     “There is no ‘them and us’

 

Q&A from the Hard Rain Website:

“Mark has been traveling and taking photographs in over 150 countries in the last 40 years. He first decided to illustrate the global environmental crisis in 1969, and Hard Rain really began to take shape as a live presentation in 2000. The DVD has been in development for about a year, since interest in the presentation has exploded.

“How many cities/countries has Hard Rain been seen in?

“The exhibition has been seen in over 50 cities, with a tour of India immediately following Copenhagen. The presentation, on which the DVD is based, has been seen in hundreds of venues on every continent.

“How has Dylan lent his support?

“Dylan and his label, Columbia Records, have been extremely supportive of Hard Rain right from its public launch as an exhibition at the Eden Project in 2006. They have also been very supportive of Hard Rain by allowing us to use the lyrics in the exhibitions.

“This year, the Royal Photographic Society recognized Mark Edwards and Bob Dylan by presenting them with the Terence Donovan Award for their achievement with the Hard Rain Project.”