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> The increasingly dilapidated state of the Eagle Works building, and the recent news that Tesco have purchased much of the land around the building for redevelopment is forcing the group to think about its future.
 | | Land around Eagle Works |
Simon Francis, painter: 鈥淔or some years there have been plans to develop this area, as a very large supermarket, some social housing and some small retail outlets. The plans have been delayed, for various reasons, but Tesco鈥檚 have recently assured us that they are going to go ahead and complete that project within two years. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 know how the development will affect us. We hope that it will have a positive effect, but we are slightly worried that the developers will not want a semi derelict building adjacent to their multi-million pound development. 鈥淔or the future we feel that the present state of the building is not sustainable. We have discussed our options in the past and the best one that we鈥檝e come up with is to move to a new building, which we will get done up, prior to our moving in.
 | | Simon Francis, in his studio |
鈥淭he difficulty we have, is that in order to attract grants we either need to own the building, or have a long lease on it. In our present situation, we merely pay rent. So our only protection is the same as any tenant. 鈥淲e are thinking around about now what are alternatives are, and we have been looking for new sites. The Council are keen to support us, as long as we fall into one of their regeneration categories. There are other organisations that are looking to support us, one of them being Advantage West Midlands, apparently. We鈥檝e been in very tentative contact with them in the past, but we would have to create employment, apparently, in order to get some grant money from them.鈥
 | | The Eagle Works building |
Sculptor Rosemary Terry is also thinking of the future: 鈥淵es, the fact that it [Eagle Works] is falling down has never mattered terribly much until now, when it is starting to leak quite badly and it doesn鈥檛 quite feel so safe, but we are exploring various avenues towards finding better refurbished buildings in the area. 鈥淢ine is not a practice that you can do at home, very easily, certainly not the carving side because it is quite noisy and messy, so I do need a warehouse type industrial type building to work in. 鈥淚deally we would like a better building, that鈥檚 got better insulation and with a roof that doesn鈥檛 leak, that would be quite nice.鈥
 | | Stairs inside the building |
鈥漌e鈥檝e considered all sorts of applications. We鈥檝e considered becoming a charity. We鈥檝e tried to get Arts Council funding for refurbishment and to get disabled access. It鈥檚 not that easy to get large amounts of Arts Council funding, partly because you need a lease. And really the Arts council is looking for quite a long lease now 鈥 20 years to 25 years, which requires a big commitment from the artists involved. 鈥淎t the moment we have a six monthly renewable tenancy here, which has been ok because we have good relations with our landlord. If we didn鈥檛 we would be extremely insecure. 鈥淲e are looking ahead to [the redevelopment of the area around Eagle Works] 鈥 we don鈥檛 know what the landlord would do. We assume that he鈥檚 regarding it as a potential goldmine, which he could then sell.
 | | Sculptor Rosemary Terry, in her studio |
鈥淭o renovate this building would require enormous sums of money 鈥 into the millions, I would think, because it would have to be gutted and started again. This building has got听 a locally listed status. It鈥檚 always had some sort of preservation order status, which I suppose, gives it some sort of protection. But that is just for the external fabric, so anyone could come in and turn the inside into whatever they wanted to. 鈥淪o we鈥檝e been trying to find alternative buildings that we could move into. But it has been quite difficult to find anything suitable, because there鈥檚 less of a choice now then there used to be. But we are looking to possibly expand or move elsewhere.鈥 Entry to the Eagle Works building is by invitation only.
Telephone 01902 425958 or email eagle@eagleworks.org.uk for more information. | 
