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: “For 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’s have recently assured us that they are going to go ahead and complete that project within two years. “We don’t 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. “For 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’ve 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 |
“The 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. “We 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’ve 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.”  | | The Eagle Works building |
Sculptor Rosemary Terry is also thinking of the future: “Yes, 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’t quite feel so safe, but we are exploring various avenues towards finding better refurbished buildings in the area. “Mine 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. “Ideally we would like a better building, that’s got better insulation and with a roof that doesn’t leak, that would be quite nice.”  | | Stairs inside the building |
”We’ve considered all sorts of applications. We’ve considered becoming a charity. We’ve tried to get Arts Council funding for refurbishment and to get disabled access. It’s 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 – 20 years to 25 years, which requires a big commitment from the artists involved. “At 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’t we would be extremely insecure. “We are looking ahead to [the redevelopment of the area around Eagle Works] – we don’t know what the landlord would do. We assume that he’s regarding it as a potential goldmine, which he could then sell.  | | Sculptor Rosemary Terry, in her studio |
“To renovate this building would require enormous sums of money – into the millions, I would think, because it would have to be gutted and started again. This building has got a locally listed status. It’s 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. “So we’ve been trying to find alternative buildings that we could move into. But it has been quite difficult to find anything suitable, because there’s less of a choice now then there used to be. But we are looking to possibly expand or move elsewhere.” Entry to the Eagle Works building is by invitation only.
Telephone 01902 425958 or email [email protected] for more information. | 
