CROYDON IN CRISIS: The council gave a £50,000 arts grant to a business organisation, where Mayor Perry is on the board of directors.
EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Tall story: one of Croydon BID’s giraffes wheeled away at the end of October. Few bothered to follow BID’s app trail
Jason Perry might as well have stood at the end of Surrey Street handing out fivers for all the good that Croydon BID’s bogus arts project, “Croydon Stands Tall”, and its 60 plastic giraffes managed.
That’s according to figures obtained by Inside Croydon for the number of people who signed up for BID’s heavily promoted “trail”.
The project was not without its self-inflicted problems, either, including a serious breach of data rules by Croydon BID when seeking to flog off their no-longer-wanted herd of giraffes.
As Inside Croydon has reported over the past year, while established and recognised arts groups have been snubbed and refused grants by the council from its £1.3million London Borough of Culture budget supposedly intended for genuine cultural projects, somehow Croydon BID was handed £50,000 for its herd of giraffes.
According to Croydon BID, this was supposed to provide “a magnificent large-scale public art trail set to grace the streets of Croydon this summer as part of London Borough of Culture”. They called it a Borough of Culture “showcase event”.
“Croydon Stands Tall will celebrate the diversity and creative spirit of Croydon,” Croydon BID said.
Director: Jason Perry sits on the board of Croydon BID with the organisation’s well-paid CEO, Matthew Sims (right)
The scheme had enthusiastic support from Mayor Jason Perry.
“Croydon Stands Tall is a great example of culture forging new partnerships between Croydon’s business, cultural and education communities, to create something fun and free for residents and visitors of all ages to enjoy,” the borough’s Mayor said, failing to mention is that he just happens to be a director of Croydon BID…
In announcing the scheme, Croydon BID claimed: “To enhance the experience for locals and visitors, a free dedicated trail map and app will be available that will unveil the colourful creatures at every turn, providing exciting rewards and fact-finding missions along the way.”
But Inside Croydon has discovered that throughout the three months that the Croydon BID giraffe trail was in place, only about 1,000 people actually bothered to download the Croydon Stands Tall app – just one download for every 50 quid of Borough of Culture grant.
If the giraffes were supposed to boost footfall in the town centre, then going by the app figures, they failed dismally. As an arts project, well…
The giraffes were removed from Croydon’s streets towards the end of October, as had always been planned, ostensibly to be auctioned off for a “good cause” (more on that later).
Croydon BID – Business Improvement District – receives extra business rates from its 500-odd member companies. It is known as a business organisation – the clue’s in the name – rather than for its arts or cultural activities.
It regularly stages stunts in the town centre as “attractions” to draw punters to visit Croydon’s bars and restaurants, many of which are members of Croydon BID. The giraffes, made from pre-moulded fibreglass, had no particular link to Croydon, and similar models of animals have been used at other venues around the country before.
But by getting the Borough of Culture to pay for the giraffe exercise, rather than spending from its existing budgets, it may be that Croydon BID has been able to release funds for its other activities, like power washing (some) pavements and graffiti removal.
Such fun!: Croydon’s business types have a night out and raised £58,000 for homelessness charity Crisis. Pic: Croydon BID/Glenn Foster
For instance, in the past week, Croydon BID has announced that it has hired a couple of extra goons – sorry, private security guards, what it likes to call “Rangers” – to patrol the High Street, where they are allowed to issue on-the-spot fines for offences such as littering and street drinking in the run-up to Christmas and New Year. Which is nice.
There has been some good come of the giraffe nonsense, however.
Most of the 30 taller giraffes were auctioned off last month, with £58,000 raised for the Crisis homelessness charity. Croydon BID wouldn’t say who bought the giraffes, but its fair to assume that the money came mostly from business accounts of BID members, who now have to work out what to do with a brightly coloured, eight-foot plastic giraffe, other than have it cluttering up their reception area…
But even that carefully-run corporate event did not go without a serious hitch.
Ahead of their auction, Croydon BID sent out an emailed invite to more than 300 addresses – but using the cc function, rather than the more discreet, and data protection-savvy, bcc addressing method.
They then tried to recall the message, at least five times, further cc-ing the same email addresses each time.
As a loyal reader said, “I am horrified at the lack of regard Croydon BID seem to have for people’s personal information.”
According to the reader, when they raised the matter with Croydon BID, “I got a weak apology citing human error. I asked if they had reported it to the Information Commissioner, but this has not been done either! I’ve reported them now.
“I would like to warn people about sharing their data in future Croydon BID events.”
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So the auction raised £8000 more than the grant? Assuming the borough had some admin costs on top wouldn’t it have been easier to just give the grant to Crisis?
Quite.
I liked the giraffes
No one *disliked* the giraffes, Tony. But they were a business gimmick, not a real arts project, and were a questionable recipient of public money for arts
Marcel Duchamp used to say that the thing that made “The Fountain” art rather than a urinal was what rich people were prepared to pay for it. A sentiment which, as a man who knows the price of everything, I am sure you will intellectually appreciate. Never-the-less, it seems to me that if viewed purely as a commercial project then £50000 was invested and £58000 returned, making a profit of £8000 to help the homeless. Given their usual economic competence I do not think we should be discouraging Croydon Council from making profits …even if it is by accident.
Of course the giraffes are not everyone’s idea of intellectual art but public sculpture occupies a strange space somewhere between art and propaganda. They could’ve gone for something more Dadaist and challenging but I suspect that if you put a Chapman Brothers sculpture in the centre of a Croydon street it would be in sever danger of just blending in…
Ooh – Marcel Duchamp! Tony, you’ve disproved the commonly held view that IC’s readers lack cultural appreciation. As your hero said, “I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.
They were nice, the app might have been a bit useless, but I saw many people interact with the giraffes over summer. A lot of other places do kitsch fibreglass animals too, because they’re popular and accessible. If you’re going to measure success by companion app install numbers, then the Croydon Heritage Music Trail app hasn’t yet broken into the 4-figures on Google Play.
Yeah. We know. Don’t ruin our follow up of another Borough of Culture failure
So what has happened to the other giraffes? They haven’t gone into Mayor Perry’s back garden to replace the garden gnomes?
Whilst I don’t disagree with what you say about the the whole project, it is not “fair to assume that the money came mostly from business accounts of BID members”. I was at the auction on the night and it was evident that many, if not most, of the purchasers were ordinary punters. As you quite rightly say, there has been some good come of the giraffe nonsense, with £58,000 raised for the Crisis homelessness charity