(Public) Space Invaders
2:40pm
Thursday, 15th April 2004
Hmm. Walked over to the Royal Festival Hall today to buy my lunch, only to find the whole building closed, surrounded by barricades and a pretty impressive police presence.
It turns out that BP have taken over for the day, to hold their AGM. I couldn't help feeling that this was a little inappropriate: the RFH is very much a public space, with shops, caf's, a bar, exhibitions, live music and - generally - an area where children are encouraged to play, as well as a wide outdoor area facing out onto the river (also cordoned off, blocking a main through-route to the rest of the South Bank Centre).
Turning away the public from such a definitively public-funded building seems at least a bad PR move by BP, and at worst a mis-use of public property - particularly taking into account the expense of policing such a central and accessible site, when there is no reason that the event could not have been held somewhere else. Should the RFH have turned BP down?
Or am I just expressing the consumerist frustration of a man denied his preferred lunchtime soup? Is this in fact exactly the way subsidised institutions should function, taking large wads of corporate money and re-investing it into public property?
Hmm. Walked over to the Royal Festival Hall today to buy my lunch, only to find the whole building closed, surrounded by barricades and a pretty impressive police presence.
It turns out that BP have taken over for the day, to hold their AGM. I couldn't help feeling that this was a little inappropriate: the RFH is very much a public space, with shops, caf's, a bar, exhibitions, live music and - generally - an area where children are encouraged to play, as well as a wide outdoor area facing out onto the river (also cordoned off, blocking a main through-route to the rest of the South Bank Centre).
Turning away the public from such a definitively public-funded building seems at least a bad PR move by BP, and at worst a mis-use of public property - particularly taking into account the expense of policing such a central and accessible site, when there is no reason that the event could not have been held somewhere else. Should the RFH have turned BP down?
Or am I just expressing the consumerist frustration of a man denied his preferred lunchtime soup? Is this in fact exactly the way subsidised institutions should function, taking large wads of corporate money and re-investing it into public property?
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