Part 5: Discord over music festivals after joint-venture plans founder
Among the casualties of the intensive cost cutting at Dartington Hall Trust has been the ending – at least in its previous form – of the long-running Dartington international summer school and festival, an acclaimed annual music event.
Meanwhile a rival summer school – using a similar model to the Dartington event and involving many of the same people – is happening this year in Norfolk under the organisation of Dartington International Summer School Foundation, a separate charity.
The Totnes Pulse can now reveal that a proposal for the two organisations to combine forces in operating a single unified event came to nothing after discussion on the idea was abruptly shut down by Lord David Triesman and David Buchler, chair and adviser respectively at the trust.
Buchler is a long-time business acquaintance of Triesman who was brought in to the charity last year to help devise a sweeping rescue plan after the chair revealed it was close to financial meltdown. Details of this joint venture idea – and the vehement discord it provoked – are revealed in a statement from Glenn Woodcock, a member of the trust’s board until he resigned last October after a series of disagreements, the most serious being over the summer school. The statement has not been made public but has been obtained by The Totnes Pulse.
Conflict of Interest
Woodcock and three other members of the trust’s board of trustees had last autumn formed a subgroup to study options for the summer school, including a possible joint venture with the foundation. The summer school has been taking place at Dartington since 1953. Deliberations on this swiftly ended, says Woodcock’s statement, after Triesman and Buchler told the four trustees at a full meeting of the board on October 6 that they were potentially guilty of a “conflict of interest” over the idea, at which point they were asked to leave the discussion.
Triesman and Buchler did not respond to requests to spell out what they meant by this or to provide any further detail. But it is thought they were alleging that Woodcock and the other trustees stood to gain financially through a potential joint venture, a claim that Woodcock has denied.
Compelled to resign
The other trustees involved have not wanted to comment. “My involvement in the summer school proposal, as is the case for all my involvement, was solely in the best interest of Dartington’s charitable purpose,“ Woodcock’s statement reads. “I am confident this was the intention of the other trustees involved as well.” Feeling “significantly provoked”, Woodock’s document says he felt “compelled to resign” with immediate effect.
One person not present at the meeting but highly involved in what was under discussion said: “I was bemused by the conflict of interest claim which didn’t appear to make sense. It seemed like something from cloud-cuckoo land”
Of the others on the subgroup, one other quit also on October 6, with a third following suit three weeks later. The fourth person has just stood down after a full term. [See part 6: Summer school falling-out led to trustee resignations]
Even if the trust had approved the joint venture approach, there would have been no guarantee that a summer school could have taken place at Dartington this year along the lines of what has happened previously. The trust has said the net costs of running the operation – after income from participants and donations – has been more than £100,000 year, making it unviable.
Against this however, the foundation had already offered to provide a grant of some £100,000 to the trust to underwrite the costs of continuing the summer school at Dartington in 2024. This offer would on the face of it appear to have filled almost exactly the funding gap identified by the trust.
The foundation’s offer of support has followed a long period in which it has provided annual grants – sometimes as much as £50,000-£80,000- to the trust to help with the summer school running costs. The charity can afford this on account of a bank of reserves (built up over the years from donations and legacies) of about £300,000.
The show goes on – elsewhere
One theory is that Triesman and Buchler were alarmed by the possibility of the trust sharing control of the summer school with a partner with which there have sometimes been difficulties, even given the foundation’s record of financial support. Later on, still more alarmingly according to this theory, the trust could have lost control completely.
A person with close knowledge of Dartington said: “There has always been a tension [between the trust and the foundation] . It stems from a difference of opinion between the two entities over which has the biggest hold over the ownership of the enterprise [the summer school]. ”
Long standing connections
Formed in 1976, the foundation is based in Newton Abbot. Its 2022/23 annual report says its role is to “promote and organise schemes to provide education for the benefit of the public in all aspects of music and related arts, including opera, music theatre, electronic media, music and dance and, in particular, to support and encourage the Dartington International Summer School and its successor by whatever name it may be known”.
Jumping ship
The main person behind the foundation’s new summer school for 2024 in Norfolk – being held in Gresham’s School in Holt – is Richard Heason, an experienced music administrator. Heason is a familiar face at Dartington and knows many of the people associated with the trust. Until September 2023 he was the chairman of the foundation, which he joined as a trustee in 2014. Heason has formed his own company called The Creatively Curious which, according to the foundation’s 2022/23 report, will for this year’s Holt summer school will be responsible for “fundraising and development, a sales website, programme planning, marketing, communications and public relations, management of bookings, operational management and delivery and financial accounting”.
Heason said the foundation was putting about £100,000 – similar to what it would have provided to the Dartington trust if it had accepted its offer – into the 2024 Holt summer school to finance the expected gap between income and spending. “Of this about £50,000 is start-up costs. Assuming we continue at Gresham’s we think we will be able to put the event on a sustainable footing within three years.”
Heason added: ”Gresham’s is offering us no direct financial assistance although has been very welcoming and supportive. Despite this move for 2024, the foundation would not want to rule out the summer school returning to Dartington in the future.”
Heason pointed out however that the overall facilities including accommodation at Gresham’s – a wealthy private school – were better than those available at Dartington and its costs were lower .
Of the eight-person team organising the event, five are people who have been central to running the Dartington equivalent in recent years, and can be expected to use many of the same ideas. Many of the musicians who will perform and give tutorials at Holt are likewise people who have previously been associated with Dartington.
Financial pressure
Spelling out why the trust called time on its own summer school in its traditional form, Robert Fedder, the trust’s interim chief executive, said: “The financial situation [for the summer school] was dire. We [the trust] realised we could not continue, based on what we had done previously.” He added that a key element to the programme as it had been run previously is that for a key part of the summer (normally four to six weeks) it tied up space and resources at Dartington – covering areas such as accommodation, catering and performance venues – when the resources could have been put to better use through generating revenue .
Meanwhile the trust is going ahead with a greatly cut-down version of its traditional summer school in the form of a week-long singing workshop called ChoralFest, scheduled for Dartington for August 3-11, so partly overlapping with Heason’s event. The venture will feature rehearsals for just one piece of music – the All Night Vigil by the Russian composer Rachmaninov – together with tutorials and recitals by professional singers known mainly for their operatic roles. While the Rachmaninov piece is regarded by devotees as “sublime” it is far from being a well-known piece of music and involves no instrumental accompaniment , which might limit its appeal both to possible participants and people wishing to see it performed. Full details of Choralfest here
Among the critics of the ChoralFest concept is music writer and critic Norman Lebrecht who said it was a “cobbled together replacement [that] in no way equates to, or faintly resembles the original festival and its extraordinary ideals”.
But Fedder said ChoralFest will be “simpler and more compact“ than a conventional and lengthier summer school. “We are confident it [Choralfest] will be financially viable . For 2025 we will look at plans again. We do not rule out the possibility of returning later to something more like the summer schools Dartington has previously offered.”
Wonderful, Ego and Politics getting in the way of saving Dartington once again, I’m sure some home grown culture would have been better then an elitist Rachmaninoff week
So the Summer School is giving way to what exactly?? If the Summer School was limiting the money making opportunity to do… what??