Durban’s Bat Centre was created for the cultural community. Today, two years later, it is under fire from that community. Suzy Bell reports
It’s that garish building by the sea, splashed with crude but colourful murals that attracts Durban’s eclectic bohemians – white girls in punjabis, rastas stoned on more than the pungent scent of boerewors braais, taxi-dudes, white cock-rock musicians and young Indians dressed like Americans. It’s Durban’s Bat (Bartle Arts Trust) Centre and it opened two years ago as a “multi-cultural” community arts centre “for the people”.
Today, despite free studios for artists in residence, there is a feeling of frustration toward Bat’s management. Recent retrenchments aside, accusations raised include mutterings of “staff intimidation”; “mickey-mouse management”; “nepotism”; “suspect conditions of employment”; “lack of vision” and “it’s no longer a community arts centre but a shopping market”.
A source this week said: “The Bat Centre had such potential, but there is so much power in terms of management and the control of funding, and all the decisions are invested in one particular person [Bat trustee Paul Mikula]. Maybe that was acceptable when it was only Hugo Bartle’s money involved. Mikula got the money – we give him credit for that. But when they are getting money from the private sector and the public sector, then it’s completely untenable that one person has control of it all.”
Another artist said: “It’s so disappointing. Bat is basically Mikula’s baby and he rules it with strong threatening hands.”
With funds (R9-million) left by the late Hugo Bartle, trustee Paul Mikula, a Durban architect, and Durban lawyer Dirk Breytenbach formed the Bartle Arts Trust. They set up the Bat Centre in August 1995. A source said: “There is no longer any vision or mission that drives the place. From having a mission and staff with a vision it’s now a place that had better break even or lose out financially.” Those approached repeatedly voiced that Mikula is “problematic” as a trustee that he is “not popular at grass roots level”.
Another said: “Mikula is a difficult man. He does have vested interests in Bat, but so what? It’s his baby. He organised the money and he’s in charge of it – so he’s accountable.”
Mikula does see the Bat Centre becoming “a lot more privatised”. He admitted, and joked, that the centre is “always under crisis management”. But he denied having any interest in side ventures, such as the Bat shop or Bat bar, although he is in partnership with general manager Ian Lindsay of Le Plaza Hotel, who owns a percentage of shares in the Bat bar.
Manager of the Bat Centre, Philipa Huntly, confirmed that the Bat Trust owns 50% of the Bat shop. Mikula admitted that “some of the guys who run the coffee shop and the conference centre are my architectural partners.”
The Bat Centre’s Marisa Fick Jordaan, general and development manager of visual arts, strongly defended Mikula, saying: “He has put so much work into this project. Bat is still home to the struggling young artists. But we’ve had to become more commercial, more professional. It’s no longer a case of the NGO `gimme gimme’ mentality. Things have to start paying for themselves, because this place is running at a yearly loss of about R350 000. Otherwise the trust will be gone, and there’ll be nothing.” Mikula estimates it costs R1,2-million a year to run Bat.
A big change in management at Bat happened last year when arts administrator Mike van Graan (former director at Bat), resigned after reported “clashes in management style” with Mikula. Mikula says it was a case of a “different vision of the arts”.
Mikula said: “We created a place to celebrate local artists. The community aspect is growing more than we had planned for. It’s now a hang-out most of the time. For having a drink on the deck and gazing at the horizon, or at the girls.”
Yes, but what about the art? “Well, we’ve come to realise that’s the best way to sell art. We have the art gallery on the mezzanine above the bar so at least people go and look at art in a half-drunk state. We want the centre to be a venue.” So no longer are there t’ai chi classes, yoga, quilt-making or Zulu and Indian dancing classes, “because it cost us a fortune”, rationalises Mikula.
Durban photographers based at Bat have refused to stick it out and it’s quite ironic that the Durban Centre for Photography moved premises because they couldn’t afford to pay the high rent. Another said: “What is suspect is that there are no clear contractual conditions of service documents. None of the staff has contracts and now there have been retrenchments without packages.”
But Huntly, Bat Centre manager, denies this. She admits she cannot make final decisions because these are made by the trustees and confirms that Musa Radebe, Bat’s ex-resource centre manager, was retrenched “because the Dutch government financed the resource centre and funding has come to an end”.
Of retrenchments Mikula says: “We have been quite hard on people. We needed to tighten up on the tenants and artists who don’t perform. Everybody thinks because Bat is a community and artists’ organisation it’s a free ride. “But it’s a major business to run to keep the concept going. We have had different styles of management at Bat. All we want Bat to be is a venue.”