One of the most eagerly anticipated new cultural venues in Europe is to be renamed after an insurance company in one of the UK’s biggest cultural corporate sponsorship deals.
The £210m flagship building in Manchester, previously called Factory International, will now be called Aviva Studios after the insurance giant Aviva acquired naming rights for, it is understood, £35m.
In some quarters, there was joy and celebration at a strikingly large corporate investment in a UK cultural project. It was essential, supporters say, to recoup public money needed for spiralling costs.
But there will also be raised eyebrows that such an important, cutting-edge arts venue is going to have such a corporate-sounding name.
The chosen name is a nod to the creative heritage of the site in that it is where the old Granada Studios were once located.
Manchester city council went down the naming rights path because of rising costs. The building’s original budget in 2017 was £110m. By 2020, Covid-19 played a big part in the budget rising to £186m and last year it was revealed that the figure was now £210.8m.
Councillors had to approve a budget increase of £25.2m, with the caveat that there was “scope for the council to recover a significant proportion of these capital costs through a long-term naming rights agreement for Factory International.”
Factory – a reference to the Factory Records music label that brought Joy Division, the Hacienda and much more – will remain a key part of the brand, with supporters stressing that Aviva Studios will be home to the content providers Factory International.
The council will get the biggest share of Aviva’s investment. The city council leader, Bev Craig, said the council had been very selective on who it would do business with.
“Manchester people are very pragmatic. They know that in this modern world to pay for things you need money to be able to do that. So the idea of having a partnership with a business that fits our values is something I think people will not just support, but I think will welcome.”
Some of Aviva money will also go towards supporting plans for a £10 ticket scheme and skills training programmes.
Tom Bloxham, the chair of trustees at Factory International, said people may well throw stones at the new name but he hoped they would “come and see the building, come and see what we are doing, get the benefit of £10 tickets, come and see the training opportunities given to young kids to get careers in the creative industries.
“We are incredibly proud of what has been achieved to date and looking forward to more that can be achieved.”
The new building has been designed by Ellen van Loon of the starry practice Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). It is OMA’s first major public building in the UK.
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The venue, regarded as a cultural counterbalance to London, has always been seen as too important to fail.
Its supporters say it will be like no other arts venue in the UK with an industrial warehouse vibe to the spaces. Super-sized movable walls will allow for different configurations, meaning everything from intimate performances to events on a grander, more eye-popping scale.
It will officially open in October with an immersive Matrix films-themed dance, music and visual effects experience directed by Danny Boyle. Before then it will in July and August host a Yayoi Kusama exhibition as part of this summer’s Manchester international festival.
The development of the building is seen as the largest investment in a national cultural project since Tate Modern opened in 2000.
It was kickstarted by the then chancellor, George Osborne, who pledged £78m towards its capital costs, revealing during his budget speech that it would be named after Factory Records. “Anyone who is a child of the 80s will think that is a great idea,” he said.
Aviva became the name of Norwich Union in 2009. It means fresh or springtime in Hebrew.
Aviva Studios follows in a long history of corporate naming with the Tate galleries taking their name from the generosity of sugar magnate Henry Tate, of Tate & Lyle.
