Big man behind Cornerhouse is ready to come HOME

HOME patron and international film director Danny Boyle (left) with HOME’s boss Dave Moutrey

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MARTYN MEETS... Dave Moutrey - the Geordie who made Mossley his home and will now run Manchester's latest arts complex.
MANCHESTER's Cornerhouse - the city's international centre for visual arts and contemporary independent film - is moving... but the edginess of the exhibitions and movies on display there will stay the same.

There will be no change as long as Dave Moutrey is in charge. He is the man overseeing the £25 million project to merge Cornerhouse - which he currently runs - with the Library Theatre Company to create HOME, which he will also run and which is now rising on land next to the railway arches opposite what was once the Hacienda night club.

Dave is a big guy: broad-shouldered and 6ft 4in. After the first 30 minutes of the two hours we spent together I had a stiff neck from straining upwards.

A Geordie from Billingham, where he played rugby, he's a Mossley lad these days having lived in the top end of the town for nigh-on 30 years. But when he came to Oldham he was a drama teacher and lived in Fir Tree House, Fitton Hill.

"I loved living there," he says. "such a great community. Everyone looked after everyone else and yes, I got to know the scallywags but I never had any bother." Hardly surprising.

Dave now commutes daily into Manchester to Cornerhouse in Oxford Road, where he has been director and chief executive for seven years.

It's clearly a job he loves: he is presently working a minimum 60-hour week overseeing the merger with the theatre into HOME, an eye-catching project, centrepiece of the regeneration of a 214-acre site (originally cleared in the forlorn hope the BBC might relocate there).

The 60,000 sq ft centre, due to open next March, will house two theatres (of 500 and 150 seats respectively), five cinema screens, galleries and restaurants overlooking a new public space.

The scheme architect is Mecanoo, which won an international design competition - the same guys currently drawing up plans for the Heritage Centre and new Coliseum Theatre in Oldham.

"By being here, we will drive footfall every day and every evening," said Dave of his new, well, home...

"In addition to the restaurants and cafes in our building there are others all around us and an open space in the centre."

If there was a man for the moment, Dave is that man - and Oldham can take pride in his achievements, for he learned his trade right here, initially at South Chadderton School and then with local amateur companies. Dave performed with enthusiasm and no little talent, but is obviously happiest away from the greasepaint.

His early days in the North-East gave no hint of his future career and preeminence in the Manchester arts and theatre scene. He studied for a teaching degree at Leeds Polytechnic and was coerced into the Forum Theatre group because he could handle the huge ropes backstage.

From here his rise was as seamless as it was inevitable. He designed a poster to advertise a subsequent production, then offered to design a set ("they weren’t very good") and even took on the lighting design. All this led him to a joint major in art and drama and his first teaching job, at South Chadderton.

"Great times, they were, in Oldham. But it was only later that I learned the only reason I got the job was because the headteacher thought someone of my size could control the class."

After teaching, Dave spent seven years producing plays and running the Abraham Moss Centre in Crumpsall: "It was the real start of my journey, a fantastic job. I was working with the school and college and touring theatre companies and I got involved with the North-West Arts Board.

"They started talking about marketing and stuff but it wasn’t for me. I was a revolutionary..."

Or so he thought. In fact Dave applied the lessons, doubled his audiences and was hooked. A business and administration degree through the Open University later, he was on his way to his current position, first running Cornerhouse and now overseeing the biggest construction project the Manchester arts scene has witnessed since the Lowry over a decade ago.

But back to admin: working with independent theatres across in Greater Manchester, he helped set up Arts About Manchester, a marketing group, and left Crumpsall to run the organisation. Seven years later he saw an advertisement for someone to run the Cornerhouse, and the rest is history.

Back in the present, he remembers vividly the fairly recent telephone call that changed his life once again.

"I was asked to attend a meeting with Sir Howard Bernstein, the chief executive of Manchester City Council, and was asked if I would be willing for Cornerhouse to share a building with the Library Theatre.

"I immediately said no: two organisations sharing one building wasn’t going to work. But I said we would merge with the LIbrary and make it one institution."

Several weeks later he was summoned once again and it was with a heavy tread he kept the appointment: "I feared the worst, that the deal was off. But it was totally the opposite," he said.

So now, rising from the ground at First Street, is a building that will house the contemporary and independent arts scene of Greater Manchester for generations to come. But with its roots, presumably, in Fitton Hill...