FOR Graham Lister, the purpose of local performing arts projects always extends beyond improving a city’s immediate cultural climate.
He believes Chester is on the cusp of its revival, and the project best suited to complement that process is the Theatre, Library and Cinema’s three-part development. Lister was named project director in January 2013 by the Cheshire West and Chester Council and previously worked on the team that created the £61m CURVE performing arts centre in Leicester.
Graham Lister, Project Director at Chester’s Theatre, Library and Cinema. © Chester Theatre
“There’s a real lack of cultural provision through the fact that there isn’t a significant performing arts venue,” Lister said.
Rich histories are embedded within the city’s Roman walls, medieval double-tiered rows and remnants of Victorian industrialization. James Bond’s latest incantation, Daniel Craig, even found his start in Chester. However, since about the 1970s, something seems to be missing in the modern city’s culture.
Part of this artistic gap stems from a lack of focus, which is often spread thin by insufficient agreement concerning small details, rather than directing energy towards completing the initial project by 2016.
Becoming a ‘cultural centre’
To some extent, a scarcity of theaters sets Chester behind in the northwest. Big-name locations such as Liverpool’s Everyman Playhouse and the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester stimulate culture and economy by creating more reasons for tourists to visit.
“Something like this building would become a hub, a cultural centre [. . .] that would continue throughout the year and not just be during the summer or certain months,” he said.
What truly sets this project apart from others Lister has worked on is the way the complex combines performance, visual, and literary arts into one socially engaging part of Chester’s ‘renaissance.’
One challenge during the design process was figuring out how each building’s “functions can complement each other and add value to each other, because they can’t be all slung together and expected to work as silos. If they end up in silos, then we won’t have succeeded,” Lister said.
“The whole point about it is that it’s a centre, and it should feel like there’s a real cross contamination between all the different functions,” he said.
Lister’s colourful career history has brought him to many exciting places around the globe, which has added to the experience that makes him an excellent choice for project director at Chester’s Theatre, Library and Cinema.
Producing performances worldwide, especially in non-English speaking countries, with the British Council’s English Shakespeare Company showed Lister the value in sharing the performing arts with communities who do not receive many touring shows.
English Shakespeare Company creator and director Michael Bogdanov “really set a tone for me in what I think about theatre and what I think it should achieve, as well as what it can do in a local place like [Chester]. That is actually what’s guided me through my career.”
Eventually, Lister will hand the torch over to Chester Performs, who will have the artistic and financial responsibilities in the future.
He said his present role is “to get the building to that point where hopefully, on its 20th birthday in 2016, it will then be open and owned by everybody in the community and the borough.”
“It’s important that it is not just for people who live here, but [that it] also works with the wider borough so that people will come to us from outside of Chester,” he said.
For more on the Chester Theatre Project, see here, and for more on the One City Plan, see here.
Chester Record 
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