2006 - 2010

Setting the Scene

The original approval by London Borough of Richmond on Thames Council for the housing redevelopment on the Post Office Sorting site at Barnes Pond was predicated on the emergence of a community arts organisation to use the public space. Jean Boht, Darrol Blake and Coeks Gordon had been the founders of the Children’s Theatre Group in Barnes and Jean’s old friend Anne Carrol had stepped into the role of Chairman when Jean’s professional career required more of her time soon after the group had commenced its operation. 

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Almost two decades later, Anne Carroll and Coeks Gordon led the bid to satisfy an artistic future for the OSO site. Coeks had been Production Manager for Sir Lawrence Olivier at the Old Vic whilst they awaited the prestigious move to the National Theatre on the South Bank. Based upon Coeks’s specification for the OSO arts space comprising three configurable studios and a café it could legitimately lay claim to the title of a community arts venue. The configurable solution enables a variety of concurrent artistic activities in the three studios or, when necessary, to provide a single space for staging sophisticated theatre events. This broad vision for the site earned the backing of the Council scrutineers and building work started accordingly in the year 2000.

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Professional theatre of various genre was already well-established by 2006 and, as example, Gyles Brandreth appeared here in the first performance of the musical Handbag. As well as exercise and dance classes during the day, the venue was also being used by the nascent Barnes Literary Society and their events introduced well-known speakers such as P D James, Andrew Graham Dixon and Andrew Marr to the venue on the pond.  The latter, notably arriving in his evening suit ready for a subsequent engagement quipped during his presentation that the inhabitants of Sheen assumed his attire entirely suitable for an early engagement in Barnes. 

The OSO Arts Centre continued to go from strength to strength but the vision for co-existing art forms required impetus and funding was a problem. Our first good fortune was the donation of funds from Barnes Community Players enabling the replacement of uncomfortable and rickety old seating by smart padded chairs whose design met modern safety standards. Later, in 2009, Chairman Anne Carroll approved an application to LBRuT for funds to document the future of the Centre. At a meeting in York House, attended by Coeks Gordon and William Mortimer, the Council awarded approximately £5000 pounds for elaborating the new ideas to include a road-map for the future of the venue. The spread sheets developed to track OSO income and expenditure in detail over a period of two years along with the completed Three-Year Plan (accepted by the Council to run from 2010 to 2012) later became useful documents for the incoming new Chairman, Simon Danciger, in 2011. The material revealed a mountain to climb but afforded a solid perspective of future opportunities.

William Mortimer