A couple of CovSoc committee members were fortunate to be given a preview tour of the amazing Delia Derbyshire Building in Cox Street.
The Delia Derbyshire building is set to be the new home of Coventry University’s arts departments, or more formally the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. It incorporates the refurbished Graham Sutherland and Maurice Foss buildings together with a new connecting building on the site of the Bugatti Building.
The building is located opposite Starley Gardens, an urban park created by the university for students, staff and the wider community. Views from the building include the Gardens and an attractive new view through to the Cathedral.
The building has been designed with references to the city’s cultural history. In particular the ceiling panels are designed to represent the punched cards used in Jacquard looms.
The new building has cutting edge equipment and spaces including a hyper studio designed for experimental cross-disciplinary projects. There are also new immersive studios for sound and vision and virtual reality and new photography and film production facilities, hack labs, post-production and games suites, as well as a new gallery and fully updated creative practice studios, workshops and fabrication spaces. Overall, the building offers students sector-leading facilities in a unique environment.
The new complex will also be open to the public with a gallery space, café and events atrium where students, staff and visiting artists can showcase their work to members of the community. At present the gallery contains a piece of art called CHOIR by local arts organisation Ludic Rooms. This comprises the illuminated sign from the formerly named Ricoh Arena with the letters rearranged: RICOH -> CHOIR
As we reported in October 2022, the new building is named after Delia Derbyshire. Delia was an innovative musician and composer of electronic music born in Coventry in 1937, best known for her ground-breaking work with the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop and her realisation of the famous Doctor Who theme music. She was awarded a posthumous honorary doctorate by Coventry University in 2017 and the Coventry Society erected a plaque on her birthplace in 2018.
The building is completed and staff have started to move in, and students will be introduced in a phased way over the coming months, with a formal opening later in the year.
The University writes “This building complex includes exciting new facilities, creative technologies and spaces which will significantly enhance the ability of our students to engage with our innovative programmes and to learn in exciting new ways. This game-changing investment for the university represents a huge vote of confidence in the creative and cultural sector, and in what we believe we, and our students, can achieve.”