A light goes out in Cumbria with the closure of the Lanternhouse

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-northerner/2012/feb/24/art-lakedistrict-lanternhouse-ulverston

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Lanternhouse at Ulverston in Cumbria is the latest victim of the Arts Council cuts. It has been announced that the Ulverston-based charity, having lost its annual grant (£284,666 in 2011-12) will close down on the 31st of March with the loss of 6 jobs.

Its HQ is the striking RIBA Award-winning Lanternhouse, a £2.2m conversion of the former National School which opened in the town centre in 1999, with £1.6m of the funding coming from the national lottery.

In a statement, the organisation said:

Following Arts Council England's funding cuts Lanternhouse spent the last 12 months investigating alternative business models and funding opportunities. However, Lanternhouse has now made the difficult decision to close business on 31st March 2012 in order for the charity to consider future possibilities and options.

Denis McGeary, Lanternhouse's chairman, explains that, having lost 82% of their income, the charity has no option but to rein in their activities. However he and the rest of the board are committed to keeping the building available as an asset for other local charities, in particular working with Lakes Alive, which organises outdoor events in the Lake District. He's hopeful that a permanent use for the building will eventually be found that preserves its unique public benefit, saying:

my image is that it's a sleeping princess that's waiting for a handsome prince to wake it up.

Lanternhouse has deep roots in the celebratory and participatory arts field, having been established, as Welfare State International, back in 1968 by Yorkshire-born partners John Fox and Sue Gill. The organisation has been based in Ulverston since the early 1980s, and its activities have helped establish the Furness market town as a centre for festivals – amongst others, Welfare State set up the town's Lantern procession, Comedy festival (Stan Laurel was born here) and Flag Festival. The Lantern procession was set up in 1983, and now every autumn equinox sees not far short of 1000 lanterns being paraded in four streams of light which join up for a grand finale, watched by tens of thousands of people.

Other products of the Welfare State era include the , a series of practical handbooks on how to make marking rites of passage more personal. They included the "Dead Good Funerals Guide", reviewed by David Ward here, which has helped many people avoid the often meaningless mock Victorian "package funerals" that funeral parlour chain hard sell to the vulnerable recently bereaved. John Fox and Sue Gill have kept the "Dead Good Guides" going, which their website describes as "An artist-led company, seeking a role for art that weaves it more fully into the fabric of our lives."

Impossible ever neatly to pigeon-hole, Welfare State and Lanternhouse's work has ranged across poetry, performance, street bands, public art, live art, theatre, literature, history, ecology, architecture, dance, sculpture, food, politics – almost anything you can think of, in fact. Lyn Gardner, reviewing their "Longline: the Carnival Opera", wrote "Because it is so specific it has a claim to the universal. It is inclusive in every way", and that can apply to much of what they did.

Not all their activities have been as successful as others, of course – their contribution to the closing ceremony at the Beijing Games attracted pretty widespread derision, but the fact that a tiny charity on the edge of Morecambe bay was selected to represent Britain in front of an audience of 1.5 billion was an amazing accolade.

Andrea Hawkins, the organisation's Executive Director, is quoted in the Westmorland Gazette saying:

On behalf of the team I want to thank everyone, of all ages, who made Lanternhouse a very special place. The mix of artists and people produced a creative vitality that was unique to Lanternhouse.

In the words of Wordsworth, a founder and regular contributor to the Gazette:

Men are we and must mourn, when e'en the shade Of that which once was great hath passed away