{"id":39377,"date":"2026-03-26T10:40:45","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T02:40:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=39377"},"modified":"2026-03-26T10:40:45","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T02:40:45","slug":"sir-alistair-spalding-on-turning-a-london-wasteland-into-a-cultural-destination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=39377","title":{"rendered":"Sir Alistair Spalding on turning a London wasteland into a cultural destination"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Sir Alistair Spalding, artistic director and co-CEO of Sadler\u2019s Wells in London, is not a man blighted by pessimism or narrow vision.<\/p>\n

When he was appointed in 2004, Sadler\u2019s Wells \u2013 \u201cstranded and unloved\u201d, as one of the London newspapers put it \u2013 was considered a theatre that merely hosted visiting companies. Spalding decided it should become its own creative force.<\/p>\n

He invited in five associate artists, one of whom was Wayne McGregor, now Sir Wayne McGregor<\/span>, a name familiar to Hong Kong audiences. These days, Sadler\u2019s Wells has 22 associate artists, whose contemporary dance productions have seeded the cultural globe.<\/div>\n

In 2013, Spalding, frustrated by having only a 1,500-seat theatre and a 200-seat studio, announced at a press conference that Sadler\u2019s Wells was going to build a mid-size space. The fact that he had neither money nor a site was, apparently, no deterrent.<\/p>\n

Shortly afterwards, he was rung up by the London Legacy Development Corporation, which was in charge of regenerating the deprived area in east London where the Olympics had taken place the previous year.<\/p>\n

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Sir Alistair Spalding at M+ in Hong Kong. Photo: Jonathan Wong<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Originally, plans had been confined to housing and sporting venues. But Boris Johnson, then London\u2019s mayor, wanted to create a cultural and educational district within the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Johnson enjoyed referring to this as Olympicopolis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Sir Alistair Spalding, artistic director and co-CEO of Sadler\u2019s Wells in London, is not a man blighted by pessimism or narrow vision. When he was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39378,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[19027,7812,5059,1833,17733,19028,6213,3121],"class_list":["post-39377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bored-interesting","tag-alistair","tag-cultural","tag-destination","tag-london","tag-sir","tag-spalding","tag-turning","tag-wasteland","wpcat-33-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}