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Fionnuala McHugh

Sir Alistair Spalding, artistic director and co-CEO of Sadler’s Wells in London, is not a man blighted by pessimism or narrow vision.
When he was appointed in 2004, Sadler’s Wells – “stranded and unloved”, as one of the London newspapers put it – was considered a theatre that merely hosted visiting companies. Spalding decided it should become its own creative force.
He invited in five associate artists, one of whom was Wayne McGregor, now Sir Wayne McGregor, a name familiar to Hong Kong audiences. These days, Sadler’s Wells has 22 associate artists, whose contemporary dance productions have seeded the cultural globe.
In 2013, Spalding, frustrated by having only a 1,500-seat theatre and a 200-seat studio, announced at a press conference that Sadler’s Wells was going to build a mid-size space. The fact that he had neither money nor a site was, apparently, no deterrent.
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.

Originally, plans had been confined to housing and sporting venues. But Boris Johnson, then London’s mayor, wanted to create a cultural and educational district within the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Johnson enjoyed referring to this as Olympicopolis.
Despite upheavals – revolving mayors and prime ministers, Brexit, a global pandemic and a peculiarly English existential legal crisis about blocked views of St Paul’s Cathedral, 9km (5.6 miles) away – the current mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, opened Sadler’s Wells East in February 2025 in what is now called East Bank.
On the afternoon that we speak via video, the happy sounds of the public taking part in events around the large foyer are so pervasive that he has to find a quiet corner in the 550-seat theatre. As Sir Alistair – he was awarded a knighthood for services to dance in 2022 – says, “It’s definitely, definitely, definitely working very well.”
His experience is valued on the global arts circuit. He has just been in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, sharing advice with a private foundation that is building a dance studio, and he is about to fly to Hong Kong for the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority’s second Hong Kong International Cultural Summit, which was held on March 22 and 23.
According to the press release, his panel on “Arts, Community and Leadership – Reframing the Relationship” has been added, “in anticipation of the opening of the WestK Performing Arts Centre in 2027”. His fellow panellists are from France, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates, but Spalding literally brings a West-meets-East overlap: wrangles about architecture, housing, cultural content and cost in a corner of working-class East Bank will be familiar to ears in West Kowloon.

Asked what he wishes he had known a year before opening, he remarks wryly, “I think it’s better that you don’t know … to be honest, it’s nothing to do with the artistic content. You can have wonderful art, but it’s always about making the books balance.”
There is a reason for the neon signs at Sadler’s Wells East entrances stating YOU ARE WELCOME. What matters is footfall, and not only by those purchasing seats. “We’re dependent on people coming in and buying coffee and having lunch, and that works, to a certain extent … but we have to have more and, at the moment, that’s a challenge.”
Step by step, East Bank is still unfurling itself. He is cheered by the prospect of the V&A East Museum, which will open in April. V&A East Storehouse opened last year; unfortunately, it did not bring in the latte-buying crowd.
“It’s a little bit away from us and I think people have gone to that and then gone home. But I think what will happen after April is people will go to V&A Storehouse, then to the museum and then come to us for a cup of coffee.”
If that sounds like nitpicking arithmetic, consider the fact that 9 per cent of Sadler’s Wells’ budget comes from the UK government, 10 per cent comes from fundraising and about 11 per cent comes from catering. Ticket sales make up the rest.
There have been unforeseen location bonuses. West Ham United Football Club has a stadium nearby. “And when there’s a match, we’re fully profitable in the bar because they all come over for a drink,” he says.

Asked if football supporters are a positive demographic, Spalding – who is an Arsenal fan – grins. “I’ve noticed, seeing the crowds here, that football’s a more middle-class pursuit,” he says. “It’s quite expensive these days and more family-oriented and some of them will definitely come in, see what we’re doing and stay.”
By contrast, the other unexpected visitors – “mostly women in sparkly tops” – stop off while cutting through the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park on their way back to Stratford railway station after Abba Voyage’s virtual concert experience. Transport and food: these are the less artistic but vital concerns of an arts chief executive.
Both East Bank and West Kowloon, of course, have spent crucial years doing community groundwork. As Spalding, a genial man with a reassuring voice, puts it, “Before you have the building, you don’t land like a spaceship.”
Sadler’s Wells East has a comprehensive outreach programme that includes 10 associate schools. It offers full-time courses in hip hop and choreography. More than 50 per cent of the staff, at every level, are local. “We had an opening event for all the people we’d worked with,” he says, “and it was wonderful inviting them into our house.”
Spalding is an East Londoner himself, having lived in Hackney borough for decades. Now, with the original Sadler’s Wells in north London and a new one in the east, he is professionally split between two distinctive compass points of a huge city. How different does he feel in each?
He considers this for a long moment. “I have an office in Sadler’s Wells, but not here,” he says. “It’s an open setting, and I forgot my headphones, which is why I’m speaking to you in a theatre … also [glances down], I’m in trainers.”

Those feet did not endure a dancer’s training. Before he became an arts programmer, he was a teacher. But his passion for dance, which began when he saw a Merce Cunningham production at 16, has never wavered.
A few days later, in the panel appearance at Hong Kong’s Xiqu Centre, he is wearing shoes, so maybe he is channelling his slightly more official, north London Sadler’s Wells persona.
The West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA) and Sadler’s Wells have just signed a Memorandum of Understanding to exchange cultural talent and ideas. His relationship with WKCDA dates back 15 years to the era of Graham Sheffield, followed by Michael Lynch.
During the panel discussion, which is available on WKCDA’s YouTube site, Spalding is frank about the past year’s financial hurdles. “We have to rent out more of our [six] studios than we thought,” he says.
Still, he conveys an ongoing irrepressibility and tells a cheerful story about a recent dress rehearsal for a new version of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring during which the artificial intelligence visual programme projected an elevating cat instead of the rising sun.
Most striking of all, perhaps, is how he begins his tale of cultural regeneration with a photo of thousands of abandoned fridges. This was the poisoned wasteland from which Sadler’s Wells East has emerged into a new era. In our interview, he had talked about a moment during a Hofesh Shechter work last autumn when the audience was asked to stand up and dance.
Forty per cent of the East London audiences are new to Sadler’s Wells. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Spalding marvels. “Everyone got up. Everyone. No question, there’s something going on since Covid. People just want to dance while the world’s burning.”


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How do you make a cultural district out of a dumping ground for fridges? Ask the artistic director of Sadler’s Wells theatre in London


How do you make a cultural district out of a dumping ground for fridges? Ask the artistic director of Sadler’s Wells theatre in London.


Sadiq Khan

Boris Johnson

East Kowloon Cultural Centre

Sir Alistair Spalding on turning a London wasteland into a cultural destination

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}How do you make a cultural district out of a dumping ground for fridges? Ask the artistic director of Sadler’s Wells theatre in London

How do you make a cultural district out of a dumping ground for fridges? Ask the artistic director of Sadler’s Wells theatre in London