From Fine Art to Final Vice Principal: Pete Wheeler's Generator Journey
Stories and Memories: An Interview with Pete Wheeler
Pete Wheeler, former Head of Fine Art and Vice Principal of Loughborough College of Art and Design, shares his memories of the Frederick Street building and the Generator Gallery in this illuminating conversation with Dr Jill Vincent. With a career spanning from 1971 to 2000, Pete witnessed the evolution of art education in Loughborough and the transformation of historic buildings that now form part of the Generator - Loughborough’s brand new arts and cultural centre.
Pete Wheeler, interviewed by Dr Jill Vincent
Q: Pete, you've had a long association with the buildings on Frederick Street. Could you tell us about that?
Pete: I came to Loughborough in 1971 as the youngest member of staff. In those days, only the Schofield Center on the corner of Green Close Lane (opposite the Griffin) and what we called the "garage block" on Frederick Street remained of the old College. Most of the Art and Design courses had moved to the Radmor campus, except Fine Art, which was in a ramshackle, fire-trap building at the end of William Street.
Initially, the Frederick Street building was mothballed and used for storing screens that were erected in the town hall for graduating students' degree shows. There was no Generator Gallery at all when I first arrived.
Q: How did the Frederick Street building evolve over time?
Pete: The building was originally called the "garage block" and I believe it dates to 1935. Those wonderful wooden bays on the ground floor were the entry points for cars to be driven in for maintenance. Auto mechanics were trained there, keeping with Herbert Schofield's belief in vocational education and learning by doing.
The Foundation course was the first to move into Frederick Street in the late 1980s. Eventually, when we could no longer use the town hall for degree shows due to financial reasons, we began using Frederick Street for Fine Art degree exhibitions.
Q: Could you tell us about the Generator space specifically and its transformation?
Pete: The Generator housed diesel engines that were obtained from World War I German U-boats by Schofield. These were used to train electrical engineers, as the diesel engines generated direct current. All the college buildings were lit with electricity generated from these engines, and Schofield even sold surplus electricity to the national grid.
By my time, what remained were the "mercury vapor rectifiers" - glass structures about six feet high with mercury in the bottom part. These converted direct current to alternating current. There was cabling all along the tops of the walls, and control panels - I remember one of my colleagues pulling a lever and the whole building started to hum!
When we wanted to use the space for exhibitions, these rectifiers had to be very gingerly removed to a basement area at the town hall end of the building. We had grandiose, naive ideas that the mezzanine area could become a cafe-bar with the rectifiers as a historical feature - but that was ridiculous really.
Q: What modifications were made to prepare the Generator space for exhibitions?
Pete: We were left with a rather scruffy old building with an uneven floor - there were raised concrete sections and broken tiles. We installed a system of sturdy joists over which we laid 8x4 sheets of high-density chipboard, painted with hardwearing battleship gray paint. That floor could support some quite heavy student sculptures.
For several years, Sculpture had the ground floor, including what is now the OAC cafe, while Painting and Printmaking used the floors above. It was a tremendous amount of work, with all Fine Art staff pitching in.
Q: Any memorable stories from exhibitions in that space?
Pete: There was one year when a student who worked between painting and sculpture wanted to build a Perspex bridge over a landfill site installation. Visitors would have to walk across this bridge to go from one space to another. The health and safety officer said no, which was completely reasonable.
She was allowed to construct her installation in the foyer of the Radmor Fine Art building instead, but she was unhappy about not showing with her friends in the Generator Gallery. She contacted the News of the World, claiming her work had been censored! I invited the journalist to come see for himself, and he realized there was no censorship happening. The headline in that Sunday's News of the World was "Cunning Stunt by Art Girl"!
Q: You mentioned an incident with the mercury vapor rectifiers?
Pete: Yes, one year a mercury vapor rectifier was being moved and it broke. Mercury spilled out and contaminated both the Generator Gallery and the basement. We didn't have a health and safety officer at that time, so we consulted the one from Leicester Polytechnic next door - by strange coincidence, his name was Richard Hazard!
He called in environmental pollution specialists who wore hazmat suits and had machines with needles going off the dial. Later, when we merged with the university, they wanted the remaining mercury vapor rectifiers. We transported them on a flat trailer towed by the college minibus - if there had been an accident, the whole of Ashby Road would have been contaminated!
Q: How did the relationship between the art school and the university develop?
Pete: In the late 1990s, polytechnics were becoming universities and gaining degree-awarding powers, but monotechnics like art colleges were left out. We had to find a partner to replace the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA) that had previously validated our degrees.
There was some resistance and a pro-independence movement among students and staff. Eventually, after a brief partnership with Nottingham Trent University, we entered negotiations with Loughborough University in 1996. I became the last Vice Principal, and we worked for two years to negotiate the merger, which happened in 1998 when LCAD became LUSAD (Loughborough University School of Art and Design).
Q: What do you think about the Generator's current transformation into an arts center?
Pete: I'm absolutely delighted that you've managed to raise the money necessary to convert it to what it should be. It's fascinating that it's a recycled industrial building. I know of a slightly similar building in Narbonne in the south of France called "L'Aspirateur" (the vacuum cleaner) that was recycled from industrial waste into an art gallery.
The Generator has the capacity to be a historic building in its own right. I understand it's going to be a multi-purpose space for performing arts, digital arts, everything - it's going to be an amazing asset to the East Midlands region. I think it's terrific that the building has as much of a future as it's had a past.
Q: The OAC café has already become quite popular, hasn't it?
Pete: Yes, it's the trendiest coffee shop in town! I expected it would be taken over by students, but it attracts people from across the board - young moms, older people, various groups holding meetings. It's fabulous.
Q: Any final thoughts on the Generator project?
Pete: I'd love to be involved in some kind of exhibition that celebrates the history of the people who've worked or studied there. I think we have enormous pride in our history and also in what we're going to be doing there in the future.
Pete Wheeler taught art history before becoming Head of Painting and eventually Vice Principal at Loughborough College of Art and Design. His career spanned nearly three decades, witnessing the transformation from LCAD to LUSAD as part of Loughborough University.
