(Kiz Durrani) So, it's the 10th of April 2025. I'm here with Rose O'Donovan, and we are interviewing Christine Cort, who was involved on the marketing side of things and the dates that we have for you are 1982, 1983, and also 1987 to 1988. Have we got that correct?
CC: I was here in a continual stint, so probably from 83 to 88, I would say, around that, so for 5 years in total. No breaks.
No breaks. OK. So if you could tell us just in a general sense about how you first became involved with Riverside Studios.
Sure, I had done a degree in Liverpool and failed miserably at my degree because I had discovered boys big time, gigs, theatre, visual arts, and had very little interest in my English degree. So I just scraped it and then I thought – and my parents were so lovely, totally forgiving – and I thought, no, I'm gonna come to London cos I knew being a girl from Blackburn, there wasn't much there for me then. So I arrived in London and I talked my way on to a hybrid course at LSE.
It was between LSE I think, and North London Poly, and it was a course in Management and Administration of the Arts for a year. And one term was at a given placement place and the placements they were suggesting were so dull, and I was like, no, no, no, no, I'm gonna get my own. So there are only two places I wanted to work, one was the ICA, Institute of Contemporary Arts on the Mall, and the other one was Riverside Studios.
So I talked my way into an interview at both, which was tricky because who was I? I hadn't done anything. I got a really poor degree, and I was a second term into a diploma in London. So I met both Artistic Directors and Chief Executives, which was a bit scary and, I mean, you know, it was a 3-month position, and both offered me the role as an intern. And I am a firm believer, if possible, that you should be paid for what you do, no matter how small a fee. I've always believed that, and I always try to promote that, whichever organisations I work in and run. So I managed to persuade John Baraldi, who was the Chief Executive in those days, to pay me the princely sum of £90 a week. Now being a working-class girl from Blackburn, whose mum worked in Boots and whose dad was a gas fitter, that was a fortune. So I came to Riverside.
And I just soaked it all up. I mean, I was for the first month, Chief Envelope Stuffer. But during that time I was in the best possible location. Sometimes I'd be in the cafe with great big boxes full of newsletters and magazines and leaflets about Dance Umbrella or Brian Eno coming, so I was hungry for what was written and I was so keen to promote it. But meanwhile I was listening to all these meetings. I was allowed to sit in on meeting after meeting but obviously I couldn't contribute because I was Chief Envelope Stuffer, but it was super, super interesting. And the second month I was here, there was a bit of a crisis. We had an A4 then, newsletter. And talk was, we were gonna have to stop doing it because the print bill was becoming prohibitive and I was actually bereft. I'd only been here a month, but I was so engaged with the building and I'm always like that, whatever I do, I totally immerse myself in it.
And so I said, OK, I know what I'll do. I will sell advertising round the calendar, and I still have some of the newsletters at home that I can share. I will sell advertising around the back page calendar, and they were like, oh I don't think you'll be able to do that, nobody will buy ads. I was like, yes they will. So I trooped up and down King Street for 3 weeks and Fulham Palace Road. I knocked on flower shop doors, taxi drivers, butchers, Habitat, sofa companies, bakers, and I persuaded – God knows how I did it – 12 people to give me £50, so all we needed to carry on the newsletter per month was £600. So I had it for the first month.
Then problem two, how the hell would I drive traffic into all those businesses, because my task in my head was to sign them up for a year, because I didn't want to be trooping up and down King Street and further, for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks, so I got everybody I knew, everybody who came here to go use that taxi company, to buy flowers from there, truly I did. And 9 out of the companies signed up a 12 month deal, so I only had to find 3 more, which I did.
So I sort of feel in that first couple of months I saved the Riverside newsletter and then at the end of my 3 months, they were like, don't go back, don't go back, stay with us as... I was like, what, as Chief Envelope Stuffer? And they were like, no, marketing’s assistant's assistant or something, you know, a creative post.
But given what had happened to my degree and given how focused I was on my course, I thought, no, I'm gonna go back. So I did my third term and for the first time I actually got a distinction, and Riverside called me and said, job's still there. So I started here properly after my year, when I got a diploma.
That was a very long answer, wasn't it?
[06:30] (ROD) So Christine, you've touched a little bit on your sensory experience at Riverside. Could you expand a little bit on what you saw, the smell of Riverside, what it felt like to be in the building?
Sure. It felt dusty. Our offices – you came into reception and right opposite was the box office, and there was always someone with a beaming smile on that box office, I remember that. And then next to the box office was reception, which was littered with leaflets: I’m super tidy, it was always a bit untidy for me. And then behind you there were racks of leaflets run by a company called Impact, and they used to come and fill up everybody else's literature. I didn't really like that sort of promoting everybody else. I was like, let's promote ourselves, not have them so central. I was always trying to get that rack moved.
And then you went up some stairs and you went down a long corridor and all the offices were very makeshifty. I remember there was a very swanky woman called Tammy who was very Fulham and I think she was General Manager and she used to wear her shirt with the collar up and I thought that was ever so posh. She was absolutely lovely, like a mother figure to everyone. And then you passed accounts, they always loved me in accounts, I don't know why.
And then you passed Artistic Director's office, which was always something incredibly important happening in there, and then the Marketing Officer I think was the end of the corridor and it was just fly posted with every single show’s poster we'd ever had. There were about 3 too many desks in there and it was just a hubbub and my boss, Renee Lowes, in those days, she's a Marketing Director, she was half-French, half-Canadian, and she was just a wonderful woman, very sophisticated, intelligent, passionate. And her sense, her sensibility really, towards marketing and press was what shaped my early vision of what it could be and I just remember lots of dust, lots of paper, lots of noise, lots of phone calls, but a really beautiful creative environment for me in which to start.
And you'd have artists wander down the corridor. I remember we did this insane opera, theatre opera called Hey Luciani with Michael Clark, the fashion designers from Body Map, Ellen van Schuylenburch, who's an incredible dancer and Leigh Bowery, sadly deceased, And they would sort of just, and Mark, Mark, oh Mark [E Smith] from The Fall and his wife Brix [Start-Smith], and they would just sort of take over our office and just hang out because we were helping promote.
So it was a time in my life that I can still remember as though it were yesterday actually, the smells – I remember the smell when you went down the long corridor beyond the cafe, to the terrace that we were just talking, Daniel and I, about earlier. And that smelt a little bit sweaty because there were lots of overheated, well non air-conditioned, should I say, dressing rooms and it was always quite warm down that side of the building, unlike our side.
So I remember sort of with my lunch on a sunny day, like bombing it down that corridor, and sometimes going (inhales), you know, till I got to the door, not, I mean, you know, it was just stuffed full of different companies. And then Dance Umbrella were up a winding staircase outside and that felt exciting, hearing them clunk down their staircase when you were having your lunch.
So yeah, I've got hundreds of memories of it, of smells and I remember a lot of, lot of colour and people who worked here weren't afraid of colour. It wasn't one of those organisations where everyone was in black, grey and white, you know, which I imagined the ICA to be more so in those days, people were quite flamboyant here. We had Vanessa Redgrave, from across the river, would come and just hang out in the cafe with Corin, her brother, that incredible Scottish painter whose name escapes me, it’ll come back to me. Ian Dury, I just took a picture of where he used to live – we’d hang out.
So there's this, and you know, when my parents came, they'd come into the foyer, into the cafe and they'd see someone like Sinead Cusack or Brian Ferry and my mum could barely breathe with excitement, you know. She thought they were all my friends and she'd tell everyone in Blackburn how utterly well connected I was, even though I, you know, I did say I've only spoken to them twice and that's to pass them a leaflet or to say it's time for you to be on stage, you know. But my parents were so incredibly proud of me and I involved them in here. They came at least once a month over those 5 years, so yeah, lots of memories.
[12:13] (ROD) Thank you. (KD) Obviously you have very fond memories of working at Riverside Studios. Just thinking about that, what would you say Riverside Studios has offered to you that you might not have been offered elsewhere?
I think it helped me find who, oh sorry, it makes me sad. It helped me find who I was. I had a cry in the in the foyer, didn't I? It's sort of, because I came from nothing and it helped me see the world in a different way. It really did help for me and my parents always told me I could do anything. I had a sister who died and I think for my parents that must have been really hard, because they could have sort of wrapped me up and protected me to the nth degree, but they set me free, and I feel like Riverside gave me permission to be who I was, deep down, who, and perhaps I hadn't found that person before, you know. I loved being here. I got, I love human beings. They're my best thing, grumpy ones, hyperintelligent ones, extremely shy ones, I just love humans, I don't know why. And Riverside, I met all walks of life here, and I was very, very happy to be thrown into the deep end.
We had companies come from Russia, who I got very, very friendly with and they were quite cold initially and quite reserved. And John Baraldi, who was the Chief Executive and I and a few others got very close to companies like the Maly Theatre of Leningrad, etc. And I began, I became Trudy Tour Operator and I, every New Year, I organised for 3 or 4, 3 consecutive New Years, Riverside Studios’ trips to Moscow, Leningrad and Novgorod, and we were going to go to Tbilisi, but there was too much trouble and we couldn't.
So I ran the Riverside Friends scheme and that was a way of promoting the Friends, that it wasn't just what was happening here: come with us, become a Friend of Riverside and explore the world. So we went to, my first Riverside trip was to Moscow and Leningrad and I took 25 people, 15 of them were my friends, which I'd made become Friends of Riverside, not cheating! And we went to illegal fashion shows under tower blocks in Moscow. We went to the most incredible avant garde theatre that wasn't allowed, because of my contacts that I'd made here. And I did 3 or 4 trips and by the end you just couldn't get onto those trips. They were incredible and I, Trudy Tour Operator was responsible for the itinerary and all of the people there and that was an amazing thing.
And I think that gave me, after here I worked at the Design Museum with Terence Conran and then I went to Time Out where I helped launch products all over the world, and I think that time at Riverside, you know, landing in a city like Moscow, being entirely responsible for a group of crazy human beings, artists, dancers. I remember one dancer who will remain nameless, from a company called DV8, dancing at length with a coat stand in an incredible party in Moscow. We made friends with a chap called Artemy Troitsky, who was a rock critic on Pravda, who, one year asked me on one of my trips, would I sneak in 120 LPs? So I said to everybody – very unorthodox – on the trip before we came, how do you feel like carrying 8 LPs? And they all did it, but we had a right rigmarole at the airport. So I've always sort of bent rules and Riverside allowed me to do that. So yeah, it formed me, I would say, and helped me understand who I was.
[17.02] (ROD) So you've touched on this, but how did Riverside then help you in terms of future career development and life development?
Yeah. I think I've always been quite confident and sure about my abilities, hopefully not, showy-offy in that respect, but it sort of gave me, I'm a, I'm a natural marketeer, I think, and I'm very good at raising money for things I'm passionate about, and I guess it allowed me to unbeknowingly test out those things. So when we were raising money for cinema here, we did a series of parties, quite late at night. Not sure if they were entirely legal, and you know, from 11 till 4am because it was taking bloody ages to sell names on backs of seats. So it was like, you know, it allowed me to test theories, if you like, for future life.
And after I left here, I didn't have such a great boss, but what that also showed me was how that was strengthening, although painful, because it was sort of like Renee, who was my boss at Riverside and when I became boss, so I was marketing's assistant's assistant, marketing assistant, marketing officer, and then marketing manager and then probably marketing director over a 5 year, 5-6 year period. So what Renee showed me was how to run a team and make sure everyone's working really hard and enjoying it, and what the person after that, not at Riverside, showed me was how not to do that. So it was really good having both versions. So then when I went on to run companies, I felt like I got a really good grounding on, you know, so Riverside really gave me that.
I have to be honest and it's the only time I can hand on heart say this. I've never been interviewed for a job, I'm probably actually unemployable.
When I came to Riverside and ICA there were meetings, you know, they weren't interviews cos I had approached a person. I moved for money. I met Terence Conran at a party and I was desperate to buy a flat. His son, Sebastian Conran, lived in Westbourne Grove, somewhere quite near here, yeah, somewhere near here and I almost doubled my salary by moving to the Design Museum, which enabled me to buy a flat. But it was the wrong move and that was also a good lesson that, you know, I probably could have, perhaps should have, stayed here for another year or two, because, you know, if you think about it, I was here for 5 or 6 years, probably did versions of the same job but different over that period, probably had another year or two. And I moved for money, which I have never ever done since and I wouldn't recommend but I did get a flat.
[20:23] So Christina, you've talked about some of the people that you interacted with while you were working for Riverside Studios. Can you tell us a bit more about some of your most memorable colleagues?
(INTERVIEW PART 2)
Sure, I've got loads of most memorable colleagues. OK, so I'll do a random selection. One colleague, a tangential colleague, was John Bird, who founded the Big Issue. He was our printer which was quite strange actually, because, I hope he won't mind me saying, he was incredibly unreliable. He, you know, when you're printing a monthly newsletter, ideally, you need it before the month starts and that seemed a bit of an anathema to him.
So we were, he and I, we're now friends, but, so I was probably when I was dealing with him, Marketing Officer, but it was my job to make sure that the newsletter was designed, printed and distributed on time. And working with John made that quite tricky, pre-mobile phone days, so I was very stealthy and did a good job of tracking him down. We had dinner years and years later and he sort of apologised, so I remember him.
I remember Bruce MacLean, who was the artist I was talking about before, who seemed like a colleague because he was always hanging around Riverside. He was funny, he was blunt and you really knew when he was in the building.
I remember a wonderful, wonderful woman called Beverly Randall, you must interview her if you've not done already. She worked with a woman called Di, who was the Artistic Director for a while, an Australian woman, after David Gothard and after or, during Charlie Hansen actually and she worked with Charlie Hansen and I met up with her recently. I lived on and off in Barcelona a couple of years ago, my son was living and working there, so I worked from Barcelona. And she lived in Barcelona and we met up Bev Randall and I, which was lovely.
One of my team was a person called Louise Lobo who Bev reconnected me with, also an absolute ball of energy and incredible marketeer as well. You have on the tech team, oh my goodness, the tech team were always the worst behaved on my Moscow trips. One of my Riverside Moscow trips, I got a call at 5 in the morning when I was in bed, on New Year's Day, saying Darryl, who is sadly deceased, I think, who was the Chief Electrician here, had been run over on Zelinsky Prospect in Moscow and had escaped from the hospital because he had thought, they put him in a white outfit in bed, and he had thought they were incarcerating him against his will. I think he was, we were all, you know, we'd been up all night partying and the tech team here, I always remember them, they were some of the best in the industry but they knew how to party hard. And it was led by the most gentle soul called Malcolm, who got MS and we did a wonderful fundraiser for him here, so that he could have a lift installed in his house.
And I remember people like Brian Ferry who used to hang around Riverside a bit in those early days saying, of course I'll perform. So yeah, I remember so many people and Tammy, I told you about the very swanky lady who sat down the corridor.
There was someone called Mark who ran the cafe for a while, he was always full of opinion about everything, not always opinion you wanted to hear or be shared about one of the shows in front of the public in a queue, but yeah, loads.
[04:41] And are there one or two performances or exhibitions that really stand out for you during your time here?
One or two, there are hundreds, I think one I have a story attached to that I almost ,sacked is perhaps too strong a word, but spoken too seriously. Crap's Last Tape with, obviously Beckett and Max Wall. And people had told me, the team, you know, the artistic team had told me that Max liked a drink, as did many artists, nothing wrong with that. And I had the privilege of taking him to Wogan to be interviewed, which was on at something like, live at 7pm I'm thinking, was it 7pm? It wasn't a pre-record, it was live and let's say the show started at 8. And I'm sort of making these times up, obviously, because it's ages ago. And I was to take Max, no stops, from here to the studio, BBC studio, not far, in Shepherd's Bush. Somehow, he persuaded me to have a stop on the way where he, sorry, Max and Max's family had definitely 2, maybe 3 pints, making us so last minute for Wogan.
But more importantly than that, I was briefing him all the way to mention Riverside Studios to talk about there were, let's say, 4 more performances left. He went on and he didn't mention a word. So I was quite grumpy and worried that I was gonna get in serious trouble. Fortunately Wogan did, he did the wrap up, so I heaved a sigh of relief, but I remember in the taxi, Max Wall getting hold of my hand on the way back going, it's all right, I'll smooth it over. And he came in with like 5 minutes to go and delivered an absolute killer performance. I saw that 3 or 4 times.
Another thing that really sticks out in my memory is Renaissance Theatre Company, which was David Parfitt and Kenneth Branagh's company doing Twelfth Night here, which was beyond magical. You have never seen so many upcoming stars in one cast. Judi Dench came, Emma Thompson was in it. It was extraordinarily beautiful and I saw that 3 times. My parents saw that, my auntie saw that. We used to house LIFT, London International Festival Theatre from here and I've seen the most remarkable work.
Dance Umbrella’s performances were always, always breathtaking here. The things that we did in the gallery were extraordinary. Gore Vidal and Spalding Grey, who came via the bookshop by a brilliant man, Gary Pulsier, who used to run the bookshop, doing their performances in Studio One. Brian Eno doing a sound and light installation.
I have seen some of the most incredible pieces of work here that I will remember forever. And when I'm seeing work, the reason I see it multiple times is because I care so much about audiences. The first time I see a piece of work, I'm just sensing. I sit right at the back and I'm trying to absorb and take in how everyone else is feeling and then I immerse my, this makes me sound insane, which you're probably getting a sense I am, a little, and then many times I would walk to the tube just stuck in the hubbub and then obviously come back on my own just to understand what people made of it, no better way than just walking behind a crowd of friends, hearing them talk off the record, because remember, this wasn't in the internet age, the way you understood what your audiences felt was by listening to them, so I plonked myself in the middle.
[09:37] The setting for Riverside Studios is Hammersmith. In your view, how has Hammersmith itself changed in the time since you were working here?
Well, do you know what, I don't feel entirely qualified to answer that question because, when I left here, I really left here and there was absolutely no bad feeling at all, I remained friends with many people, but I was just, I'm very absorbed in what I do. So when I went to the Design Museum for 3 months, I never came back to Riverside or Hammersmith. And when I worked at Time Out, I was always everywhere. I was in New York, I was in Paris, I was in Abu Dhabi, I was in Lisbon, I was in Dubai.
I never really had the opportunity to come here properly, so I can talk about, you know, how we tried to reach out to these incredible people who live on Queen Caroline Street in the flats and I made friends and I walked through a couple of the, you know, I zigzagged my way on the way here and I said to Daniel and I went down Crisp Road and I went to the cafe and my cousin used to live on that road where the houses are really swanky now and they've got painted doors. So I can't tell you, all I can tell you is I spent a lot of my time lost. I got monumentally lost when I came out of the tube because I came out the wrong side.
I was looking for the big um, it's called Eventim Apollo now but I was looking for what it used to be called and so I don't have a view on Hammersmith. You’re probably better to ask me that if I came back in 3 hours because I've got 2 more meetings in Hammersmith, so sorry.
[11:37] So you've mentioned a little bit there about outreach to the community in Hammersmith. How did that work at your time at Riverside in terms of the local community and the youth community?
Oh well, we really tried to programme things that would appeal locally as well as nationally and internationally, so I remember being involved in this incredible festival. In those days, I'm not sure if this is still the case, there was a large Irish community in Hammersmith and Shepherd's Bush and we did this festival called A Sense of Ireland.
And then Van Morrison and the Chieftains headlined and we did this incredible thing at the Irish Embassy that I remember being on one of the squares in London and we and Ros, I'm gonna say Scanlon, she would be a great person to talk to and I think she's still working around here cos she reached out to me recently, which was lovely. I hadn't spoken to her for decades. Oh, I should try and see her today if I can. Oh, I don't know if I'll be able to, but she, she was very intent on involving the local population, which we did, and there were lots of people who were ushers and volunteers who lived locally.
We did loads of things where we invited people in to the cafe if we were, like, say we had a new menu or something, we invited a whole load of local folk in but it's so long ago I can't remember all the initiatives.
I remember a lot of the businesses being a little bit mindful of Riverside not being for them and I think with me trooping up and down King Street, I'm dying to troop up and down King Street again, I've purposely made a meeting at the Lyric and then one much further down so I can troop up and down. But I managed to get those people through as part of the deal, you know, if they signed up for 12 months, they got a number of tickets and it was really lovely seeing people who'd run taxi companies and picked people up from Riverside, but never actually stepped foot in it or thinking a performance was for them, thinking it was.... because I spent, you know, a lot of my life when I was growing up thinking, I don't even know what the arts are, I don't know what creativity means and it's really nice to help break that down, so, yeah, seeing people experience it.
I remember that, the lady who owned the fruit shop and the baker (sounding like a nursery rhyme!) and the butchers and the taxi company and a guy on Fulham Palace Road who was really sceptical. I remember getting him tickets for a gig, and he was like, whoa, that was amazing and we ate here and it wasn't even that expensive, so I think it's a, you know, getting people into incredible spaces and to make them feel like they're for them is still an issue now, I think, so it's only the same as we faced then, just to have to break down barriers and then we just did it by talking to people, offering them something, free tickets, getting them to work here, thinking it was for them because, you know, creativity and arts is for everyone, they just don't know it.
[15:19] Staying on that topic, I mean, do you think Riverside Studios has provided much of an opportunity for young people in terms of giving them an introduction to the arts?
I hope so and I'm sure cause we always, I mean, what about, take me? I was 21 when I came here and it was my introduction to the arts, so I'm sure the powers that be here and the team will have got much smarter and transformed many young people's lives, yeah, or else they're not doing their jobs properly, I would suggest.
[15:56] Are there any elements of the old Riverside that you think Riverside is missing today?
Here's a controversial one. It's soul. When I walked in, I'm a very, very, very intuitive person. I feel things so deeply, I, I'm so sorry to say this, but one of the things that struck me was it felt corporate and I didn't want it to feel like that. I'm gonna, I hope Daniel will still be my friend and let me explore a little more. But it was beautiful to see and hear families with children running around the moment I came in but I felt, from the facade, and I absolutely understand progress and flats and commerce, you know, I spent most of my life raising money for the arts and I know compromise that has to be reached, but it, yeah, I struggled, but I was only here 5 minutes, 3 minutes before Daniel came to greet me, I struggled to find its soul.
[17:21] What difference, if any, do you think Riverside Studios has made?
I think it's helped move the cultural dial in this country. I think in its early days, as I mentioned earlier, I think people who were here, artists, visiting companies, were given artistic freedom and licence to perform work that many places in the UK and Europe wouldn't have entertained and I think that that engendered a whole generation of human beings who came through its doors like Greg Hilty you mentioned earlier, to go on and do extraordinary things in this country and further afield because it helped us see the world differently. It helped us see the world through creativity and art in a way that many of us had never been exposed to and wanted to carry on through the various threads in our lives I think.
I mean, I think, I am eternally grateful for my time here. And I feel sad in some ways that I am so disconnected because I was so connected and I'm disconnected from the Design Museum because I was only there for a short while but I'm so totally connected still to Time Out and I'm so so still intrinsically connected to MIF that I co-founded, Manchester International Festival, you know, as soon as I left, I was commissioned to do a book on that.
So I think what this process is making me realise is I need to reconnect with Riverside because it was a seminal moment in my life when I began here and I've not wilfully turned my back on that, just circumstance has happened and that's wrong. I'm gonna do something about that, I don't know what but I'm gonna do something about it.
[19:48] And finally, Christine, is there anything that you could sum up which is unique about Riverside?
I think its location is unique. I think its spirit and its past, you know, I think it comes from.... I spent when I was here, in that 3 months, I probably, once I got the newsletter shored up, I think my last month, apart from stuffing envelopes, was doing a project not dissimilar to this into the archive.
So you know it was the place where the first coloured TV BBC programme was made, as you all know, and I think it's a place where firsts have happened, and I think it will always be known for that.
I think, so I think that pioneering spirit and location combined make it a very special place for very many people, I would suggest.
[20:56] Thank you, it's been wonderful hearing your memories, thank you very much.
You're welcome.
