PRESS INFORMATION ________________________________________________

As many of you will know, I was brought up here - not just in Leicester, but on this very campus which was then a University College. My father was the Principal and he was largely responsible for the College achieving full University status.

As you can imagine, a father immersed, as he was, in higher education, desperately wanted all three of his sons to attend university and gain a degree. Two of his offspring, my brothers David and John, fulfilled this ambition. But I, mad keen to be an actor, went instead to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

And so it is, that I stand before you on this very auspicious and triumphant day for Leicester University and admit that my biggest regret in life - perhaps my only true regret - is that I never attended university.

But had I wanted to do so - and been prepared to work hard enough to gain a place - there was nothing to stop me.

Unless, of course, I happened to be disabled. And the kind of higher education I wanted to pursue required active participation in the visual and performance arts. If that was the case - until today here in Leicester - I would find myself excluded. Excluded not by lack of ability or enthusiasm but purely because the buildings in which these arts have traditionally been taught are physically inaccessible and lack the aids that enable people with a whole range of disabilities to get around them and communicate with their tutors.

For far too long we, as a society, have excluded disabled people from every form of artistic expression - both as participants and as spectators. Some years ago, I was involved in an inquiry which set Out to examine the whole question of accessibility.

What we discovered was shameful. The provision for access in almost every one of this country's colleges and major arts institutions was virtually non-existent. Today, the situation is slowly beginning to improve and, even more importantly, so are attitudes. But I am conscious that we still have a very long way to go.

So when I was asked by Dr Eleanor Hartley, its Director, to help raise the money to build this Centre, I found it impossible to refuse. Here was an irresistible opportunity - to make higher education in the arts fully accessible to those with disabilities and to create a brand new building with their needs, for once, at the very forefront of the design. No cheap and bodged adaptations. No grudging, tacked-on facilities. No sending those in wheelchairs to some hidden rear entrance next to the dustbins.

This is not a building for able-bodied people. They are welcome, of course. But their needs and their comfort are secondary. That was the brief we gave competing architects in the competition organised with the help of the Independent newspaper and the RIBA in 1993. The building had to be totally accessible and - just as important - it was to be created out of the finest materials and it had to be beautiful.

The winner of that competition was Ian Taylor and I think you will all agree he has fulfilled his brief with elegance, with taste and with sheer inspiration. Indeed, Jonathan Glancy the architectural correspondent of the Independent wrote of Ian and of the building"... what could have been one of the worthiest but dreariest building types of its kind (because that is how we have tended to treat those with disabilities) is, instead one of the most subtly inspiring buildings in this country."

To have your organisations news
published on these pages click here