London

This summer, the South Bank has been wearing its hat on the side of its head. The new fountain has been a jaunty presence, soaking without prejudice callow youths, winsome lovers and sturdily dressed businessmen. The musical chairs-esque installation, Play.orchestra, has been incessantly playing a variety of classical pieces that all sound rather like the theme from ‘Sykes’. Even when you’re on the site every day, the place has seemed to change constantly. The scaffolding has now been removed from the Festival Hall and the exterior is restored to its original, erm, grey-green splendour. Feature continues

Bob (right) and his Saint Etienne colleague Pete Wiggs take a tour of the site

The biggest change over the past month has actually been in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, where the foyer has been redeveloped to include the Front Room. Since the QEH opened in 1967, the foyer has had more makeovers, facelifts and implants than Cher, and the place had begun to look like a bit of a battleground. Now a curtain wall has been put in, creating a separate space for concerts and events, with a new wooden stage and most of the extraneous additions removed. The original, hefty metal doors have happily been retained. Joan As Police Woman, otherwise known as Joan Wasser from Antony and the Johnsons and Rufus Wainwright’s touring band, will be the first act to perform in the Front Room on October 16. During her quieter numbers you can relax in ‘the Soft Space’ at the back of the room, a mini-boho hangout for those too cool to dance.

The new fountain - the hit of the summer

Our first Turntable Café club night took place in the blink-and-you-missed-it Festival Square Café. The café was closing down so we took it over on the last night and trashed the place with DJ sets from Jonny Trunk and Nervous Stephen, and some screaming rockabilly from the Sugar Creek Trio. It was – phew! – a sell-out. Wiping the sweat from our brows, we’re sorting out details for the October Turntable Café, the theme being I Remember Architecture. Mysterious, eh?

Also lined up this month, on the 22nd, is our first film event – a special screening in the Purcell Room of ‘The Revolution will not be Televised’, the documentary about the coup in Venezuela a few years ago. Producer Rod Stoneman just happened to be in the country filming President Hugo Chávez when the coup took place: what he captured is almost unbelievable. Stoneman is flying in from Galway to introduce the film and do a Q&A session.

The old carpets have been torn out in anticipation of the makeover

Highlight of Saint Etienne’s September was a trip to Chichester – not because of the top quality secondhand bookshops, but because we met Robin Day, the greatest British furniture designer of the twentieth century. Now in his nineties, he blazed a trail by using new materials to make inexpensive furniture, most famously the Series E grey polypropylene school chair on which we all fidgeted during double chemistry.

All of the seating for the Festival Hall was designed by Robin Day. Unsurprisingly he designed, or even hand-built, all of the furniture in his house, too. It’s an incredible collection. Some of the original Festival Hall chairs have eluded him, but we tracked examples down at the SBC archive which is secreted up the wooden hills in Bedfordshire. They are carefully swathed in bubblewrap, held inside huge wooden crates. Rare as hen’s teeth and quite beautiful, they will all hopefully be on display once the Hall reopens next summer.

For more info on events at the South Bank, visit www.rfh.org.uk