Whether it’s to watch a ballet or a pantomime, a musical or a play, there are few experiences which are as immersive, memorable and can gladden the soul quite like a trip to the theatre. But sadly, the UK’s smaller theatres have been one of the biggest victims of stretched local authority budgets during times of austerity.
Provincial theatres have seen their local authority funding dwindle to a trickle, or be pulled altogether. Five years ago, Nottingham Playhouse found out, via Twitter, that it would be losing all of its Nottinghamshire County Council funding within a few months. Worcester Live has seen its funding from Worcestershire County Council go from £25,000 six years ago, to £800. The Dukes Theatre, in Lancaster, Lancashire, received £160,000 from the local authority in 2010, but will get nothing thiss year. This is despite a study showing its economic impact to the area is worth £3.3m and it supports 89 full-time jobs in the supply chain.
For some, the funding shortfall has proved impossible to make up. The North Devon Theatres’ Trust went into administration last year after running into financial difficulties and had to close its two theatres in Barnstaple and Ilfracombe, blaming cuts in grant funding and a 20 per cent decrease in audience figures. The council struck a deal with Parkwood Theatres to reopen both theatres in March 2017.
Pressure on trusts
Chris Jaeger, chief executive of Worcester Live, which operates the UK’s smallest producing theatre, a festival, two weeks of outdoor events, a week of Shakespeare at the cathedral and a city ghost walk aimed at tourists, says he has to raise £650,000 every year in order to keep his organisation afloat.
Fortunately, as this cultural activity is integral to Worcester’s tourism offering, the city council values it and awards the organisation a generous £100,000 of its £12m budget. Despite this, Jaeger has to spend a lot of time making funding applications, which are becoming ever more competitive.
“I make approximately 250 funding applications to arts trusts each year, and I’m usually successful in about 20,” he says. “I never know if I’m going to get £300 or £10,000. We receive nothing from the Arts Council.”
As the traditional funding streams diminish, there are more organisations fighting for a finite amount of funding from arts trusts, and Brexit is likely to lead to the loss of more funding. Theatre operators are having to up their game and expand their skill sets beyond producing good theatre.
Many theatres have adapted, not by cutting their programmes or staff, but by tightening up operations, expanding their programme and finding other sources of income. However, they are always on the back foot and there are no reserves for unforeseen costs and keeping the ageing buildings at their best. Jaeger worries about a lift which needs fixing, and Ivan Wadeson, chief executive of The Dukes, would like to extend the bar, which isn’t big enough to cope with a capacity audience.
Narrow audiences
The other problem facing theatre operators is that theatre still does not draw in the mass market. “We aim for our audience to reflect the mix of demographics in our area,” says Stephanie Sirr, chief executive of the Nottingham Playhouse. “Nottingham is a reasonably culturally diverse city, with some terrible pockets of deprivation. We do Pay What You Can nights, but still most earned revenue comes from a handful of demographics.”
Jaeger says he also remains dependent on the same core audience and despite efforts to change the programme to reflect different groups, such as the Pakistani community, or the student population, his audience remains broadly the same. “The majority of my audience is white and over 40,” he says. “If I don’t programme for them, they don’t come either. One year I targeted the 18 to 30 market and put programmes on with them in mind, but there was little interest and it alienated the core audience.”
The situation is unlikely to change regarding local authority cuts and it’s the theatres outside London that face the toughest challenges. London fares well: the 2013 report, Rebalancing our Cultural Capital, said the city receives £20 of funding per head, compared to £3.60 elsewhere. London also has access to the tourists and the lion’s share of sponsorship and philanthropy – 88 per cent of sponsorship goes to 4 per cent of arts organisations.
Happily, many theatres are showing skilled and creative leadership to find other sources of income while continuing to anticipate the tastes and trends of the audiences. The theatre manager’s job might not be easy, but it does continue to be rewarding.
“Arts are at the core and centre of human existence,” says Jaeger. “We take people somewhere else. Every week I see something in my venues which makes me glad to be alive.”