Prompt magazine - Issue 64

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Plus: training, advice, opinion Risky business Is making theatre in 2012 a riskier business than ever before? ISSUE NO. 64 JULY 2012

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Prompt magazine - Issue 64

Transcript of Prompt magazine - Issue 64

Page 1: Prompt magazine - Issue 64

Plus: training, advice, opinion

Risky businessIs making theatre in 2012 a riskier business than ever before?

ISSUE NO. 64JULY 2012

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TMA - PROMPT 2-7 IFC:Layout 1 22/6/12 14:12 Page 1

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Welcome…to the July issue of Prompt magazine in which we’ve posed the question of whether the theatre industry is facing more risks today than ever before.

From funding to programming, technology to training, through a series of features and interviews we’ve looked at what risks TMA Members and industry insiders are most worried about, how they’re tackling them and, in some cases, making them pay off .

Th is issue includes details of how TMA’s Code of Conduct is under development, news of how things are progressing at the soon-to-open National Skills Academy for Creative and Cultural’s new training centre and explores how Chichester Festival Th eatre was pulled back from the brink with ambitious programming.

We’re also pleased to be able to introduce you to new TMA Council Member Henny Finch and update you on exciting news about how TMA’s new box offi ce data collection project is progressing.

We hope you enjoy the issue.

David BrownleeTMA General Manager/Head of Member Services and Research

04 | News

09 | Going placesPrompt speaks to Catherine Mallyon about her upcoming role at the Royal Shakespeare Company

Risky Business 11 | Shenton saysOur regular columnist Mark Shenton looks at the rewards to be won by taking risks with programming

12 | Festive SpiritCaroline Bishop talks to Jonathan Church and Alan Finch about pulling Chichester Festival Theatre back from the brink

17 | Building blocks for trainingJo Caird goes backstage at the National Skills Academy for Creative and Cultural’s new training centre set to open this autumn

22 | Burning PointCharlotte Marshall talks to the Tricycle Theatre’s Mary Lauder about the fi re that threatened to destroy the Kilburn venue 25 years ago

25 | Following the codeCaroline Bishop looks at TMA’s Code of Conduct and, two years after launch, the work still to be done

TMA events & training28 | EventPrompt was at the annual TMA lunch to talk to guests

31 | Meet & greetPrompt meets new TMA Council Member Henny Finch

32 | Forward thinkingMartyn Allison talks to Prompt about how theatres should be working with local government

34 | Sounding boardFour experts tell Prompt what they think the greatest risks to the theatre industry are today

36 | ResearchDavid Brownlee explores fi ndings from TMA’s new box offi ce data project

38 | CalendarYour at-a-glance guide to forthcoming events and training courses

Editor: Charlotte Marshall | Design: SOLT digital team | Cover photo by Manuel Harlan | Contributors: Martyn Allison, Caroline Bishop, David Brownlee, Jo Caird, Anneliese Davidson, Henny Finch, Catherine Mallyon, Charlotte Marshall, Mark Shenton, Sam Walters, Anna Williams, Sheena WrigleyPrompt is brought to you by the Theatrical Management Association, 32 Rose Street, London WC2E 9ET. Tel: 020 7557 6700. President: Rachel Tackley. Chief Executive: Julian Bird. General Manager: David Brownlee. Prompt is printed by John Good, Progress Way, Binley, Coventry CV3 2NT. To advertise in Prompt please contact Viv Plumpton on 01993 777726. All views expressed in Prompt are not necessarily those of the TMA or its members. The inclusion of advertising material in Prompt does not imply any form of endorsement by the TMA.

Issue 64 | July 2012 CONTENTS

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Derek Nicholls, TMA Vice President, Rachel Tackley, TMA President, and former TMA Presidents Andrew Leigh, Barbara Matthews, Roger Spence and Ken Bennett-Hunter.

Derek Nicholls, Chief Executive of HQ Theatres, and Michael Lynas, Managing Director of Ambassador Theatre Group

Roy Luxford, Producer at Luxford Productions, and Vicky Biles, General Manager of York Theatre Royal

Jo Danvers, J. Alan Davis, Kate Pakenham and Imogen Kinchin Graham King, Head of Business Development at Dundee Repertory Theatre,and Lynda Barber, Marketing and Programming UK at Spirit Productions

Photography: Eliza Power

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TMA NEWS

This year’s TMA lunch saw the announcement of an exciting new partnership between the TMA and The Stage, one of the UK’s leading performing arts organisations that has been at the heart of the entertainment world for more than 130 years.

The new collaboration will provide TMA Members with exclusive benefits including a 25% discount for online only recruitment advertising rates on www.thestage.co.uk. The website’s popular recruitment section boasts impressive viewing figures with job ads receiving an average of more than 770 views over a seven day period. The website holds an unrivalled share of the industry’s recruitment market with 58% of offstage theatre vacancies listed in May 2012, making it an invaluable resource for TMA Members during recruitment processes.

The new partnership also offers TMA Members a 15% saving on an annual subscription to the weekly publication which includes access to the digital edition and The Stage Archive.

The partnership was announced by The Stage’s Chairman Catherine Comerford. Speaking to attendees at the event, Comerford said: “The reason that we’re [The Stage] here today is because we feel very strongly about regional theatre and we always have done, and to that end we are starting a new partnership with the TMA today.”

TMA’s President Rachel Tackley commented on the new partnership, saying: “The Stage is the UK’s most respected performing arts publication and we are thrilled to be working in partnership together. The Stage are offering TMA Members some fantastic benefits and discounts that I am sure everyone will want to take advantage of.”

Members can find out full details of the partnership, the benefits and how to take advantages of the offers by visiting www.tmauk.org/TheStage/stagemainpage

TMA launches new partnership with The Stage at TMA annual lunch

TMA’s President Rachel Tackley speaking at the TMA lunch

The Stage’s Catherine Comerford announcing the partnership at the TMA lunch

Guests at the TMA lunch

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NEWS

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TMA News

Alastair Tallon has been appointed Campaign Manager for the family friendly campaign announced in the last issue of Prompt. Tallon has previously worked at Shakespeare’s Globe and the Royal Albert Hall and is currently consulting with arts organisations on what the campaign might look like, and what its scope and outcomes should be.

An online survey has been created to gather information and thoughts about the campaign from arts organisations across the country which can be completed at www.familyarts.co.uk. Th e survey is also seeking responses from families and carers so please do publicise the survey to any parent network groups to help gain a snap shot of what families want from the campaign too.

Family Friendly campaign launches survey

Digital Th eatre has announced a new partnership with Routlege which will see the launch of Th e Routledge Performance Archive, an unparalleled international performing arts archive of video and text for educational institutions around the world. Co-founded by Robert Delamere and Tom Shaw, Digital Th eatre was launched in 2009 with the aim of capturing live performances authentically onscreen with people able to rent or download the fi lmed productions. Th e company has since worked with numerous theatres including the Gate Th eatre, the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, and English Touring Th eatre. Delamere and Shaw said: “Of paramount importance to Digital Th eatre is the gathering and sharing of creativity. In our work alongside Routledge we will create a comprehensive archive that will be available for future generations as an educational tool for the teaching and study of performance.”

Digital Theatre announces new archive project

As part of its 40th birthday celebrations, Sheffi eld Th eatres has teamed up with East Midlands Trains to off er fi rst time theatre bookers the chance to see a show for just 40p. First Time Fridays, which will run until 1 September, has been designed to entice new audiences into the venue and aims to encourage repeat attendances.

Dan Bates, Sheffi eld Th eatres Chief Executive, said: “Support for the work that we do at this level is vital for the on-going success of Sheffi eld Th eatres and we look forward to developing our partnership with East Midlands Trains well into the Crucible’s next 40 years.” Th e transport company are also principle partners of Th e Future 40 Fund, the venue’s fundraising initiative to raise money during the Crucible’s 40th year.

Sheffi eld Theatres celebrates 40 years with 40p tickets

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Guests at the launch event | Photo: Sam Strickland

NEWS

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TMA News

Leicester’s Curve theatre has been awarded a gold Access for All Tourism Award at the national finals of VisitEngland’s Awards for Excellence 2012. Fiona Allan, Chief Executive of the venue, commented: “We are thrilled that Curve has been recognised for this national award and pleased that our unique and truly accessible building has been recognised in this way. We are proud of our programme and all the other work we do to ensure that Curve is accessible to all, from enhanced performances through to accessible pricing and community productions. This recognition helps us spread the word that Curve is a fantastic venue and a key attraction in Leicestershire’s varied and vibrant tourism offer.”

Curve celebrates access award win

Sarah King has succeeded Paul Windsor as the new Chair of the Board of Trustees at Wimbledon’s Polka theatre. King, who has over 30 years experience in both the commercial and charity sectors, commented on the appointment, saying: “I have known Polka since its earliest days and more recently as a parent of three children. Not only is it a well-loved institution locally but it has an international reputation that means the theatre is currently collaborating with companies as far afield as Toronto, Bologna, Sydney and Washington DC.” She also paid tribute to her predecessor, saying: “It is also a real privilege to be taking over from Paul Windsor who has done such an excellent job over the past 6 years.”

New Chair for Polka Theatre

Following funding cuts, Max Stafford-Clark, Artistic Director of Out of Joint, has come up with a unique fundraising plan, inviting the public to attend rehearsals for forthcoming touring production Our Country’s Good. The open rehearsals will constitute the first three weeks of a five week process and take place from 31 July to 18 August at a cost to audience members of £6 per session or £12 for three sessions.

As well as enabling the company to raise funds, audiences will be given the unusual opportunity to discover the processes that take place during rehearsals. Stafford-Clark explained his new initiative, saying: “Opening rehearsals up for Our Country’s Good will give the public the chance to discover what is normally a very secret process and will be of value to students and aficionados. It also allows my company, Out of Joint, the chance to raise money for the production after a cut in funding last year. I think it will be very interesting for both the audience and cast, who normally have until first preview before appearing in front of audiences.”

Public rehearsals for Out of Joint

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Curve receiving the award | Photo: Stuart Hollis

Our Country’s Good | Photo: Eric Richmond

NEWS

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What was your first big break?Every one of my roles has felt like a big break and an ideal move. I’ve been very lucky to have accumulated the appropriate experience at the right time for each appointment and then to have had the opportunity to progress within each organisation. At the Oxford Playhouse I was Administrator then General

Manager; I went to Reading Borough Council as General Manager then had a period as Interim Head of Arts and Theatres; and became Deputy Chief Executive at Southbank Centre having spent approaching five years as Director of Operations.

My lucky break was that when the Southbank Centre job was advertised in the Guardian it was on a Wednesday, rather than the usual Monday, and the ad only caught my eye as I was putting the paper in a bin at Oxford station.

Best learning experience to date?Observing and understanding the levels of planning, preparation, practice and rehearsal, combined with complete commitment, required by artists to perform at the highest levels.

Who has influenced you most?In terms of the impact of the combination of imagination, ambition and hard work, everyone involved in the Apollo Moon Programme. From the compelling rhetoric of JFK’s “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard...”; through to the story of the cleaner who understood that his job was part of putting someone on the moon; the “failure is not an option” approach of the mission controllers; the creative scavenging undertaken to save Apollo 13; and to the glorious ‘earthrise’ photo demonstrating the beauty of our planet to us, there are multiple stories to inspire us.

As specific individual influences: Marie Curie, Emily Pankhurst and Martina Navratilova, each for obvious reasons and to counter the near invisibility of the few women who worked on Apollo.

What are you most proud of?When my teams have performed at the highest levels in

Catherine MallyonCatherine Mallyon, current Deputy Chief Executive at the Southbank Centre, will take over as Executive Director at the RSC this September. She spoke to Prompt about her inspirations, new challenges and her homecoming to theatre.

Catherine Mallyon’s prime picks

Most useful websiteDepending on the season, snow and surf webcams. My ongoing attempts to improve at surfing and skiing are also good learning experiences – as yet, I’m quite a beginner at both.

Must-read publication Harvard Business Review. It’s full of good thinking that may on the surface be far removed from the arts but which provides fresh ways of thinking about supporting creativity and working effectively.

Can’t be without My sense of humour – if that has disappeared then things can get tricky.

challenging circumstances, especially when that has involved real creative collaboration. To me this means enabling the creation of the highest quality artistic and educational work and delivering the very best experience for everyone coming into contact with us, whilst being effective organisationally and having fun.

What does it mean to you to be joining the RSC? To be coming home to theatre and especially to the company that presented the first theatrical performance I remember: Judi Dench and Ian McKellen in Macbeth directed by Trevor Nunn – a school trip in the mid 1970s and a profoundly inspirational experience.

What attracted you to the position?The chance to help lead the RSC at this stage in its important history was irresistible.

What are you immediate plans in your new post?To listen and learn: the company, staff, supporters, partners, participants, audiences and visitors know so much about what works – and how we can become even better.

What will be your biggest challenge?An enjoyable one – being able to identify all the characters in the Shakespeare canon.

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GOING PLACES

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The risk issueOver the next 18 pages Prompt looks at how TMA Members and people working in the industry deal with risks, from backstage dangers to ambitious programming, and what happens when the unforeseen occurs.

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Theatrical risks and rewardsMark Shenton looks at the tendency to endlessly recycle old films and pop songs to make new shows: does familiarity breed content? Or is it worth taking risks on more unfamiliar material?

Looking at the listings for productions playing in the West End and on Broadway, there is one striking fact: almost all of the titles of musicals, and many of the plays, are familiar, whether from the fact that they’re revivals of old work that is coming back around again, or adaptations of well-known films or TV shows like Chariots Of Fire and Yes, Prime Minister. And even when a musical is itself new, it will often recycle old pop songs to form the score, from Mamma Mia! and We Will Rock You (Abba and Queen respectively) to Jersey Boys and Rock Of Ages (featuring the music of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and a bunch of 80s rock groups respectively).

The West End’s big new autumn musical The Bodyguard is not just based on a well-known film, it will also feature old pop songs; while Viva Forever will fold old Spice Girls songs into a new plot devised by Jennifer Saunders. Also arriving from Broadway soon are Rain, a tribute to the Beatles, and American Idiot, a theatricalisation of the Green Day album of the same name that will tour prior to a London season at Hammersmith Apollo.

As costs escalate, both for theatre producers in creating new work and for the public in supporting it in turn, it’s no wonder that both the manufacturers and consumers of it are increasingly risk-averse, looking for titles and music they already know and love and are therefore already comfortable with. Familiarity breeds content. Thus it is that two classic films – Top Hat from 1935

and Singin’ in the Rain from 1952 – have arrived onstage in the West End earlier this year; Top Hat for the first time ever (with a brand new script and folding in additional songs from elsewhere in the Irving Berlin catalogue), while Singin’ In The Rain has appeared on a London stage in three previous incarnations, from the London Palladium and Sadler’s Wells to the National Theatre (the latter two by way of Leicester and Leeds respectively).

Audiences are always said to like to come out of a show humming the tunes; these days they more often go into the theatre humming them already. As the advertising tag for Mamma Mia! puts it, ‘You already know you’re going to love it’. Audiences want guaranteed good times — especially when they’re paying through the nose for it. And they also want to see where their money is being spent, hence the fact that audiences of big musicals are often said to come out humming the scenery. What started off as a dramatic device in the 80s, with shows like Cats being defined by the levitating tyre, The Phantom Of The Opera by the crashing chandelier and Miss Saigon by the life-size helicopter landing on the stage, has become an often essential part of the way shows are made and sold.

But successful shows are more than scenery; they are stories that are crying out to be told in theatrical terms. And while regional touring theatres often depend on a diet of post West End shows or familiar repertory titles, those theatrical terms are increasingly being redefined in regional venues, where costs are lower and more adventurous choices can be made. Thus it is that an original British musical, Loserville, has just premiered at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, which also staged the world premiere of The Go-Between last year.

In the midst of the extensive borrowings from other primary sources, there are still glimmers of originality, whether it be in such Broadway shows as Next To Normal or

The Book Of Mormon (the latter of which comes to the West End’s Prince of Wales in February 2013), which respectively channel stories of mental illness and a comic story of religious missionary fervour into hit musicals, or London Road which translates verbatim interviews with a community affected by a serial murderer’s activities in Ipswich into a searing new piece of arresting music theatre.

Those are the sorts of shows that are stretching the template of what’s possible for musicals to both handle in terms of their material and also through the means by which it is told. And it’s also the biggest risks that often produce the biggest rewards: who would have thought, for instance, that Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical setting of a set of TS Eliot poems to music would become as big a hit as Cats did, his first show to go truly global? Likewise, adapting a massive French novel like Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables seemed an unlikely candidate for theatrical success, but it is now not only the longest running musical in West End history but is also now being made into a new film. Rock Of Ages is also about to be released as a film. So the movie industry is once again borrowing, at last, from the stage again, instead of the relentless traffic in the other direction.

Mark Shenton is theatre critic for the Sunday Express and writes a daily blog for The Stage (www.thestage.co.uk/shenton) for whom he also writes regular reviews and features. He is also London correspondent for Playbill.com. You can follow him on Twitter @ShentonStage.

Mark Shenton | Photo: Dan Wooller

“Audiences are always said to like to come out of a show humming the tunes; these days they more often go into the theatre humming them already.”

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SHENTON SAYS

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Festive spiritSeven years ago the future of

Chichester Festival Theatre looked bleak. It took a balancing

act between safety and risk to pull it back from the brink, finds

Caroline Bishop.

When Jonathan Church and Alan Finch arrived at the ailing Chichester Festival Theatre in late 2005 the venue was near to closure. Audiences were half the level they were 10 years previously, it was losing money and there were just two years of Arts Council funding left. As the new Artistic Director and Executive Director, Church and Finch were tasked with saving this historic venue established by Laurence Olivier in 1962, a venue that had for years attracted the cream of British theatre, the loss of which would have been unthinkable. No pressure then. So what did they do? Told the auditors they expected to lose money in their first year. “They said, ‘nobody’s ever said that to us, we sort of believe that, so maybe we

believe the rest of the plan’,” smiles Church. “We basically came to an agreement that the second year of Arts Council funding could be used to wind the company up if we lost more money than we predicted. The model we were suggesting, if it hadn’t worked in the first year, we would probably have self-destructed.”Thankfully the model – in simple terms, to grow audiences – worked. They didn’t lose money that first year after all, and audiences grew more quickly than expected, from 106,000 when they arrived to 145,000 in their first festival. When the two-year period was up, the company’s £2m subsidy was renewed. Now, seven years later, Chichester Festival Theatre celebrates its 50th anniversary in rude health, with an

Singin’ In The Rain | Photo: Manuel Harlan

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FEATURE

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audience of 200,731 last year, ticket sales for the anniversary festival exceeding targets and three shows from last summer’s season currently in the West End. Taking on Chichester was a massive risk for the pair – not least, if they failed they’d have been out of their jobs – but, crucially, part of their model was to attract audiences with a slightly safer, less risky programme. “We wanted to try and keep the sense of quality of work that subsidy had brought but get back to a slightly more populist programme,” says Church. So their first festival featured well-known classics Carousel and The Life & Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. But that’s not to say in the past seven years there have been no artistic risks. On the contrary, some of Chichester’s biggest hits posed significant risk, not least Rupert Goold’s psychologically wrought Macbeth in their second festival, which, staged in the 283-seat Minerva theatre, could only lose money, even if it sold out. This was followed by Goold’s

disturbing Six Characters In Search Of An Author and the 16-actor, technologically expensive new play Enron, “a huge risk, but you took it because it was part of an artistic journey for Rupert,” says Church. With packed houses, West End transfers and glowing reviews, the risks paid off. But it took that initial year of “populist” programming to build trust with Chichester’s audience and create enough financial buoyancy to warrant a little more risk-taking. “There’s always got to be a balance; in a sense you earn your right to the risks,” says Church. “Olivier said it once: you do three for the audience and one for yourself.”Therefore for every Enron – Lucy Prebble’s play about the financial crisis – there is a Calendar Girls, Tim Firth’s play based on the hit film which has enjoyed West End and touring success since its 2008 opening in Chichester. “I used to joke to the critics that Enron would never have happened if we hadn’t had that royalty from Calendar Girls,” smiles Church.

“We wanted to try and keep the sense of quality

of work that subsidy had brought but get

back to a slightly more populist programme.”

Enron | Photo: Manuel Harlan

Alan Finch and Jonathan Church | Photo: Johan Persson

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FEATURE

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“There’s always got to be a balance; in a sense you earn your right to the risks. Olivier said it once: you do three for the audience and one for yourself.”

As he says, it’s “not rocket science,” but this artistic and financial balancing act has proved key to putting Chichester back on an even keel. “The glorious thing is that as the audience have come back, what we’ve been able to do is truly use the subsidy to take bigger risks, invest in bigger casts, perhaps riskier titles, more new work, but the bedrock of that has been the success of the main house attracting larger audiences.”Both Church and Finch are adamant that these risks would not have been possible without subsidy. “The biggest credit to what we have created here needs to go to that foundation of subsidy,” says Finch. True, public funding has provided a cushion which allows Chichester to take risks, but it’s clear

the duo’s effective management of that subsidy, which has brought back audiences, is equally deserving of credit. “Our box office is probably more than three times the subsidy, which isn’t necessarily a normal equation,” adds Church. Part of Chichester’s success during the pair’s tenure has been the number of shows that have transferred into the West End, and sometimes Broadway. London has seen all three of Goold’s Chichester productions, dramas including Pygmalion, Yes, Prime Minister and Calendar Girls, and musicals Singin’ In The Rain and Sweeney Todd. However, rarely is a show created with a transfer in mind. “Singin’ In The Rain, for instance, absolutely wasn’t intended to transfer. We did it for a very specific reason – because

Chichester Festival Theatre

Imelda Staunton and Michael Ball in the West End production of Sweeney Todd | Photo: Johann Persson

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42nd Street [in the 2010 festival] had been so successful we wanted to look after that audience.” Equally, says Church, often the big musicals are harder to transfer because of their scale; it’s the less expensive dramas such as current West End transfer South Downs/The Browning Version which are more likely to head into town. But success in Chichester doesn’t guarantee success elsewhere, demonstrated by the bijou musical Love Story, which failed to find an audience in the capital. “Sometimes it can give a false sense of security, a show being a hit in Chichester,” says Church. So how big a risk to the venue is a transfer? Well, not a huge one, given its propensity to partner with a commercial producer rather than produce it independently. Enron’s short-lived foray to Broadway, for example, was in the hands of a separate commercial producer. “So while there might have been a return if it had worked, there wasn’t a loss for us.”While this mitigates risk for Chichester, it may mean it misses out on a bigger slice of the pie should a show’s extended life prove lucrative – because Church is even-handed, whatever the projected success. “It’s very easy for the subsidised sector to go ‘here’s a show that seems to have very little risk therefore we’ll take the risk on it; here’s a show that has more risk therefore we’ll palm it off on an independent producer’ and actually I think to have a healthy ecology you need successful independent producers so I think independent producers sometimes having the hit is really important.”In any case, adds Finch, “Even if we have a show that transfers that doesn’t bring us in a royalty income, there’s still a purpose for a piece of art to transfer into London and for people to see it.”It all raises the profile of Chichester, which in turns keeps the talent returning. “There’s no doubt that for the industry, the belief that we have the doors open to make work transfer helps,” says Church. This, in turn, benefits the venue and the work produced. “Some of the risks you offset by the quality

of the people you trust to do it,” he says, citing Sondheim’s murderous musical Sweeney Todd, which was a departure for Chichester audiences used to more upbeat fare.Church and Finch are great believers in supporting talent, though risks come with that, too. At the time relatively unknown for his choreography, Andrew Wright was appointed choreographer for 42nd Street on the advice of Chichester Associate Stephen Mear. “We took a risk on 42nd Street and of course it paid off. Then we were able to develop that [by finding another vehicle for him, Singin’ in The Rain].” This year, Chichester is supporting three young directors by giving them their own space to programme. The specially created 180-seat venue, Theatre on the Fly, is costing £300,000. “We are watching and supporting but they are taking ultimate responsibility for all areas of creating the venue and running it financially and artistically,” says Finch. “If anything goes wrong there will be consequences to that. But it’s that thing of trying to support and take the right level of risk.”“It’s about backing hunches,” adds Church. So far, his hunches have been pretty spot on. But Chichester faces more uncertainty as it embarks on a major capital project this autumn to transform the Grade II listed main house. After doubling audiences, the risk is they now lose them again. So rather than simply closing completely, Church and Finch have applied for planning permission to create a temporary 1,400-seat ‘Pavillion in the Park’. It’s an additional worry – and cost – on top of the £22 million capital project, for which they still need to raise £4 million. “It comes from wanting to keep the engagement and not give people an excuse to go somewhere else,” adds Finch. And though a financial risk, the purchase may one day pay for itself. “If we can raise enough funds that we can own a portable theatre, in the future that might give us another opportunity to do something different.”Given their success to date, I’d bet on audiences sticking with them through the upheaval of the capital project. But Finch is canny enough not to take anything for granted. “I think we have a healthy belief that success can disappear as quickly as it arrived.”Caroline Bishop is a freelance arts journalist and former editor at SOLT/TMA. www.carolinehbishop.co.uk

Chichester Festival Theatre

“I used to joke to the critics that Enron would never have happened if we hadn’t had that royalty from Calendar Girls.”

Photo: Johann Persson

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FEATURE

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Travelers is proud to support the training programme of theTheatrical Management Association.

The main space at the National Skills Academy for Creative and Cultural’s new Backstage Training Centre in Purfl eet is unpainted, has a rough concrete fl oor and is still full of building site detritus. But even in this unfi nished state, it’s an impressive space. Measuring 35 by 25 metres, with a technical grid bearing 100 tonnes at 15 metres, it’s large enough to rehearse arena tours, operas and large-scale commercial musicals. Th e 16 to 19 year olds that will come here to take part in backstage training once the building is fi nished won’t know what’s hit them. I’m being given a tour of the site by Pauline Tambling, Joint Chief Executive of Creative and Cultural Skills, the sector skills council for the creative and cultural industries. CC Skills set up the NSA in 2008 in response to a call by the industry for an employer-led network to address the issue of training. Tambling is the organisation’s Managing Director. Also with us is NSA Operations Director Robin Auld, who has been part of the team leading the development of the

Building blocks for trainingJo Caird discovers that tackling risks is a skill as she goes backstage at the National Skills Academy for Creative and Cultural’s new training centre.

Backstage Training Centre from the very beginning. When the building opens to the public as a rehearsal and training space in September, Auld will manage it. As we pick our way across piles of cables, duck under ladders and squeeze past heavy lift ing equipment, the pair tell me about how the project came about. When the Royal Opera House began looking for a new home for its scene-making studios aft er being given notice on its existing East London premises in the run-up to London 2012, the Arts Council realised that this represented a wonderful opportunity to create not just a new workshop for the ROH but a hub for the creative and cultural industries in an area undergoing signifi cant regeneration. Th ey settled on a 14-acre piece of derelict land in Purfl eet, Essex, and an ambitious £60 million plan was set in motion.

Pauline Tambling Photo: James Fletcher

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High House Production Park – which so far includes the ROH’s Bob and Tamar Manoukian Production Workshop, a cafe, gardens and children’s playground, and will eventually also be home to artists’ studios and workshops for small businesses – is the UK’s first national centre of excellence for technical skills and production for the performing arts and live music industries. The NSA’s £13 million flagship building is a key piece of the puzzle. Rigorous industry-based research published in 2008 by CC Skills found that by 2017 there will be a shortfall of 30,000 members of skilled backstage, offstage and technical staff in the sector. While performing arts and academic theatre courses are wildly oversubscribed, the backstage professions are finding it difficult to attract skilled staff because too few young people are aware of the opportunities in this area. The NSA aims to redress the balance. The idea behind the Backstage Training Centre is to give young people studying these skills a taste of the backstage sector through access to professional rehearsal processes. “Whether that be theatre, opera, live music or any other large-scale live event,” Auld explains, “it’s about offering students something they can’t get in a college environment.” The Backstage Training Centre will be open to students from any further education (FE) college, but the first young people to make use of the state of the art facilities are likely to be

those enrolled at the NSA’s 20 FE college partners. These 16 to 19 year olds will be able to receive training on industry equipment and software and observe professional practice in action. As well as the main rehearsal space, the Backstage Training Centre contains adaptable multi-use

training rooms, a recording studio, a wet room, an AV suite, a dance studio, a theatre laundry and a stage door (complete with “grumpy” stage door person, Auld tells me with glee). Every aspect of backstage training will be covered. Arguably those with most to gain from the centre will be the young women and men doing apprenticeships in the sector. While FE students can only watch rehearsals “from a safe environment”, apprentices will have the opportunity to work with professional technicians and other backstage staff, playing an active role in the rehearsal process and gaining valuable industry experience. CC Skills only launched the Creative Apprenticeships scheme in 2008, but there are already over 1,100 young people taking part. Passionate about the system’s potential to “uncover the talent” of young people who, for whatever reason, do not go into higher education, Tambling is keen to expand the scheme further to offer high level creative apprenticeships. “Our aim,” she says, “is that you would be able to get into the industry by doing a wholly vocational course.”

“It’s about offering students something they can’t get in a college environment.”

A computer generated image of what the finished building will look like | Photo: Robin Auld

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But it’s not just young people at the start of their careers that the NSA is seeking to engage in terms of training. In order to ensure that the backstage and offstage sector can respond to changing technologies and adapt to developments in the wider creative and cultural industries, on-going professional development for those already in the industry is essential. Auld and his team will therefore be offering a series of masterclasses open to professionals employed in the backstage sectors, as well as to students and apprentices. The masterclasses will be delivered by professionals working with the NSA’s 230 member organisations and will cover the entire process of bringing in, fitting up, lighting, installing and running

a big-scale production. “It’s encouraging the industry to take responsibility for ensuring training and skills are developed,

with us guiding and promoting that and developing the product,” says Auld. Training on managing risk will be an important aspect of what goes on at the centre. For many young people, the first step is addressing misconceptions about the sector. Tambling describes how when the NSA takes students from its founder colleges on ‘production day visits’ to allow them to observe backstage at live shows, they are often shocked by the “absolute order and discipline” of what goes on. “It’s getting that message out that when you talk about the creative sector, you’re not talking about [something] airy fairy,” she says.Once that message has been received, the process of training people to assess and understand risk, from how to work safely

at heights to how to look after yourself while touring, can begin. “It is absolutely mission critical to making our industry safe,” believes Auld. The team will also offer “high level management training” as part of the masterclass series, as Auld explains: “the financial systems the sector works with are much more effective and efficient than they used to be. You have to train for that...How do you work with creative teams? How do you analyse a creative production and get the risks to the production clearly identified?” If the creative industries are to continue to grow, now that funding is tighter than ever, these are considerations that must be taken into account.

“It’s encouraging the industry to take responsibility for ensuring training and skills are developed, with us guiding and promoting that and developing the product.”

CC Skills Creative Apprenticeships scheme has been running since 2008 | Photo: James Fletcher

A computer generated image of what the finished building will look like | Photo: Robin Auld

Robin Auld Photo: James Fletcher

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But what of the risks posed by the Backstage Training Centre itself? Auld acknowledges that the NSA is “going into territories unknown” with the venture, but is adamant that the organisation will be able to deliver on its promises in terms of what the centre will mean for the industry. “Ultimately we’re building a building that is being asked for, so it’s not speculative. It’s come out of an industry need following rigorous research. We’ve got 230 industry members; they know us; we all know each other. That is offering a certain level of mitigation of the risk of doing a new endeavour like this”. The centre will need to pay for itself, however. The Homes and Communities Agency, Thurrock Thames Gateway Development Corporation and the Skills Funding Agency have together put £13 million into the capital project, but once it is open, the building will be run as a business. As an Arts Council national portfolio organisation, the NSA

receives annual funding of £400,000, in addition to further funding from a number of partners; even so, Auld will still depend on income earned from hiring out the space and running training programmes to make the building work financially. As yet there are no agreements in place, but Auld isn’t worried: he is in promising talks with plenty of major industry players, he says, and is confident that when people see what the centre has to offer, they’ll be champing at the bit to hire the space. Flexibility is key to how the building will be run. The space, of course, is itself extremely flexible – “basically every venue type in Britain will be covered by what we offer here,” says Auld – but the team will also be responsive when it comes to meeting industry demand for both hires and training. “At the moment we’ve given ourselves enough slack to try lots of things out in year one and two... When you’ve got a space that’s operating you can develop all sorts of additional opportunities.”Her ambition, ultimately, is that the NSA – with the Backstage Training Centre as its flagship enterprise – might play a decisive role in putting the UK at the forefront of delivery of training internationally. “I think the sector, whether it’s events, theatre or music, is perceived as world class, but if we could also project that group of industries, companies and individuals as world class trainers as well, the potential we would have in a place like this – and with higher education partners – to be able to create a sort of platform for that world class training would be extraordinary.”

© Jo Caird [email protected] 07788 454 589

“We’ve got 230 industry members; they know us; we all know each other. That is offering a certain level of mitigation of the risk of doing a new endeavour like this.”

The turning the turf ceremony at the site in May 2011 | Photo: Robin Auld

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Burning PointOn the morning of 16 May 1987 the Tricycle Th eatre caught fi re causing a two year closure and severe damage. 25 years later, the venue’s General Manager Mary Lauder spoke to Charlotte Marshall about what to do when the unexpected happens.

“The biggest lesson I learnt from the whole episode,” the Tricycle Th eatre’s General Manager Mary Lauder tells me in a characteristically proactive and unwaveringly optimistic fashion, “is that you just wake up one morning and your theatre has burnt down and you’ve got to do something about it.” A quarter of a century aft er the disaster that left the Tricycle’s all but destroyed auditorium in need of a complete rebuild and unable to open for more than two years, Lauder can recount the events of that fateful day as if it happened yesterday.

Th e day of the 1987 annual TMA lunch, Lauder was woken at 05:00 by the theatre’s security alarm company to tell her the alarms had been set off , most likely as a result of a fi re on the Kilburn High Road. Th inking she’d probably start work early and head to the lunch later, she dressed for the TMA event and followed her usual route to work. It wasn’t until she arrived at the station surprised at how foggy the morning had become that she realised the true enormity of the situation. It wasn’t fog, it was smoke.

“It was always absolutely ‘we’re going to rebuild this and we’re going to rebuild it better’.”

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“I got to a certain point in the Kilburn High Road where the fire brigade had cordoned off the road completely and I went up to one of the firemen and said ‘I’m the key holder for the Tricycle Theatre’,” Lauder tells me. “This enormous man put his arm around me and walked me all the way up to the entrance and said ‘Sorry, it’s too late, we had to break in’.”The fire had been caused by a timber yard situated to the north of the Tricycle, the direction winds had unluckily been blowing from during the fire. “There were two lorries in there [the timber yard] with full petrol tanks, a lot of wood preservatives, paint and so forth, all exacerbating the flames…it was quite windy and the flames were so high that it was the stage and the auditorium that were damaged by the fire, the rest of the building got off pretty scot free. The whole building was ghastly because of the smell of the smoke, that was the worst thing.” That and the fact that the roof had disappeared, of course. After calling Nicolas Kent – the Artistic Director who Lauder worked with until his recent departure earlier this year – the pair got straight on the phones to the funding bodies and, as she explains, things moved surprisingly quickly: “By 12 o’clock that very same day, we had a meeting in the yard looking at the mess of the fire with representatives of each of the three [Tricycle] funding bodies and Tim [Foster] the architect.” There was not one moment of debate as to whether the theatre would reopen. “It was always absolutely ‘we’re going to rebuild this and we’re going to rebuild it better’.”But there was one large stumbling block in their way. Brent Council had underinsured the building meaning they were thousands of pounds short of what they needed for the rebuild. The council came good however when they successfully made up the shortfall by leading on an Urban Aid application which awarded the theatre a much needed £330,000. There was also one lucky coincidence that meant there was never a moment’s doubt as to whether the Tricycle was in anyway at fault. “The best thing was that on

my desk when I was allowed up to my desk,” Lauder told me laughing, “[there] was a note from the previous night’s house manager saying ‘Fire brigade did surprise inspection, everything’s fine except we have to paint a white line on the bottom of the yard stairs’ or something like that. There was never any question that everything was fine.”Even in the days before Twitter and the Guardian theatre blog, word spread quickly with the theatre making the front page of the Evening Standard by lunchtime. The publicity proved instrumental to the public fundraising that followed. “The brilliant thing was it was a bit like dying!” Lauder laughs, “we got masses of letters. My theory is we were just so lucky that the show we’d had on before [The Greatest Story Ever Told starring Patrick Barlow and Jim Broadbent] was just so funny and such good fun. I think it really meant that people were more shocked than ever that the Tricycle wasn’t there anymore.” Publicity was also helped by the fact that at the time of the fire, somewhat ironically, a production entitled Burning Point had just opened. The headlines must have written themselves.While Lauder tells the story now as more of an adventure than a disaster, the reality was of course immensely hard work. The theatre had to exist on a skeleton staff of about six, as Lauder explains: “Certain people were made redundant so they knew where they stood and there were others who we said ‘we really want you to come back, but for the time being will you please go away and try and find another job’.”Forthcoming productions had to be cancelled or reorganised and any opportunities to keep making money taken. The front of house areas were kept operating for a year after the fire with “absolutely no problem and with some jazz and bits and bobs happening”, while satellite programming was planned with the Donmar Warehouse and Lyric Hammersmith both housing Tricycle Theatre productions.

Photography: Sarah Ainslie 2323

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“Th e biggest lesson I learnt from the whole episode is that you just wake up one morning and your theatre has burnt down and you’ve got to do something about it.”

For Lauder and Kent, the rebuild became their full time jobs. While the decision was made to rebuild the Tricycle’s iconic scaff olding auditorium and original 1927 proscenium arch as they were, there was now the unusual opportunity to make improvements. “We wrote to every single stage designer, lighting designer, sound people, stage management, actors, everybody we could think of as the redesign process was going on to say ‘If you had the opportunity to build again (like we have now) what would you do diff erently?’” said Lauder. “All sorts of people took the time and the trouble to write back. It really helped make it what it became.”More than two years later, the new and improved building reopened to the public in September 1989 complete with a new educational space and small scenery workshop thanks to the Urban Aid fund. “Th is is not a good message to send out to people obviously,” Lauder cautiously says with amusement, “but in the end the fi re was a good thing in that if nothing else it was great publicity and for people who were used to coming to the Tricycle, for it not to be there for such a long time, it builds up in their minds how much they missed the place. Th en the excitement and the glamour of the reopening meant that we put ourselves in front of people who hadn’t known us before.”

However, the frustration caused by such a catastrophic event is undeniable. “By the time of the fi re in May 1987 we felt like we were really beginning to motor in terms of getting a returning and mixed audience and it sort of felt like that break stopped everything a bit dead,” Lauder explained. “To start it all over again in 1989 felt a bit like hard work but I suppose that’s just par for the course.” Th e experience also changed the way Lauder looked at insurance. “I always say, just remember it can happen because it’s so easy to just kind of think ‘oh insurance is so boring, who needs it’ and not concentrate properly on what you’re covered for, but it is just so vital.” Singing the praises of a broker the venue hired aft er the fi re, Lauder reiterates throughout the interview on how insurance is not worth taking unnecessary risks with when there are professionals specialising in the arts who can take those risks out of your hands.Now, the theatre is under the new Artistic Directorship of Indhu Rubasingham who Lauder tells me is planning a new capital project following the theatre’s second renovation in 1998 when the venue added the cinema and rehearsal room. “Hopefully the builders on the next [project] won’t call me ‘the cross one’…” jokes Lauder. When she later explains it was because they kept blocking the fi re exits, given her experience, I can hardly blame her.

Photo: Steve Stephens

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Following the codeTMA’s Code of Conduct aims to promote best practice regarding health and safety in the theatre industry. More than two years after it launched, there’s still work to be done, finds Caroline Bishop.

It sounds commonsensical. You wouldn’t risk crossing the road without looking for traffic, therefore nor should you enter a construction site without protective clothing, or attempt to lift something without knowing how heavy it is. But within the theatre industry sometimes these fairly logical safety precautions get overlooked. “It is common sense, “ says David Brownlee, General Manager of TMA, “but at the same time you are in a really complicated and pressured environment, bringing together different people who will not have had a relationship with each other before, to do a complex task in a very short amount of time.”“When you are dealing with an itinerant population in terms of touring companies and the theatres they go to,” adds Lucinda Harvey, Head of Employment Relations, “there are different ways of interpreting what you should do.”Without a uniform set of guidelines, it’s easy to see how safety can be compromised. So, a few years ago, with changes in corporate manslaughter legislation looming and rumours of safety “near-misses” circulating, the TMA and BECTU together took on the task of setting out in

black and white the safety standards the industry should demand for get-ins, fit-ups and get-outs from the huge variety of different stakeholders – venues, touring companies, full-time technicians, freelancers and contractors – involved in the task. A joint working party made up of technicians, union reps, technical managers and industry staff spent 18 months devising the Code of Conduct, which was launched at the 2009 Touring Symposium, before two rounds of piloting. In May 2010 it was appended to the TMA-BECTU agreement.The Code, available to TMA Members and non-members alike on tmauk.org, is divided into three parts – Staffing, Loading/Unloading and Reporting – and sets minimum standards and best practice for each, covering issues such as working at height, working hours, vehicle safety and reporting problems using incident books and check sheets, to ensure they aren’t repeated. Ultimately, it’s about

David Brownlee

Photo: iStock/Cate Gillon

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minimising risks and “trying to ensure you’ve got a culture that’s putting safety first around all those players,” says Brownlee. It sounds straightforward enough, but implementing it hasn’t been easy. It’s a problem that John Young, Head of Technical Services at Ambassador Theatre Group, knows well. ATG was one of the first organisations to trial the Code and Young has been championing it ever since. But harmonising standards across an organisation with 39 venues with varying standards of working has not been a quick fix. “We had venues where they had to wear PPE [personal protective equipment] as a matter of course and venues where there was none. There was no hint of a level playing field,” he says. Now, Young estimates two-thirds of ATG venues are complying and the others “are wanting to get there”. Can’t ATG be more demanding about compliance? “We are really clear about what we expect,” says Young, “but it’s actually creating a positive culture where people go, ‘yeah I understand why’.”The bottom line for venue managers is that compliance precludes legal action. “It’s so easy to be prosecuted,” he says. “I make a point of saying the Health & Safety at Work Act is so non-specific; people usually get prosecuted under Section 2, ‘failure to provide safe working conditions’. It’s so

general.”One difficulty faced by venues

is how to impose safety standards on visiting touring companies whose staff and resources may be limited. “We need to work with smaller companies and find what works best for them,” says Young. “Larger ones have people whose job it is to focus on health and safety – very lucky. But [if] you’re a promoter who runs an office, probably in your house, you and maybe an assistant and then the tour manager on the road could be your entire staff.”But letting safety slip down the priority list is a culture that needs to change, regardless of the size of the operation, thinks Brownlee. “If people’s lives are at risk because they haven’t got adequately trained and resourced staff, they shouldn’t be putting the show on.”Training is a big issue, adds Brownlee. “You’ve got to have people with the right skills to be able to do the jobs.” The Code recommends that all staff involved in technical work should undertake an industry standard induction course relevant to their duties. But that training need not be onerous. “The thought that you have to have every single member of your crew know everything is absolutely not intentional,” stresses Harvey. “Training has to be appropriate for the job you are doing.”Inevitably, there are financial implications of training staff, particularly if it involves paying freelancers for an extra day, but it’s better than risking the alternative, points out Young. “You can only really get that message across by saying ok,

“We had venues where they had to wear personal protective equipment as a matter of course and venues where there was none. There was no hint of a level playing field.”

John Young

Photo: iStock

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“We’d like to create a talisman to be able to hold up and say ‘we’re doing this’,

because the people who are doing it are doing it brilliantly.”

you had to pay someone £250 for a day of their time to embark on this training, but if they had an accident on tour you are talking five times that, more, with no upper limit, if you’re looking at insurance claims.”In helping ATG staff to comply, Young devised an induction course which trains an appointed technical staff member to in turn train others in the key points of the Code. Earlier this year he joined with TMA to offer this ‘train the trainer’ course more widely across the industry. Two one-day courses, each with 50 places, were quickly filled, and courses will be running again this October. It’s a flexible training that can be cascaded to staff in manageable chunks. “You can break it up into little pieces, depending on when your staff are available,” says Young. “You don’t need to spend a lot of money calling people in for training or overtime.” It’s a good step forward; however there remains more to do. Monitoring who is and who isn’t complying with the Code remains hugely difficult for the TMA. “At the moment it’s not visible on a day to day basis,” says Brownlee. “It’s something we talk about, it is in the agreement, but if you go backstage at any TMA Member venue there would be nothing there that screamed Code of Conduct at you. What we want to see is that this is part of day-to-day backstage life and celebrated as such.”So planning is taking place for a new development for the Code of Conduct: self-accreditation. Currently under consultation, self-accreditation would award venues and companies who abide by the Code of Conduct with a Gold Standard certificate for display. Others whose compliance is a work in progress could apply for ‘Working Towards’ status. “We’d like to create a talisman to be able to hold up and say ‘we’re doing this’,” says Harvey. “Because the people who are doing it are doing it brilliantly and they should be proud.”Young is excited about the idea of self-accreditation, having already seen the benefits of healthy competition in ATG’s annual internal awards. “It becomes something you want to strive for because people are naturally competitive.” Part of self-accreditation will be the ability of the industry to self-regulate. If a venue or company has achieved Gold

Standard, but another feels they are not living up to it, they should be able to challenge that through an agreed process. “The thinking behind self-accreditation is about formalising things, about really championing good practice and hopefully rewarding it in terms of giving it a spotlight,” says Brownlee, “and then as a secondary thing it’s about being able to put measures in place to check and challenge. But it’s not about finger-pointing.”“The whole Code of Conduct, going back through its origins, was not about knocking people over the head and saying ‘you’re doing it badly’. It was about engendering good practice,” adds Harvey. “There is a real need and feeling from all staff I’ve spoken to that this is a good thing and they want it [the Code] to happen. Their frustration lies in the fact that they feel not able to make it happen.”If all goes to plan, self-accreditation will enhance the visibility of the Code and reduce that frustration. A Code of Conduct website and the championing of Gold Standard organisations in Prompt should also raise recognition of the scheme. In the end though, it’s not about what TMA can do for Members but what the whole of the industry can do for itself. “The answers don’t come from the TMA, they come from the professionals out there,” says Brownlee. “What we want is a climate of constructive criticism. With the ‘Working Towards’ we are saying ‘have the conversation, talk to each other, raise the issues, because this organisation is working towards this and wants to hear about these things.’ If we can get that culture going it will make a huge difference.” TMA is looking for willing partners to help pilot self-accreditation. If all partners agree, the scheme could roll out in 2013, giving the Code of Conduct a new lease of life and hopefully levelling out the health and safety playing field for all concerned. “Health and safety is not an event,” adds Brownlee, “it’s a way of life, a culture, and I think we need to embed it into ours.”

Lucinda Harvey

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Code of Conduct and Risk Management will take place on 2 October at TMA, London and 23 October in Birmingham.

For more information and to book, visit www.tmauk.org/events

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TMA Annual Lunch 2012

This year’s much-anticipated TMA lunch took place on 15 May with more than 230 Members, colleagues and guests from across the UK in attendance. As well as launching the new partnership with The Stage, the annual lunch is always one of the most popular dates on the TMA’s calendar of events, allowing people to network, catch-up with old friends and colleagues, and even do some business in an informal setting.

This year’s lunch took place following the AGM when new TMA Council Members Henny Finch and Dan Bates were announced. Rachel Tackley, President of the TMA, opened proceedings by congratulating the pair, saying: “For the first in a long time we had an election for our new Council Members, which is fantastic because it means more people are standing and more people are interested in the work that the TMA does, so thank you very much for everyone that stood. We look forward to working with Henny Finch and Dan Bates.” Tackley also took the opportunity to thank TMA staff, joking: “It’s fantastic being president of the TMA because all you have to do is turn up and smile and say a few thing and then David [Brownlee] and his colleagues do all the work, so I highly recommend it! We’re quite demanding as an organisation

I think and certainly the changes that memberships are going through and the amount that the TMA staff has had to do, I really want to thank them for making my job easy and hopefully representing you all incredibly well.”

It was a sentiment shared by many. Speaking to Prompt, Donna Monday from Working Title Productions described the TMA as “an amazing membership organisation,” adding: “The industrial relation assistants, the legal assistants, they are just fantastic.” Birmingham Stage Company’s Executive Producer, Philip Compton, described the organisation as “a tower of strength in the industry”, while Carissa Hope Lynch, Literary Manager at Graeae Theatre Company, told Prompt she thought the current economic climate “necessitates that we pull and share resources. We’re at a time when people are looking to co-produce and co-commission,” adding “coming to events like this is a really great place to seedbed some of those ideas.”

Funding cuts from local authorities and arts funding bodies was the subject of much discussion. Mark Skipper, Chief Executive of Northern Ballet, said the biggest risks the Leeds-based dance company is currently facing are the decisions made in the next spending round: “I think the overall problem is that we probably all managed

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David Hall, Joanna Atherden and Roger Edwards

Pam Bone and Jodi Myers

Mark Skipper

Carolyn Forsyth and Marsha Ferguson-Yarde

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to get through the current financial cuts and personally as a company we’ve tried various fundraising initiatives which have been successful, but if we get further cuts in the next spending round I think it will be impossible to actually reproduce those saving initiatives, so then it will become much more difficult to continue.”

Of course the recession has not just affected theatres as David Martin, Executive Director at Oldham Coliseum, explained: “We’re finding that recession is really hitting our audience base. We live in a relatively impoverished community, very highly reliant on working in the public sector, and of course there isn’t really a public sector anymore, which means that our punters are less likely to come to theatre than they were 12 months ago and we can see the effects of that on our box office numbers. It’s very testing times, but we do what we can and we think we can do it very well.”

Many people in attendance remarked how important events like the annual lunch are, however, during these testing times. Joe Wenbourne, Producer at Objective Productions, commented: “I think it’s always important to get captains of industry together, no matter what the industry might be, and I think especially at this time when everyone is under a lot of pressure, we need to work together to make it more attractive to come to the theatre and to see live performance.”

While there may be some difficult challenges facing theatre today, there were plenty of success stories discussed at the lunch. Birmingham Stage Company’s Compton described business as “amazing”, adding: “I’m lucky because I’ve got a product which is currently on the television with Horrible Histories, which is supporting us with our attendances. We’re very lucky, Hong Kong and Singapore have confirmed this week and we’re going to Dubai and Abu Dhabi in October, the London show will continue [and] the current national tour is now going through to July next year so it will be a year and a half national tour consecutively.”

One important way of tracking progress over the next few years will be by working with the TMA to compile box office data. Tackley called for Members to send TMA their data, stressing that, as well as offering a way of tracking box office trends, the information would be vital for putting arguments together for funding.

Photography: Eliza Power

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Simon Woolley and Janet Powell

Debbie Richards and Susan CofferPhilip Compton

Carissa Hope Lynch Joe Wenbourne

Kate Anderson and Barbara Matthews

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Why did you want to stand for the TMA Council?I feel very lucky to have made a career out of something I love doing so much – being a theatre producer – and I’m looking forward to supporting others who do the same whether in venues, for touring companies or independently. I believe TMA has a vital role to play in supporting companies through challenging times and encouraging us all to work together through existing and new consortia and collaborations.

You’ve worked in both commercial and subsidised environments, and in both London and regional theatres. How will your varied experience help your role? I think the subsidised sector has a lot to learn from commercial theatre and vice versa, so it has been interesting sitting on both sides of the fence in my last two jobs. I’m particularly interested in how the two sides of the sector can support each other, especially at the moment when funding is becoming tighter and the subsidised companies are exposed to more risk, but also potentially great opportunities too. In terms of working with theatres both in and out of London, touring gives me a useful perspective on regional variations in the theatre environment, which I think are becoming more pronounced at the moment.

What issues are you most interested in looking at and tackling in your new position? I’m particularly interested in looking at venue contracts for visiting work and hopefully to encouraging greater standardisation and transparency in dealings between venues and producers. I’d also like to see the use of a green rider becoming more widespread, and it would be great, within the law, to encourage easier sharing of marketing data between venues and companies.

Tell us about your current role at Headlong Theatre. How long have you worked for the company?I’ve been at Headlong for seven years now. I initially worked for a short time with Dominic Dromgoole at what was then Oxford Stage Company, and when Rupert Goold joined me in 2005, we renamed the company and refocused the mission to produce more new writing alongside the classic texts that had been the hallmark of Dominic’s regime. We’ve had an amazing

Henny FinchNewly elected TMA Council Member and Executive Producer of Headlong Theatre, Henny Finch, talked to Prompt about her reasons for standing, what issues she is looking forward to tackling and why collaboration is key.

few years, working with venues up and down the country, as well as theatres in London ranging from the Gate Theatre to the National Theatre and producing work including Lucy Prebble’s Enron, Mike Bartlett’s Earthquakes In London and the multi-authored Decade which we presented site-specifically in a disused trading floor in Docklands.

What achievement in your career so far are you most proud of? I’m really proud of putting together the team here at Headlong, who are a really talented, committed and all round nice bunch of people. I’m also proud of the way we have maintained our strategic focus on making excellent work and over a relatively short time have built a reputation among the industry and audiences for tackling contemporary issues in an exciting and theatrical way.

What current risks facing theatres today are you most concerned about? I think the environment is changing rapidly – most rapidly outside London – with audiences much less willing to take a chance on an unknown product; there is also an increasing localisation and the rise of festivals/event-style theatre, meaning that the weekly touring model needs to evolve quickly if it is not to be left behind.

How should Members be looking to address these risks?

Collaboration is key. But we should also keep artists central to our work and continue to offer up opportunities for young theatremakers to experiment and to learn their craft in a practical way outside the studio theatres. For instance at Headlong we tour one show a year directed by an emerging director to middle-scale venues; I think it is vital that we continue to invest in the next generation when other opportunities for them are becoming thinner on the ground.

What are you looking forward to most about working with the Council?

I’m looking forward to speaking up for the touring companies at Council meetings and in negotiations with the unions, to working within my networks to support the membership and to making new connections too.

Henny Finch

31

MEET & GREET

Page 32: Prompt magazine - Issue 64

Martyn Allison

32

Working with local governmentAhead of his TMA training session this autumn, Martyn Allison talked to Prompt about how theatres should be working with local authorities in these changing times.

TMA staff say that Members state the biggest risk to their sustainability is potential cuts to local authority funding. Should they be worried?The world economic order has been fundamentally shaken which means recovery will take a decade at least and when and if it does, the availability of public sector finance will be constrained for a long time. In simple terms, the pot of public money will be smaller, the demands on it continue to grow with need and expectation, and therefore what we fund and why we fund it will become even more important questions for national and local government. Should they be worried? No, if they are high performing and resilient organisations, adaptable and willing to change. Yes, if they are not.

How much of a priority is theatre for local government in 2012?I don’t think this is easy to answer nor is there a standard answer because each council and place is different. I think what is clear is that councils face an increasingly difficult challenge to respond to a wide range of needs in their communities, which themselves are growing and will grow further, for example: educational attainment, a growing older and vulnerable population living longer with increasing care needs, job creation and inward investment, a declining transport infrastructure, waste and environmental management, community safety and cohesion, and now a new responsibility for public health with its own challenges of health improvement and health inequality. I think where investing in theatres helps councils address these big issues and deliver better outcomes for individuals and communities they may remain a priority, but where they don’t or cannot evidence that they do, funding will gradually drain away or at best remain static.

Where you see theatres that are at the heart of local life and are valued by communities and politicians, what have their managers got right and what should others learn?Valued and supported organisations are those where the leadership team has been able to position the theatre in terms of the big challenges I listed earlier and are able to evidence and demonstrate the contribution being made to raising educational standards, helping older and vulnerable people live happily and independently in the community, generating jobs and inward investment and fully contributing to the general health and wellbeing of the “whole community”. Theatres that

FORWARD THINKING

have both positioned themselves well in the corporate focus of the council and performed well are those that have and will continue to survive and be supported.

We’re hearing of more and more local authorities looking at moving their directly managed theatres and concert halls to trusts or commercial management. In 10 years, do you think there will be any venues left in local authority management?I believe some councils will always want to directly control the services they provide for their communities, but I think they will be in the minority. We now have a very mixed market in terms of management and, in terms of theatres, we perhaps always have. The current movement to externalise is obviously driven in some instances purely by political ideology but also at present by the belief that savings can be made by handing over the management to a trust or a private contractor. We are also seeing the birth of new hybrid models of asset transfer to trust or community ownership but with privately contracted management operationally in control. What I think and hope will emerge is some new innovative approaches. My fear at present however is what I would call “panic transfer”, where the process is being conducted too fast without all the options being properly assessed and the short and long terms benefits and risks properly quantified and considered.

In South East London there is an arts centre that has just taken over the building management for a new library. Will the changes taking place in local government open up opportunities for other enterprising arts organisations?I think this is an example of the new innovation I talked of. Where there are already successful trusts or social enterprise companies, there are potential benefits in bringing together a wider range of cultural or even sport and culture facilities into one model. Obviously there are advantages of economies of scale in terms of management and back office activities and

Page 33: Prompt magazine - Issue 64

Established in 1894, the TMA is the leading membership body representing the interests of and providing professional support for the performing arts in the UK. Our Members include theatres, multi-purpose venues, arts centres, concert halls, commercial producers, touring theatre, opera and ballet companies, sole traders and suppliers to the performing arts.

The TMA provides a collective voice for the management of the UK performing arts. We support our members with the very latest in current thinking and best practice, and our services include specialist legal, financial and employment relations expertise, practical support and guidance.

The TMA’s agreements with the trade unions are the benchmark for the employment and engagement of those working in the middle and large scale UK performing arts. We represent the interests of arts organisations from across the UK to central, local and European government, funding and other bodies concerned with the performing arts.

bringing the industry together

(From left to right) Hall for Cornwall, Northampton’s Royal & Derngate, and the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester

Photo: HOLLIS

Member benefits

A wide range of local and national professional networking opportunities

Advice, guidance and support on legal matters, industrial relations, business management and corporate governance

Reduced costs through the TMA’s Group Purchasing Scheme

Reduced rates and advance booking for our high quality training and events programme

To find out how to become a member or how you can get more value from your existing membership, call Gemma Nelson on 020 7557 6706 or visit www.tmauk.org

33

FORWARD THINKING

Martyn Allison was National Advisor for Culture and Sport with Local Government Improvement & Development between 2005 and 2011. He now runs his own company providing management improvement support to the culture and sport sector and is an associate of the Local Government Association, a member of SOLACE and a Fellow of CIMSPA.

Working with Local Government will take place on 10 October 2012 at TMA, London.

For more information and to book, visit www.tmauk.org/events

advantages of multiple marketing. We have not yet talked about the potential of commissioning, but multi-functional providers would be far better placed to benefit than small scale stand-alone enterprises. I identified earlier some of the big strategic challenges faced by councils to improve outcomes for individuals and communities, and identifying providers to meet these needs and deliver outcomes is done through the process of commissioning. Commissioners need to award contracts efficiently but are themselves looking for innovative solutions to issues of mental health, dementia, youth training, bullying, school attendance etc. Contracting a multifunctional provider would be very attractive to them and open up new funding streams and greater public recognition for the provider. I think success in the future will emerge from organisations that have good business acumen, flexibility and fluidity, and a desire and willingness to innovate... and, above all, good leadership.

What do you plan to cover in your workshop for TMA and who do you think should come?My plan is to provide people with some time and space to think about what is happening around them, to help them

better understand the difficult position facing councils and how it will affect them in the future, to think through some of the challenges and opportunities that might exist for them to build new and better relationships with councils, and to consider what a more resilient organisation might look like. I hope we can end with agreeing a small number of actions they can think about when they return. I hope people with a desire to survive and succeed will attend, people with innovative ideas we can all learn from and people who just need to take time out and think.

Page 34: Prompt magazine - Issue 64

Sam Walters, Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre

I suppose the biggest risk to theatre is the advance of technology. I think the long-term deep risk is that it may come to seem like an old fashioned art form and that we now live in this screen orientated technological age when we can see things on our iPads and our telephones. I think you have to think very carefully about what makes theatre special and

different, and that’s that it’s a shared experience and all the new technologies are, by and large, private activities. Theatre means people go out and become a communal group, and because technology means that’s now happening less, theatre could become even more important.

One of the emerging threats is that young people now study theatre at school and at university. There’s a little bit of me that says, “This is terrific, theatre is now mainstream stuff ”, but there’s a bit of me that also says, “Hang on a minute, which of us go out and do a school subject for fun on a Friday night?” Theatre mustn’t seem worthy and become something that you study; it must be exciting, it must be challenging. Theatre has got to go on being provocative and in touch with the life we are leading. It mustn’t try to emulate what the screen can do better than it; it must do what makes it unique.

Anneliese Davidsen, Executive Director of the Unicorn Theatre

I think the biggest risk to theatre is that no one’s really talking about the big ideas. I keep seeing very small work and wondering why we’re not talking about big issues, and wondering what theatre means to us if we don’t want to discuss those big thoughts. Children are growing up with limited education and no jobs, protesters are being evicted from public spaces, voices are

being silenced everywhere; where are the big conversations about all of this? We’ve got strong traditions of theatre in our country but we’re not collectively proud of it, it’s sort of eroded

Assessing risksPrompt asked four arts professionals what they believe the biggest current risk to the theatre industry is and, more importantly, how they’re tackling it.

out of our daily lives, we don’t really talk about it in the pub. You wouldn’t know it from the Guardian theatre blog, but theatre is still something that a very small group of people does and it’s seen as either entertainment or education, particularly for us in children’s theatre. But it seems to me that there are some huge ideas that we should be exploring and we seem to be fearful of approaching them. This is an amazing time to be trying to work out your place in the world and what the future holds, so theatres need to make bold choices about the stories they tell.

Theatres have been through difficult economic and social climates before, but traditionally the response to that is to challenge and enhance your creativity. I hope that that happens over the next few years.

Anna Williams, Finance Director of Birmingham Royal Ballet

I think cuts to local authority funding is in some ways a more invisible and potentially threatening issue to a lot of theatres than the Arts Council cuts, particularly regional theatres. Many of the small to medium scale venues outside the large metropolitan centres are highly reliant on local authority funding and are hugely important to the local communities; it’s very often people’s first experience of

seeing theatre in some form. I think the problems of closures, or significant contraction of that bit of the market, has real implications for the theatre economy and ecology across the country because most of the population are accessing live theatre in these middle scale venues.

Having a plan and knowing what your organisational priorities are is absolutely vital because if you don’t then you just end up fire fighting and making very knee jerk reactions. Obviously the easiest thing to do is to reduce activity, but we’ve really tried hard to avoid that and looked at ways of using our subsidy well to make sure we prioritise UK touring, maintain performance numbers and maintain activity levels. We’ve done that by really planning for reduced funding over the last five or six years and developing our fundraising infrastructure and a core level of fundraising income. I think contracting the organisation and the organisation’s aspirations is probably the worst thing you can do.

SOUNDING BOARD

34

Anna Williams

Anneliese Davidsen

Sam Walters

Page 35: Prompt magazine - Issue 64

Get in touch!

In the next issue:

We would love to hear your views on any of the subjects in this issue of Prompt. To contact us, email [email protected]. If you would like your letter to be considered for publication in a future issue, please mark ‘for publication’.

The next issue of Prompt will focus on the people running theatres from behind the scenes, the crucial skills needed and the keys to team collaboration; from front of house staff to fundraising and box office managers.

Comments, questions, suggestions?

Risky businessIs making theatre in 2012 a riskier business than ever before?

ISSUE NO. 64JULY 2012

To request

your copy

CALL: 020 7557

6706

Sheena Wrigley, Chief Executive at West Yorkshire Playhouse

The slow erosion of public funding in British theatre puts all aspects of our industry at risk. Beyond the immediate effect of having less money to make work or employ people, the funding reduction will have insidious long-term effects likely to disrupt the delicate ecology of our sector at a fundamental level, e.g. the impact on risk taking and the decline of the crafts base across the country.

With loss of public investment and therefore greater pressure on box office success, the danger is theatres create programmes of work that don’t excite or compel audiences. We must create work that has relevance for this specific place at this specific time. We are learning to be tougher in our artistic conversations, bringing greater urgency to our decision making. If we approach audiences with some humility and let them help us to shape the kind of live theatre experiences we develop for the 21st century, we will continue to be relevant and indispensable.

We have to get serious about making our case on several fronts at once. Listen to and arm our allies, approach those who have been moved by our work to advocate on our behalf and commit to building the data and hard facts that underpin our stories, and to archive the support that unequivocally proves that public investment in the arts is, and can be, transformative – and in doing so pave the way for others to follow.

SOUNDING BOARD

35

Sheena Wrigley

Page 36: Prompt magazine - Issue 64

The week commencing 14 May 2012 could go down as one of the most important weeks in the TMA’s long and illustrious history. Why? Because this is the first week that we have a reliable picture of the scale and impact of our Members’ sales that we can compare to the West End. Huge thanks are due to Michael Quine and the legion of box office staff up and down the country who have been filling out and processing box office return forms for decades. The data they have provided forms an invaluable archive on national trends in capacity achieved, ticket prices and yield. But for many reasons, form filling has been patchy and the overall picture of the impact of regional theatre in the UK was being significantly under reported. Why does this matter? You’d be hard pressed to find a politician in the country who would question the social and economic impact of the West End and theatre in London as a whole. Ask them about the comparative importance and interplay between London and the nations and regions

Strength in numbersFor the first time in TMA history, a new data collection project means vital information about box office trends will be available to be analysed for venues across the country. David Brownlee looks at why this is such an important step forward for the industry.

and you’d receive a variety of answers, most of which would be poorly informed. With no end in sight to local and national government cuts, if we didn’t need to make the case previously for the importance of theatre up and down the UK, we do now. And to make a strong case, we need robust data. The Society of London Theatre (SOLT) gets 100% return rates from its Members. We’re not there yet with the TMA, but in the early weeks of the new method of data collection, we reckon we’re getting at least 85% of venues (but far fewer touring producers) returning on a weekly basis, and we hope to boost this with historic data from the few stragglers. Huge thanks go to all the Members who have been providing data and we are particularly indebted to HQ and ATG for providing single weekly returns covering their entire groups. Over time we’ll be able to answer more crucial questions by analysing this comprehensive data set. For example, is

36

RESEARCH

Attendances

Seat capacity

600,000

500,000

400,000

300,000

200,000

100,000

West End

TMA Venues

Gross potential

£20 million

£15 million

£10 million

£5 million

Revenue achieved

TMA Venues

West End

Page 37: Prompt magazine - Issue 64

there a north/south divide in capacity and yield achieved? And if so, is this divide growing? We hope to answer at least the first of these questions in the next issue of Prompt. For this edition we’ll just focus on that first week of data for TMA venues and compare it to the data published by SOLT. Remember, the SOLT data covers 100% of West End theatres, whereas the TMA venues dataset is not complete and as more organisations submit their figures the numbers will change. It should also be noted that where a venue is a Member of both SOLT and TMA, we are not including them in the TMA figures to avoid double counting.Of course, the week commencing 14 May 2012 may not be a typical week for TMA venues. For SOLT venues, week 20 is generally below the annual mean for both attendances and capacity. In the West End, the week commencing the 14 May 2012 proved average for week 20 in terms of attendances and better than average for revenue.The graphs show that the potential capacity, the revenue achieved and the ticket prices were all substantially higher in the West End. However the income from box offices in

the regions and Nations was at least 64% of the West End and at least 41,000 more seats were filled in TMA venues during the week. Put another way, at least 15% more people were enjoying theatre for an average of 45% less per ticket in their local TMA Member venue. Of course, it is not a competition between the

West End and regional theatre – both parts of the sector are reliant on the other for product, profile and audiences. Looked at together the figures are even more impressive: in just one week in May, West End and regional TMA theatres together welcomed at least 570,000 and took £16.75 million at the box office. To put that into context, in 2010 the entire box office for film in the UK only averaged £19 million a week (source: BFI). The theatre sector needs to work together in future years to make our case. And together we need comparable, reliable statistics about our scale and impact. In the week commencing 14 May 2012, we made a great leap forward.

“In just one week in May, West End and regional TMA theatres together welcomed at least 570,000 and took £16.75 million at the box office”

37

RESEARCH

To find out more contact [email protected]

Average price asked

£50

£40

£30

£20

£10

Average price achieved

TMA Venues

West End

£21.39

£47.95

£21.31

£38.64

% Seats filled

% Revenue achieved

TMA Venues

West End

64%

56%52%

56%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

Page 38: Prompt magazine - Issue 64

JulyFri 27 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony

AugustSun 12 Olympic Games Closing Ceremony

Wed 29 Paralympic Games Opening Ceremony

SeptemberSun 9 Paralympic Games Closing Ceremony & 2012 Festival ends

Tue 11 Experience Design – Creating a Great Customer Experience

Wed 19 Leadership Skills

Thu 20 Frontline Conference, Birmingham

Mon 24 Health & Safety Essentials Plus

Tue 25 Conducting Performance Appraisals

Wed 26 Making the Most of Database Marketing

OctoberMon 1 Effective Management residential course, Rugby

Tue 2 Code of Conduct and Risk Management

Wed 3 Delivering Excellent Customer Services & Up-selling

Thu 4 Networking for Success

Wed 10 Working with Local Government

Thu18 Box Offi ce Conference

Mon 22 Essentials of Marketing, Druidstone, Rugby

TMA diary datesFor further details on all TMA training courses and for location information, visit www.tmauk.org/events or email [email protected] to receive a full brochure. All courses are in London unless stated otherwise.

Tue 23 Code of Conduct and Risk Management, Birmingham

Thu 25 Introduction to Finance (TMA & ABO)

Sun 28 Theatre Awards UK

Tue 30 Managing Confl ict with Customers

Wed 31 Press & PR Conference

NovemberThu 1 Performance Management

Tue 6 IOSH, Managing Safely

Tue 13 Practical People Management Skills & Creating a Vision for Your Team

Wed 14 Time and Stress Management

Thu 15 TMA Members’ Meeting

Mon 19 Governing for a Not-for-Profi t Arts Organisation

Wed 21 Pricing at the Cutting Edge

Thu 22 Essentials of Fundraising in the Arts (TMA & ABO)

Tue 27 Introduction to Marketing (ABO)

Wed 28 Personal Effectiveness and Emotional Intelligence Skills

Thu 29 Finance for Non Finance Professionals (TMA & ABO)

DecemberWed 5 Recruitment and Selection Skills Training

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The theatre business is becoming increasingly more complex and it is important that those involved take advantage of professional development and share best practice. That is why Travelers is delighted to support TMA’s training programme, helping theatres to successfully manage their organisations and business risks. To fi nd out more about Travelers visit www.travelers.co.uk or talk to your insurance broker.

CALENDAR

Page 39: Prompt magazine - Issue 64

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Page 40: Prompt magazine - Issue 64

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