The Right People

In the third instalment of his series of reports from the 2013 Theatres Trust Conference, thriving theatres, Conference Reporter Fin Kennedy hears from Lyric Hammersmith’s Executive Director Jessica Hepburn, about the Lyric’s ambitious redevelopment – and how fundraising is all about having the right people doing the asking.

As Executive Director and Joint Chief Exec of London’s Lyric Hammersmith, Jessica is currently overseeing a £16.5 million redevelopment project. Historically, the Lyric has had two linked aspects: producing theatre, and the creative development of young people. Their redevelopment will see a two-storey extension of new facilities for young people and theatre artists to work together, and a full refurbishment of their existing theatre and audience spaces, with an emphasis on environmental sustainability.

However, Jessica had three words of advice for those considering undertaking such any capital project: Don’t do it. She was only half-joking – any such project will be long, hard and very messy, on top of which there is no guarantee that it will make your theatre thrive. The Lyric’s redevelopment had also been an exercise in negotiating capital works with their landlord. Jessica freely admitted that the project would not come in on time or on budget – and didn’t believe that there is one which has.

As if that level of uncertainty wasn’t bad enough, the world is also guaranteed to change during the period of redevelopment, Jessica said. The Lyric’s plans began under the last government, when they had specific funding for delivering education programmes – funding programmes that no longer exist.

What has focused the Lyric is a belief in two things: that their theatre should be a home for great art, and that it should emphasise young people’s creative development. The Lyric will consider anything to develop that – especially partnerships with other local organisations. Jessica has a vision of their new building ‘teeming’ with artists and young people – but not all projects have to be Lyric-delivered. A range of partners can bring in their own resources (a list of such partners will be announced in the autumn).

What Jessica looked for in potential partners was that they weren’t too much like the Lyric itself. She gave the example of Hammersmith Action for Disability, an organisation which would benefit from the Lyric’s creative expertise, while bringing in heard to reach groups which the Lyric would struggle to attract on their own.

The Lyric is lucky to have a supportive local council, the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham. As a Conservative council, despite cuts to their budget, they have contributed £5 million to the Lyric’s redevelopment. The Mayor of London has also contributed, as has the Reuben Foundation, a trust which doesn’t normally support the arts. Jessica emphasised that they had not used a ‘development organisation’ (ie. professional fundraisers), which she characterised as ‘women in nice dresses who earn more than anyone else in the building’. She was clear that she felt this would not be appropriate for the Lyric. Instead, the theatre had instigated a culture of every senior manager at the Lyric being responsible for income-generation. Fundraising and business development was at the core of what they all do – and she used the word ‘business’ advisedly. It shouldn’t just feel like people asking for money.

Her top tip when fundraising was to ensure you have the right people asking the right people at the right time.

Postscript

The week after the conference, the Lyric also announced a new season of work which will take place during their building work entitled ‘Secret Theatre’. The project aims to be a creative catalyst for changing some of the structures in which theatre in the UK is made currently. Click here for the full transcript of Artistic Director, Sean Holmes’ speech at the season launch.

A Theatre and its City

In the second of his missives from the 2013 Theatres Trust conference, Thriving Theatres, Conference Reporter Fin Kennedy hears from Executive Director at Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, Deborah Aydon.

Deborah is currently overseeing the redevelopment of the Everyman Theatre and told the Theatres Trust 2013 conference on 11 June about some of the strategies the theatre had deployed to gain widespread local support.

Deborah began with a whistlestop tour through the history of the Everyman and Playhouse theatres – an alliance between an old Victorian music hall which became one of the UK’s first repertory theatres, and a chapel, converted to a theatre in 1964, one mile away from each other. Their Young Everyman Playhouse (YEP) is a crucial component in their success – actor David Morrissey is an alumnus and returned to play Macbeth in the Everyman’s closing show. The company also has reach far beyond Liverpool, and their shows regularly tour, most recently Frank McGuinness’s Matchbox which came down to London’s Tricycle Theatre. The company has also tapped into Liverpool’s rich history of local writing talent, such as Lizzie Nunnery’s The Swallowing Dark, which received five Off West End Award nominations or poet Roger McGough’s three adaptations of Moliere, all of which toured nationally. As Deborah herself put it: “Everything we do is infused with our city, inspired by it and by its people. Nothing that we do is parochial.

The company is lucky to have a city council which is very supportive. The Mayor recently described culture as ‘the rocket fuel of our local economy’.

Outreach is a big part of how the Everyman and Playhouse have achieved widespread support. Deborah cited a project in Kirkdale with local gangs, in which the theatre’s technical team trained young men in lighting design, and coached them in rigging an installation at the local recreation centre for use at their football matches. Liverpool Football Club watched their first match and were so impressed they offered free football coaching, which is still ongoing two years later. The theatres piloted a technical training programme with the young men and a video artist worked with the same group to turn the entire frontage of a local pub into a video animation. All 12 of the former gang members involved in the lighting project are now in either related employment or training and the technical training programme is now an annual strand of YEP.

The Everyman embarked on an ambitious redevelopment programme to overhaul the Everyman Theatre, a building that was dated and not really physically accessible. The motto for the project is ‘An Everyman for Everyone’.

The journey to the new Everyman began with a finale for the old building, which took the form of a collection and sharing of memories (such as couples who had met there). The public were invited to write these onto luggage tags, which were displayed around the building. Thousands of people came to say goodbye to the old Everyman – simultaneously discovering why the redevelopment was needed. Many of these brought children, to introduce them to their theatre and express their hopes for the future. This drawing out of emotional connections created a feeling of ownership and belonging. Though the old building has now been demolished, 25,000 bricks were saved and used in the walls of the new theatre.

The new design is democratic and inclusive, with every seat the same (no more seats vs. benches), with each close to the stage, and a rehearsal room and studio dedicated to youth and community work which has deliberately been placed right at the centre of the building. Reimagining the building as a creative and social hub aims to bring artists and audiences together – physically as much as metaphorically – by connecting the theatre’s social spaces. This includes opening up the old Everyman bistro, which has long been a bohemian hang-out for counter-cultural Liverpool. During the redevelopment, the theatre embraced a social media strategy by installing a ‘cranecam’ high above the building site, broadcasting online how the building was coming along, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The front of the theatre required installing some external screens to manage sunlight into the building – the architect, Steve Tompkins, took the opportunity to make a feature of this, and turned it into an art project which expresses the Everyman’s ethos. The ‘portrait wall’ is made of aluminium sheets have been etched with engravings of local Liverpool residents – not famous ones, but ordinary citizens, alive today – 105 of them in total. They range in age from an 86-year old to a new born baby. The Everyman invited them all to a party to get to know them and emphasise the fact that they are all now part of the Everyman’s story, and the Everyman part of theirs.

The fundraising campaign for the new theatre will also establish a talent fund to enrich the programme and create opportunities for their YEP members to go on to professional careers. The strong relationship with donors has meant they can move away from a focus on donations to fund bricks and mortar towards future activity, which also strengthens the emotional bond. Deborah looked up the etymology of the word ‘philanthropy’ and was delighted to discover that it meant ‘love of humanity’. That seemed to sum up everything the Everyman does.

But the theatre’s fundraising doesn’t just come from wealthy patrons. Local citizens of ordinary means had also taken it on themselves to fundraise for the theatre through activities such as tea parties and sponsored mountain climbs. Deborah wasn’t talking about large sums of money, but the larger amounts of goodwill and further sense of belonging which came with it were arguably more important. There are now over 1,000 of these citizen donors.

To capture what motivated the Everyman’s audience to do this, the theatre collected their reasons on another series of luggage tags. One of Deborah’s favourites read: ‘Home is where the heart is, and our heart is in the Everyman’. It was written by a working-class Liverpudlian couple who had never thought theatre was for them, but who tried it out for the first time during Liverpool’s City of Culture in 2008, and fell in love. They are now not only regular theatregoers, but regular donors to the Everyman too.

Young Everyman Playhouse is excited about opening the doors to their new space. They have already decided on its motto: ‘This will be a place where impossibility is not an answer’.

Welcome to The Theatres Trust Conference 13 blog!

This blog is a forum where we can discuss topics related to the thriving theatres conference which will be held on June 11.

Each post to this blog can be categorised as ‘General’ or under one of the four topics we will be discussing during the conference sessions.

Here is a brief description of each session:

Opening the doors – theatres leading the way

This is the topic of our first session at Conference 13 and will address ways to harness community and social engagement through better use of theatre buildings.

We will hear from theatres whose capital projects are building their capacity to secure their future viability, community and social engagement – and are winning over hearts and minds.

Session Chair: Vikki Heywood

Deborah Aydon, Executive Director, Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse
Ian Pratt, Vice Chairman and Technical Director, Kings Theatre Southsea
Jessica Hepburn, Executive Director and Joint Chief Executive, Lyric Hammersmith
Jiselle Steele, Regional Team and Partnership Manager, Livity, somewhereto_

Going local – the opportunities

Our second session of Conference 13 will look at how theatres can act locally to develop partnerships and new opportunities, including relationships with local authorities and Local Enterprise Partnerships.

New Government policies to promote greater local and neighbourhood ownership of planning decisions and community assets have created new opportunities for theatres. How can these help theatres take the initiative and secure their assets and future?

Session Chair: Nigel Hugill, Chair, The Royal Shakespeare Company and Executive Chairman, Urban&Civic

Martin Sutherland, Chief Executive, Northamptonshire Arts Management Trust
Martin Halliday, Chief Executive, Lowestoft Marina
Flick Rea, Chair, Culture, Tourism and Sport Board, Local Government Association

Keynote speech

Baroness Hanham CBE
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Communities and Local Government, followed by Questions to the Minister

Louder voices – speaking up for theatres as cultural and community assets

The third session of Conference 13 will be focused on how planning policy and practice affects theatres.

New planning initiatives also create new challenges to theatres future viability, operation and capital redevelopment plans. In this session we look at the impact of the Community Infrastructure Levy on theatres and arts centres, lessons learnt by theatres engaging with the planning system and how they need to be vigilant to the relaxation of planning regulations, and where they are taking the lead in developing new community based theatres and cultural facilities through being recognised as Assets of Community Value.

Session Chair: Dave Moutrey, Director & Chief Executive, Cornerhouse & Library Theatre Company

Alan Bishop, Chief Executive, Southbank Centre
Trudi Elliott CBE, Chief Executive, The Royal Town Planning Institute
Nica Burns, Chief Executive and co-proprietor, Nimax Theatres Ltd
Peter Steer, Director, Derby Hippodrome Restoration Trust

Survive or thrive?

The final session of Conference 13 will explore the economic opportunities and impact of theatres’ capital development.

What are the leadership qualities and capital strategies which can make the difference between surviving and thriving? In our final session we look at innovative schemes that have balanced risk and reward and created more financially, culturally and socially resilient theatres through implementing major capital and asset developments.

Session Chair: Anna Stapleton, Administrative Director, Citizens Theatre, Glasgow

Jim Beirne, Chief Executive, Live Theatre,  Newcastle
Colin Marr, Director, Eden Court, Inverness
Gemma Playford, Senior Project Manager, Arup
Neil Constable, Chief Executive, Shakespeare’s Globe, London
Jack Mellor, Theatre Manager, Theatre Royal, Plymouth

For more information or to register for Conference 13 thriving theatres go to

http://www.theatrestrust.org.uk/events/conference-13/registration

	Keynote speech Baroness Hanham CBE Parliamentary Undersecretary of State at the Department for Communities and Local Government Questions to the Minister