Does theatre in the UK need your love? You may think not if you look at the attendance figures: in London and across the regions overall, sales are strong. It seems that during the longest and deepest recession in living memory, the public chose to stop spending money on expensive holidays and new cars, but they kept investing in brilliant artistic experiences. It means that in 2014, theatre continues to be one of a few industries where the UK still leads the world, creating challenging, innovative an excellent work for a huge domestic audience and for export all around the world.
It’s wonderful to have a chancellor of the exchequer who gets theatre and its importance both economically and to our national identity. George Osborne has become an unlikely poster boy for the sector with his fantastic new tax credits for theatre, which will benefit the whole industry and particularly touring of work outside London.
So with such a thriving, internationally successful sector with political support at the highest level, is theatre to be envied rather than loved? Is it in robust health, or does it need some urgent attention?
Scratch the surface and there are serious causes for concern. National funding has been cut in all four UK nations, but Arts Council England has seen the biggest reductions, with 36% of its funding lost since 2010. Great efforts have been made to support frontline services in arts organisations, but the cuts to theatres have been unprecedented. Sensibly, many organisations built up reserves in the good years. These have been massively depleted in recent times and soon they will be exhausted by many organisations, while it still seems likely there will be yet more cuts from central government in the coming years.
But what worries most organisations more than cuts to national grants is the pressure on funding and support from councils. Local authorities have been the unsung heroes of arts funding for decades, providing grants to independent organisations and running their own facilities up and down the land. Local authorities receive most of their funding from national government and they have been subject to a similar scale of cuts as the arts. At the same time, they are seeing a massive growth in demand for the statutory services they provide, such as adult social care and children’s services.
Less money and more demand on those services means that local authorities need to make disproportionate cuts in other non-statutory areas. The modelling produced by the Local Government Association is shocking. Things are bad now. They are likely to get much worse over the next 10 years.
I have huge sympathy for councillors taking extremely difficult decisions. Theatre may appear an “easy” target. Of course, it shouldn’t be. Theatres play an enormous role in the community that goes far beyond what’s on stage. In challenging times, theatres support the financial stability of communities, attracting employers to an area and helping to retain graduate employment. Every pound spent in a theatre is then matched by further spending in local shops, cafés and bars. Theatres attract a wide range of people to towns and cities in the evenings, keeping the streets friendly and welcoming for all ages and all backgrounds.
Theatres support the development of children of all ages. They welcome toddlers and younger children for a range of creative events and activities, providing educational stimulus at a vital age. They help children to make sense of the world, challenge some of their preconceptions and raise their hopes and aspirations. In teenage years, they offer positive activities to express themselves in ways communities genuinely applaud rather than object to.
Theatres provide opportunities to get an experience of paid work, as well as learning new skills through volunteering. They are a place where you can make friends for life or you find a deeply rewarding career that offers you opportunities nationally and internationally.
For adults, theatres offer an increasingly rare chance to engage and share experiences with your local community. They provide a focal point for a community to associate with and be proud of, without the fear of relegation at the end of the season.
Theatres can and should keep making all these points, but what local politicians care about is the views of their voters. That’s why if you #LoveTheatre, then you need to do more than use a hashtag. Sign up to the My Theatre Matters campaign and join the thousands of others who have already told their local councillors how they value their local authority’s investment in their local venue.
David Brownlee is executive director of UK Theatre
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