Small but plucky: how British arts centres are fighting off Covid-19
Amid the grim news about the devastating effect of Covid-19 on the arts, particularly live performances, one category has been overlooked – at least publicly. Arts centres – multi-purpose venues where you might catch a touring play, a film or a comedy gig, but maybe also take your children to ballet class, hold a planning meeting or simply indulge in coffee and cake – have a crucial role to play in the creative ecosystem.
They take hit shows such as Tall Stories’ adaptation of The Gruffalo’s Child to a wider audience, nurture spoken word artists such as Kae (formerly Kate) Tempest, and offer a staging post for bands such as The Unthanks. Yet this eclecticism can be a curse. It has, in the past, meant they have had no collective voice and there is no clear funding strategy for the sector.
Arts centres range from London’s giant Southbank Centre to artist Simon Thackray’s The Shed, hosting music and poetry on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors. Because there’s no firm definition of an arts centre, it’s very difficult to say how many there are. On a regular basis, Arts Council England funds 187 “Combined Arts” organisations (which includes many arts centres, festivals etc); Creative Scotland and the Arts Council of Wales fund 21 each. But in England alone, early in the pandemic, there were 676 applications, 485 of them successful, for emergency Arts Council funding from the Combined Arts category.
Leading arts centres tend to rely more on commercial income and less on public subsidy than prominent single artform venues. Future Arts Centres, set up in 2013 to give the sector UK-wide more lobbying power, states that the average turnover for its members consists of 12 per cent from the Arts Council and 11 per cent from local authority funding, while the rest comes from ticket sales, space hire, catering and the like.
The lack of customers has clearly left arts centres exposed during the pandemic. So how are they coping? A group of metropolitan arts centres estimate they will lose half to three quarters of their income this year. Andy Eagle, CEO of Chapter Arts in Cardiff, is expecting to lose 60 per cent. “We got ￡125,000 from the Arts Council of Wales in June and we’ve raised ￡45,000 from the public, part of it spontaneous, part of it by orchestrating a donations campaign,” he says. “But we’ve lost ￡250,000 a month in income”. The Southbank, likely to be closed until next April, is consulting on cutting two-thirds of jobs, and is reducing in-house production to 10 per cent of its 2021/22 programming.
Arts centres, however, have some advantages. They are often flexible in terms of space and can thus be reconfigured. “We’ve got more levers to pull on: theatres, galleries and cinemas,” says Dave Moutrey, CEO of Home in Manchester, which reopens on September 4 at 25–30 per cent of normal capacity. In Oxford, The Old Fire Station’s Jeremy Spafford, who has commissioned outdoor and storytelling projects for next year, says he’s energised despite the financial challenges: “We have fantastic supporters. We genuinely don’t want to go back to exactly what we did before”.
Certainly, arts centres have shown an incredible community spirit during the pandemic. The Albany in Deptford launched a podcast series and local record company. Farnham Maltings backed an array of projects including community singing in Lewes and a sensory trail in Bedfordshire, alongside working with local councillors on a hardship fund and convening Covid response meetings.
Barney Jeavons, who worked in arts centres for 20 years, calls them “the most incredible vehicle for change when they’re well-funded and run – they reach into communities, and with that range of art, craft, music and dance you can do anything”.
One of his favourite memories is of a night at Colchester Arts Centre many years ago with two DJs who “turned discs made of found objects: grass, concrete, gravel, sandpaper”. Puzzling what to do with these off-the-wall artists, director Antony Roberts had told John Peel about the gig, and the seasoned presenter turned up and DJed alongside them to a packed crowd.
Spread through the regions, fostering strong community links, offering youth employment opportunities and with limited reliance on public funding, arts centres should in principle enthuse Conservatives, Ed Vaizey admits.
The former Culture Minister says: “It would be good to see multiple departments committing multiple resources to support these multifaceted organisations. Social prescribing – where doctors can prescribe activities rather than drugs – has been pioneered by health and culture ministers working together. We need to see more of this, across many other policy areas.”
Stella Duffy of creativity movement Fun Palaces says that rather than simply talking about “crown jewels” – i.e. big arts organisations such as the Royal Opera House and the National Theatre – the Government should look to support “the local arts centre, library, small local touring company. They’re the ones making culture across the board.”
There are two powerful arguments for more public money to help arts centres through the crisis. One is their value beyond what is easily quantifiable. Playwright James Graham says: “They do what theatres should frankly be better at. The standard theatrical experience, much as I love it, can often default to transactional: you pay and you watch. Art centres encourage all sorts of creativity from everyone.
“In communities like the one where I grew up in north Nottinghamshire, a lot of our social infrastructure has completely disappeared. When we talk of communities and networks now, we think digitally, online. But we need public places to gather, and see ourselves as part of a community. An ‘infrastructure revolution’ [to level up neglected regions] can be more than just roads and high-speed rail.”
Then there’s the more directly economic case. The Arts Council-administered Cultural Recovery Fund – part of the government’s ￡1.57 billion for the arts, and in addition to the emergency funding allocated from April – welcomes applications from venues which don’t plan to reopen until March 31 2021 or even later. Arts centres, with their flexibility of programming and spaces are often in a stronger position to welcome audiences, and employ freelancers, much sooner than this.
“Everyone’s thinking about the bailout, but we’re also thinking about stimulus,” says Future Arts Centres’ Gavin Barlow. “That’s the bit I’m most surprised hasn’t been picked up on by Tory MPs”, his colleague Annabel Turpin agrees.
The campaign has called for a broader theatre tax-relief scheme, to allow arts centres and community venues to invest in programming; a fund for creative industries apprenticeships and local arts centres; and a National Arts Project stimulus package allowing arts centres to employ freelancers to make work in settings like schools and care homes.
There are many ways arts centres could play a part in the recovery from Covid over the longer term: for example, by taking over empty town-centre retail units. But first they have to ensure their own survival, and that will always be something of a gamble. “It’s so important that arts centres have the freedom to give platforms for excellence,” says Barney Jeavons.
“As a society, it’s about holding our nerve and believing arts centres and artists are important. There’s an inherent financial risk in that.”