News

Unity Theatre, Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse and The Royal Court have jointly launched their 2021 seasons as part of a longer-term commitment to collaborative working.

As they prepare to reopen to the public, the theatres believe acting as a collective will give them more opportunities to nurture new artists, connect with communities and entertain audiences across the region.

A joint statement from the CEOs of the three venues said they wanted to “play our part to help theatre makers in Liverpool thrive both now and in the future".

Unity business development manager Rachael Welsh told The Guide: “In Liverpool, there isn’t a sense of competition between theatres. Unity recently finished a Crowdfunder for our open call programme, we had hundreds of people donate and so many of the comments were about supporting not just Unity but Liverpool artists and Liverpool theatres."

A £23m loan fund that backs socially-motivated cultural activity is looking for more takers.

The Arts & Culture Impact Fund, led by Nesta’s Arts & Culture Finance team, opened in March 2020. It is backed by a combination of public money, philanthropic funders and private social investors including Big Society Capital and Bank of America. Visual arts philanthropist Freelands Foundation is the latest, contributing £3m.

Fewer organisations have sought investment to grow their activities and experiment with new revenue models during the pandemic, but five cultural organisations are already sharing the first £1.2m in loans to buy and develop new spaces for activity to enrich their local communities.

Kurious Arts will fit out a new post production facility based in Castle House, Sheffield; Future Yard CIC will buy a building dedicated to live music in Birkenhead and the Wirral; East London Dance and UD will create the Talent House, a creative hub on East London’s Sugar House Island; and Friends of the Pipe Factory CIC will buy and renovate the 19th century Pipe Factory in Glasgow’s East End as a creative hub for microbusinesses and social enterprises.

This new fund builds on the success of the previous Arts Impact Fund, which delivered over £7m in loans to 27 organisations including Studio Wayne McGregor, the National Holocaust Centre & Museum, Soho Theatre Company and Walk the Plank.

Theatre company Out of Joint is being renamed as Stockroom – a change that is taking place with immediate effect. This rebranding follows the launch last year of its writers room with the same name.

The company is also moving into a new building which will become a creative hub for writers, other artists and the local community.

The six theatre-makers employed in the writers room will work with the rest of the team to create “bold and ambitious” new theatre writing for the future.
 
The restart comes after a torrid few years for the company. Founder Max Stafford-Clark left the organisation following alleged inappropriate and sexualised behaviour and a new team took over.
 
Executive Producer Martin Derbyshire described the name change as feeling “like a breath of fresh air”.  He said: “Stockroom is an identity that we’ve been building for three years. We learned a lot during that period and we are now ready for a creative leap into a new relationship with our writers and audiences.”

A campaign to save a 60-year-old mural on the side of a former BHS store in Hull looks set to succeed as Hull City Council confirms plans to preserve it when the building is demolished.

The ‘Three Ships’ mural by artist Alan Boyson, made of tiny cubes of Italian coloured glass, was listed in 2019. Due to asbestos levels in the building it was decided the artwork could not be saved.

The council has now said it will be applying for planning permission to incorporate the mural into the latest designs for a £130m mixed-use development to replace the shop.

DCMS has awarded the additional funding to help Coventry City of Culture host Covid-safe events.

The latest financial boost brings Government investment in the third UK City of Culture year to £18.5m, including £8.8m from the Culture Recovery Fund.

The £3.5m will support enhanced hygeine measures to reassure audiences as restrictions ease.

Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden cited Coventry's "remarkable resilience and ability to adapt during these challenging and unprecedented times".

"I look forward to seeing how the next 12 months will benefit the local area as we build back better from the impact of Covid."

DCMS says it expects the year to deliver an economic boost of £211m, draw 2.5 million visitors to Coventry, and create 900 jobs.

It is hoped that 80% of the city’s residents will engage with the programme at least three times, and that it will attract around 10,000 volunteers.

Personal testimonies from musicians facing economic disaster as a result of Brexit have been drawn together in a new report.

25 stories and case studies by professionals who rely on working in EU countries reveal the administrative and financial burdens they are facing as touring in Europe begins to reopen after the pandemic.
 
Comments from the musicians describe how they have been “professionally paralysed by Brexit”. One calculated the additional cost of a tour at £700 per performer due to carnets and visas, plus two days unpaid attendance at embassies, and said “the tour is now completely uneconomic”.

The report stems from a collaboration between the two largest bodies representing musicians, the Incorporated Society of Musicians and Musicians’ Union.  

They have been holding high-level meetings with politicians and civil servants on this issue. They are calling on the Government to negotiate a bespoke visa waiver agreement with the EU and bilateral agreements with individual EU Member States that do not offer cultural exemptions for work permits, as well as those which are financially the most important to UK performers.

MU General Secretary Horace Trubridge said: “This situation shouldn’t be about political posturing, this should be about real people being robbed of their livelihoods at a time when they have suffered huge financial loss due to the pandemic. These are UK taxpayers who create the culture that the UK is famous for and they deserve better from this Government.”