Escape routes

So, will we be rolling out the barrel or scraping the bottom of it? Should we be jumping on the Olympic bus or hitching a lift in the opposite direction? We’re all looking for escape as credit becomes crunchier. Vox pops in the national press show that people will be giving up fancy coffee and meals out, but they’re still ordering pizza and buying sweeties to eat at home. Let us hope that they, like our forebears in the Great Depression of 1929, will turn to entertainment to escape the everyday ghastliness. According to Arts & Business (p1), we’ve got about a year to get our act together, as current planned arts sponsorship and grants have about that long to run. (Some of us are better insulated than that, but some will feel the pinch far sooner.) It’s not hard to feel hard done by in the arts, despite the ground we have gained in the past ten years. A substantial proportion of the private sponsorship still knocking around may well be diverted to Olympic sports (it’s really not cricket!) before long. Diversifying funding, persuading donors of the importance of keeping us going and putting our faith in panto might work. Certainly, dour plays such as ‘Kill All the Fluffy Bunnies’ by Sandra Doom aren’t going to cut it. Relentless optimism and working the crowd just might. The fact that we can now point to huge piles of research and case studies showing that we are essential to building a creative economy and solving all society’s ills might be a bolster against falling income: non-arts funding streams should remain open to us. Building audiences is another way forward – fewer pennies but from more people may keep our heads above water. Reaction to Arts Council England’s free ticket scheme has varied (see news p3, Andrew McIntyre on p6, our interview with Alan Davey on p16, and our Discussion Forum at www.artsprofessional.co.uk). But if it brings more young people into the theatre, and subsequently to other artforms, it might be doing us a timely favour. (Though it will be interesting to see whether ACE will get 95 theatres to apply by 14 November.) So chin up, shoulders to the wheel, noses to the grindstone! Escape may be a pipe-dream, but survival is possible.