When Box Clever learned that it would be losing its small but significant funding from Arts Council England, Michael Wicherek feared that this might be the end of the road for the company.
In February 2011 we received the news that Box Clever was one of the organisations unfortunate enough not to be successful in our application to become a National Portfolio Organisation (NPO). Nearly two years later, we are able to look back on the journey our small company has taken and to recognise the positive impact the loss of funding has had on us and our view of the future. We have developed into a far more resilient company: one which is not only leaner and healthier but also much more in tune with our customers and stakeholders.
Initially the loss had a significant impact. Although we received only a small amount of funding from Arts Council England (ACE), in the region of £60,000 per year, as a Regularly Funded Organisation (RFO) that income provided us with security. It was a foundation on which we could build, through fundraising and earning the rest of our income, safe in the knowledge that we could subsidise our tours if the need arose. We did have a year’s grace; ACE ensured that we still received core funding until March 2012, something that became vital to our replanning and a decision for which we are very grateful.
In the summer of 2011 we had planned to take our new show ‘Time for the good looking boy’ to Edinburgh. It was the first time the company had ventured to the Fringe Festival and, unfortunately, the last time we had the security to do so. That tour date kept our morale high. We had received a terrible blow to our confidence but this focused our efforts on something positive. And it paid off. The performance was very well received by both press and public, and the whole project became a positive experience for the whole company.
We have developed into a far more resilient company
We always had three distinct themes in our work: new writing projects, issue-based touring productions for schools and written word projects, largely delivered to GCSE students. Following Edinburgh we still had nine months left of ACE funding, time that we used to refocus the company. We had never relied on a single income stream, and in recent years we had seen our schools and local authority market reduce year on year. We were already looking more closely at our product offer, our relationships and our priorities, but the funding announcement made this even more urgent and relevant. We decided to make the company leaner and fitter for purpose at that time. We moved offices and restructured roles. This gave us an opportunity to bring in specialist support that did not need to be office-based or full-time, including a producer, marketing, PR and fundraising personnel.
Our next tasks were to create an even more sellable product and to work with our potential funders in a cleverer way. We looked closely at how to provide what our clients wanted, whether that be a funder, school or local authority. We listened more and stopped taking our relationships for granted, whether they were with young people, a funder or a school. We implemented a new process for gathering research about tours, reflecting on their performance and putting positive change at the heart of the organisation.
We have always aimed to act as a cultural interface for young people via their teacher or school. Upon reflection we felt as though we might in the past have moved away from that aim. The removal of our regular funding and this period of analysis allowed us to get back on track.
‘Time for the good looking boy’ was ready to tour, so we passed the responsibility of booking it to Half Moon Young People’s Theatre instead of trying to organise it ourselves. We aimed to maintain our visibility as a company actively touring to regional theatres and festivals, but without the need to worry about booking and administrating the tour ourselves. We also made sure any dates would be cost-neutral. This has been incredibly successful, with dates at the Half Moon, Birmingham Rep and Takeoff Festival, and new dates booking for this spring to autumn.
The most financially viable products we have in our portfolio are the traditional issue-based plays for primary and secondary schools and our classical tours to secondary schools, products that we were well-known for delivering effectively. We decided to focus on developing these further, reinvigorating them and bringing them closer to market needs. We could no longer subsidise these tours from our central funding pot as they had to be self-sustaining and income-generating. Our issue-based plays for local authorities have been reboxed as a holistic approach to health, including road and travel safety, healthy eating and overcoming bullying or victimisation. Our sales and marketing efforts are now focused on these core elements of the business, with a new sales and marketing strategy. This new financial and marketing model is proving to be very successful.
Next we needed to find a route for our fundraising and new writing development. We looked very hard at the new strategies emerging from ACE and aimed to find ways that our innovative approach to developing and delivering work could fit these new objectives. By remaining true to our philosophy of developing theatre that was relevant to young people, informed by their attitudes and beliefs, we could clearly see the next logical step in our redevelopment. We ran a pilot project called ‘Puck of the estate’, in which we not only worked with and consulted young people during the writing stage but produced a final scripted play which was written by the young people themselves (who had started with nothing more than a title). It was successful and we knew we were on to a great new model for developing new writing. We developed this into a much larger project called ‘Urban mischief’ which engaged nearly 400 14 to 16 year olds in 12 schools across the country. The project successfully received £47,000 funding from ACE’s Grants for the Arts fund and is well underway, with the first draft of new production taking shape.
We have been all across the country in the 15 years since Box Clever came into being and we have seen at first hand some of the cultural cold spots that exist. We had an ongoing relationship with a local theatre in Louth, Lincolnshire, but very few links to schools or local authorities in the area. We applied to the Strategic Touring Fund and were delighted to be awarded £37,000 to take our work to Lincolnshire. The tour will reveal the whole creation process to students, offering free access to rehearsals, delivering our productions across 12 schools and working with teachers on delivering creative approaches to lessons in schools. The whole tour will finish off with a special presentation of ‘Time for the good looking boy’. We hope this project will bring more people closer to theatre in the area and we are already developing our legacy plans.
On top of ACE funding, we have been successful with a number of trust and foundation applications, again by being responsive to need and promoting unique artistic work of the highest quality.
These new projects are challenging and more engaging for the young people and their value is greater than the work we did in the past. This year we have received more funding from ACE than we ever did as an RFO, but we have to do more with that funding. We have come to understand that there is a new measure of quality and artistically we have become much more thorough. Our survival is going to be achieved by being distinctive, lean and adaptive.
There are still a lot of cuts on the cards across the country, with trusts drying up, local authorities unable to fund the cultural sector and the next round of NPO funding applications imminent. It is an interesting time for the sector, but one that can be positive for organisations that are prepared to adapt quickly and work with, not against, these challenging times.
Michael Wicherek is Artistic Director of Box Clever Theatre.
www.boxclevertheatre.com
 |