Currently working with Travelling Light Theatre Company in Bristol, I am a theatre maker and producer from Somerset. I love the South West and want it to be a cultural Mecca for theatre makers. I’m going to use this blog to guide you around the region and share my thoughts on how that might happen. Feel free to comment!
Somerset
Recent national press coverage of Somerset County Council’s total cut of grant aid funding to arts organisations has raised the profile of my favourite county, but all for the wrong reasons. I’d much rather Newsnight or Lyn Gardner were showing an interest in Somerset’s arts scene for positive means, but you can’t choose the time of the day and the cuts – sure to get worse as Arts Council cuts hit – give a big old challenge. Hastily, I must add that the cuts for the arts aren’t the only service cuts being put through by the council, but the impact has been high profile. Rather than being bleak, can theatre makers take the challenges ahead as an opportunity to reclaim the county?
Niche
Theatre in Somerset is where there is a niche and where there is a need for investment. Cornwall, Devon and Dorset all have a rich mix of professional theatre producers, from the self-funded brand-new to the regularly-funded well-established, as well as those who have moved there from elsewhere in the UK. Now is the time for Somerset to encourage that growth.
Even when the money flows, that isn’t exclusively what investment is about. It’s about finding space to let artists work, offering critical development, and working in partnership. Much of what Somerset does best focuses around creative community engagement projects or work for young people, often incorporating music as well as drama. Dance also has an excellent profile in the county with a number of resident companies and artists.
To promote pride of place, to share a rich history with the rest of the UK, to ignite a creative chain reaction that gives venues their stages back, and gives audiences experiences they can identify with as well as being entertained, let’s make Somerset the new artistic hotspot.
Somerset County Council hasn’t cut arts funding by 100%. Rather the organisations it traditionally funds have. There’s an opportunity for those who work as hard, on even smaller resources, to pick up the baton and apply for grant aid. And that means there’s the opportunity to give audiences live theatre that they can be proud about.
Nick White is a theatre maker and producer.