Arts: Funding

Viscount Eccles Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Eccles]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Earl. I cannot resist commenting on the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Moser. I remind him that more and less difficult times come and go. More importantly, I wonder whether it was my father who accused him of whingeing; come to think of it, that would sound very like him.

My point is about how we deal with the present situation, rather than how we got there. I am informed by the Arts Council that one of its five rubrics is that arts organisations need to be sustainable, resilient and innovative. There might be an overlap between sustainability and resilience. Of course, there are different views about innovation. Even some of the recent performances of “Hamlet” have created cries of “Well innovated!”

I could talk about quite a number of different organisations, because I am a sort of long grass-roots fundraiser, but I will talk about the Georgian Theatre Royal, Richmond, and its finances. It is a small organisation. In one of our briefings, it is threatened. The theatre was built in 1788 and went dark in 1842, but it came alive again in 1963. Much credit goes to the wives of previous members of your Lordships’ House. The wife of the late Lord Crathorne was instrumental in leading the recreation of the theatre, as then was her sister, the late Baroness Elliot of Harwood. Finally, there has been the present noble Lord, Lord Crathorne, and his wife, who sadly died about 18 months ago.

The theatre has two charities: it is itself a charity, and it has a fundraising and investment charity. It keeps underlying control of its finances separate from the management of the theatre, which is probably wise because theatre managers are not always fired up by a close control of money. It is lucky because it is in Richmond, which is of course much older than 1788 and has a castle, a fine cobbled square, the Landmark Trust’s Culloden Tower and the Green Howards Regimental Museum. Richmond is not a place that welcomes top-down instructions. It has an amateur drama company and an amateur opera company. The staff of the theatre is small—sometimes very small—and not paid very much, so the theatre depends strongly on amateurs.

How is the theatre funded? Of course, it has had the lessons of history. There were hard times before, in 1842, and also when we were switched from Northern Arts to Yorkshire Arts. At that time, the policy of Yorkshire Arts was radically different from that of Northern Arts. We were thought to be rather unsuitable for funding by the people from Sheffield. We developed a model that we had in mind from experience. Our experience has been that we can generate about 50 per cent of our total costs from people coming to the theatre. We have one advantage, which is that we have heritage tourists as well as others who attend the about 100 performances of music, drama and opera—some professional and some amateur—that we have in the theatre in a year. That compares with a figure in the mid-40s, which is more the average number of performances.

Ever since the death of the first Lady Crathorne, we have been building up an endowment fund. That has been slow—it takes time—but our target is that income from that will fund 25 per cent of the cost of the theatre. We are more than halfway to that target, and I am confident that if we keep on down the same road we will get there. If you have 75 per cent covered, that is not too bad. It also gives you that flexibility and independence, which, if you are a citizen of Richmond who wishes to escape from being told what to do next, you will find very welcome.