SPRING 2021 - EDITION 27
LIGHTHOUSE NEWSLETTER | LIGHTHOUSE NEWSLETTER
THE YEAR OF FIRSTS ISSUE
PROGRAMMING OUT OF A PANDEMIC 01202 280000 www.lighthousepoole.co.uk
WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM OUR FRIENDS
LIGHTHOUSE AWAKES!
INTRO There are many, many things about my job that bring me great joy for which I am thankful every day, and there is always the usual stress that comes with being responsible for the organisation as the CEO. I can honestly say that I have never worried so much or lost as much sleep as I have over the last year or so. The first six months of the pandemic was the worst time as we waited to see what we could and couldn’t do as the guidance from the government changed on a weekly basis. The financial uncertainty until the Culture Recovery funding was granted and the furlough scheme extended was profound and, at times, we felt precariously close to the edge. On a practical note, our amazing people in the artistic programming, marketing and ticket office did an incredible job of cancelling or rescheduling 520 performances, calling customers to apologise that the event wasn’t going ahead as planned and re-booking to the new dates. Sometimes they had to do that three times for the same show! Our customers have been so generous, graciously moving to a new date or in many cases when dates were fully cancelled rather than rescheduled, donating their ticket refunds to us. That has meant so very much to us all. At Christmas we presented 15 performances of a brandnew production, Happy Ever After. Sadly, this was cut short as first some of the actors had Covid symptoms, then the entire company and many Lighthouse staff, including me had to self-isolate on Boxing Day, and then we went into Lockdown 3.0! So, as we welcome our much-missed audiences back to our venue, I am extraordinarily proud that Lighthouse has kept going, refusing to lie down or stand still, and has achieved so many things in response to the greatest existential threat it has faced since opening in 1978. There have been many milestones – it most certainly has been a year like no other and in this special issue we rightly celebrate our year of ‘firsts’. However, as much as we check the rear-view mirror to understand how we got here, our eyes are firmly on the road ahead and we are going to need all our creative spark, entrepreneurial spirit, and showbiz savvy as we embrace a future we have already started to shape. Much of that can be attributed to the phenomenal achievements we have made in fundraising this year, that has provided an investment of around £1 million ensuring our survival as well as providing additional support for a wider, more diverse programme that will include a Christmas family pantomime produced entirely in-house; our Learning and Participation programme to support our community to access artistic opportunities
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and develop their creative talent; and a new programme of artists’ support, SANCTUARY, that is already enabling and supporting artists and creative practitioners to use our spaces to devise, develop and research new work. And, of course, many fun and pleasing productions and performances to offer our audiences the entertainment and joy that has been so missing over the last 14 months. This activity benefits us all in the long run as not only does it assert the position of Lighthouse as a cultural leader and creative hub of national significance with work made here on tour throughout the UK it lights a beacon to illuminate a world of possibilities for the next generation of artists and creatives. And while the last few months have been difficult, frustrating, and challenging, we have found ways to continue to deliver where and when we can, displaying great resilience and motivation to reframe and develop new approaches. On a personal note, I can’t wait to find out how Lighthouse is going to surprise me next.
Elspeth McBain, Chief Executive, Lighthouse
Happy Ever After
SISATA Open Air Theatre working on their adaptation of Antigone as part of the SANCTUARY artist development scheme
Lighthouse: OUTSIDE returns for 2021
Performer Lucy Green worked on her multi-media version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in residency at Lighthouse
PROGRAMME NOTES What does a performance venue do when no-one is allowed to perform there, by law, and even if they were able to nobody is allowed into the space to watch? For more than a year the industry has grappled with that question and Lighthouse is no exception. Here, Head of Programming Tim Colegate sheds some light on how Lighthouse has gone about cancelling and postponing shows while simultaneously planning for the return of live performances and audiences to watch them.
Obviously, there was no template for this, so how do you programme a way out of a pandemic? I have tried to keep one eye on the ‘now’ and one eye on the future. It is very easy to get caught up in the urgency of cancelling and postponing shows, especially when you have as many to deal with as we do at Lighthouse – we have cancelled or rescheduled more than 350 different productions over the past year. However, throughout the various lockdowns, we made a conscious decision to focus on what we can do rather than what we cannot. Granted, it might have created less work for us had we simply shut our doors and waited for it all to blow over, but we never subscribed to that approach; we have a responsibility to our community to remain culturally engaging. So, we have expanded our creative engagement programme; we are thinking digitally; we have invested in new equipment; we have taken our work outside; and we haven’t forgotten the basic principles of programming when looking to the future. As Lighthouse reopens (hopefully for the last time), the programme will be packed full of the diverse, quality, visceral experiences that our audiences expect and deserve.
What have been the main challenges in revising, rescheduling, and extending the programme? The ongoing uncertainty has been the biggest battle, for sure. While I stand by our approach, the frustrating thing about trying to make events happen amidst a pandemic is seeing our best-laid plans dashed time and time again by changing restrictions. Despite that, we have produced our own original Christmas production, enhanced our artist development strand; offered an indoor programme when we could; and launched Lighthouse: OUTSIDE, our first-ever outdoor season in our amphitheatre which is returning this summer over ten weeks. All in all, not too shabby! Looking to the future, the age-old programmer’s dilemma remains: we are always trying to maintain an equilibrium between financial robustness and artistic integrity.
How have promoters and artists faced those challenges? We work with hundreds of producers, promoters, and artists to present our programme and maintaining our relationships with them is of the utmost importance. They
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have been through an ordeal as well and yet they have shown grace and understanding as we’ve worked together to navigate the latest developments. I’ve also noticed a real drive to continue creating work. I don’t believe people in our industry are the sort to be passive in the face of adversity and the creative practitioners that I’ve spoken to have been finding ways to keep creating. It has been truly admirable.
Going forward, what has changed in the way programming works? As a busy receiving house, we are very good at being reactive. We consider existing shows for our programme every day and we are dab hands at welcoming visiting companies into our venue. Long may that continue, too. Our programme features so much more than that though. Enduring the last year has given us an opportunity to assess what more we can do and surviving it has given us the confidence to push ahead with some bold decisions. Lighthouse is not a producing venue, but we are producing our own pantomime for the first time in a long time this year and we’re focusing on how we can enable work to be created even if we don’t produce it ourselves. Thanks to support from the Culture Recovery Fund and the Weston Culture Fund, there will be much greater emphasis on our artist development and learning & participation schemes that will complement our regular received programme. There is no reason why we can’t present a sell-out West End musical by night and facilitate the creation of a newly devised circus piece during the day. As our audience develops and we look longer term, that circus piece might be found selling out our theatre in years to come, thereby allowing us to support the creation of a new piece of musical theatre in the Studio. Of course, that’s a simplified cyclical model but it’s how I see the arts ecology developing. Being commercially successful and artistically progressive are not necessarily mutually exclusive. In fact, I would say that they are more mutually inclusive than I ever thought before.
Three things you have learned over the course of the last year… 1... We are more resilient than we realised. 2... You can think too much; just get on with it! 3... Just because we can work from home all the time, does not mean we should. Flexibility will be the key going forward.
Three things you are looking forward to in the year ahead… 1... Seeing people – staff, customers, artists – back in the building and loving life! 2... Supporting artists to do what they do best. 3... This Northerner’s colleagues have promised him a blistering south coast summer so I’m holding them to it! Especially with Lighthouse: OUTSIDE 2021 on the horizon…
"I’VE ALSO NOTICED A REAL DRIVE TO CONTINUE CREATING WORK. I DON’T BELIEVE PEOPLE IN OUR INDUSTRY ARE THE SORT TO BE PASSIVE IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY AND THE CREATIVE PRACTITIONERS THAT I’VE SPOKEN TO HAVE BEEN FINDING WAYS TO KEEP CREATING. IT HAS BEEN TRULY ADMIRABLE." TIM COLEGATE, HEAD OF PROGRAMMING
Angel Exit theatre company at work in the Sherling Studio as part of the SANCTUARY artist development scheme. They enjoyed a week’s residency to work on a project about Poole’s historic Newfoundland trade and are seen here warming up with their fellow artists from Newfoundland via Zoom
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A YEAR OF FIRSTS The first thing that struck everyone about lockdown was the seemingly endless list of things we were told we were unable to do, but by the time Lighthouse bid its final customers farewell on 17 March 2020, thoughts had already turned to what we could do. What followed has been an incredible year of ‘firsts’ as we remember here... 1st Global pandemic in our history. Although theatres closed in the face of the 1919 Influenza pandemic that was almost 60 years before we opened. We did as we were asked.
1st Enforced lockdown (followed by the second and the third). Never before had Lighthouse been forced, by law, to close its doors. We complied, willingly, but rather than sit still we moved our creative activities online and reached out to engage our audience in new ways.
1st All-staff meetings online. Throughout lockdown and with furlough ongoing, Lighthouse has a maintained a close connection with all its staff, volunteers and stakeholders. As well as weekly meetings for all staff online chaired by the Chief Executive, a weekly newsletter has been produced and distributed to which scores of contributors have sent in items of news, images, recipes, ideas and, most recently, artworks for the Lighthouse Craft Club.
The weekly all-staff online meetings kept everyone in touch.
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1st Bedtime Stories. Using our social media channels in new and creative ways we commissioned award-winning storyteller Michele O’Brien to create a series of short films for Facebook in which she read favourite bedtime tales for the under-7s and they were an instant hit.
1st Song. Live music has been a cornerstone of Lighthouse since the day the building opened in 1978 and the way the Concert Hall floor ‘bounces’ when packed with dancers is the stuff of legend... as artist Lorna Rees found out when she put a call out for people’s concert stories after we commissioned her to write a song about Lighthouse. The track, And the Floor Bounced, has racked up thousands of views online.
Michele O’Brien read the hugely popular Bedtime Stories on Facebook
1st Bedtime story writing competition. Such a hit were Michele’s tales that we staged a competition for young people and adults to write new bedtime stories with the winners seeing their work made for sharing online.
Artist Lorna Rees and her family formed The Lockdown Band to record her song, And the Floor Bounced, commissioned to celebrate our live music heritage.
Bedtime Story (writing competition), Arts Award Discover
1st Cake making competition! Having launched our #LighthouseLoves hashtag for the February half term we did our bit to keep our Little Beacons amused with a series of challenges including a cakemaking contest to mark the 140th anniversary of legendary ballerina Anna Pavlova for which we were overwhelmed with photos of the mouth-watering entries!
1st On-going artist development scheme. As a direct result of grants from the Garfield Weston Foundation’s Weston Culture Fund and the Arts Counciladministered Culture Recovery Fund, Lighthouse has launched its SANCTUARY scheme to enable artists to use its spaces to devise, develop and rehearse new work free of charge.
1st National qualifications delivered by Lighthouse. Certified by Trinity College London, Arts Award is a range of qualifications that support anyone aged up to 25 to grow as artists and arts leaders. All of our Young Writers have passed their Bronze Arts Award and entrants as young as six have achieved Arts Award Discover Online qualifications.
SISATA Open Air Theatre developing a new adaptation of the ancient Greek tragedy Antigone as part of the SANCTUARY artist development scheme.
1st Reopening after public health emergency (followed by the second and, finally the third). Mothballing a building like Lighthouse is not an easy thing to do and causes all sorts of problem when reopening – things burst, crack, leak and drip. Consequently, Lighthouse has been kept on ‘tick over’ during its closures. (See page 7)
1st Digital partnerships. As artists took to the digital world in order to create work, forward thinking organisations followed suit and Lighthouse has enjoyed some magical digital partnerships that have involved interactive theatrical experiences, live music performances, game playing and all points in between with artists and groups as diverse as Platform 4, Angel Exit, John Grant and the Royal Northern Sinfonia, FoolHardy Theatre’s The Three Musketeers, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and The Jazz Bounceback, a global online mini festival.
Invisible Music – Lighthouse partnered in the digital premiere of Platform 4’s immersive and hypnotic Invisible Music.
1st Full use of the amphitheatre. Conceived as a way to reintroduce audiences to live performance following the first lockdown, last summer’s season of performances outdoors, Lighthouse OUTSIDE, was such a hit it’s back bigger and better this year. Incredibly, it was the first time the amphitheatre to the side of Lighthouse had been properly used as a performance space since it was built in the 1970s.
1st Online play readings to care homes. Using the ubiquitous online video conferencing app, actors Fiona Wade (Emmerdale) and Abigail Cruttenden (Not Going Out) read Quicksand by Chloe Moss, partially set in Poole, to residents in local care homes. The initiative came about as a result of Lighthouse’s connection to new writing theatre company Paines Plough and its Come To Where I Am caller service.
1st International media attention. Far from going silent in lockdown, Lighthouse has told its story more widely than ever before, achieving significant coverage on BBC News, the Today Programme, BBC South Today, several national newspapers, Radio Solent, Wave, Wessex/Greatest Hits Radio and in the local physical and online news outlets. It also picked up its first international coverage when Chinese state-backed network CGTN visited in lockdown to record a feature.
1st Covid-secure Christmas show. Produced in-house, written and directed by its star Chris Jarvis, Happy Ever After was an instant hit with socially distanced audiences who revelled in the panto jokes as children’s story book characters shared their ‘happy ever after’ tales.
CBeebies' Chris Jarvis wrote and directed Happy Ever After, the Christmas show we produced in-house for socially distanced audiences
1st Online escape room-style adventure game. Created and filmed at Lighthouse by Marvo Mysteries, The Mystery of the Missing Magician is a familyfriendly online adventure team game for remote players.
Harry Potter actor Rohan Gotobed stars in The Mystery of the Missing Magician, an online family escape room adventure game filmed and set at Lighthouse
1st Lighthouse Young Writer commissioned by BBC. In March 2020 Eve Wright’s audio play Anchor was commissioned to be made by the BBC after she was selected as one of five Lighthouse Young Writers shortlisted for BBC New Creatives and enjoyed two training days at BBC Bristol.
1st Live/As Live streamed performances from Lighthouse. Although we have long enjoyed loyal support for event broadcasts and encore screenings in our Cinema, Lighthouse had never hosted such events before the start of last autumn’s BSO season of live streamed concerts. Just weeks later we played host to the prodigious talents of the Lockett-Vettese Band who wrote, rehearsed and performed a new piece of music called Other Voices Other Rooms in a behind closed doors residency at Lighthouse that was subsequently broadcast online.
1st Benefit concert. Former pupils of Poole and Parkstone Grammar Schools who now work in the arts industry organised an online benefit concert in aid of Lighthouse in lockdown. No matter whose house it was watched in, there wasn’t a dry eye to be seen!
Love For Lighthouse benefit concert in aid of Lighthouse in lockdown.
STILL TO COME...
The Lockett-Vettese Band wrote, rehearsed and recorded a new concert performance filmed in residency at Lighthouse.
1st Content filmed and broadcast in-house. As a result of funding received the new Digital Project will shortly see creative content made, produced, filmed, and broadcast by our own team, effectively establishing Lighthouse as an online studio.
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FUNDRAISING: THAT'S WHAT FRIENDS ARE FOR When Lighthouse Friends launched in October 2019, we were fairly confident it was going to be a successful scheme. We knew we had a large base of loyal supporters and we felt we’d come up with a membership scheme that would give our Friends the opportunity to come closer to our work and encourage them to continue to support us. In the first six months, Lighthouse Friends generated more than £6,000 in income for Lighthouse – but like everyone else, we had absolutely no idea what was around the corner. By the start of 2020 we had 148 Friends, we’d held our first Friends event, and it felt like we were on a positive trajectory. But then the pandemic hit and there was some concern how it would affect the Friends programme – particularly as Friends would not be able to take advantage of many of the benefits such as events, discounts at the bars, and buying tickets without paying a booking fee. However, our Friends made it clear to us that they wanted to continue to support Lighthouse. Like everyone, they were keen for us to get through the pandemic and saw their membership as a way of helping.
OUR SAFE HAVEN FOR ARTISTS
One of this year’s fundraising highlights has the support of the Garfield Weston Foundation’s Weston Culture Fund. The fund was designed to help organisations restart their work, and in awarding us a grant of £290,000, the Garfield Weston trustees commented that they were “particularly struck by Lighthouse’s focus on community engagement and artist support”. The grant will pay for a wide variety of activity including upgrading the infrastructure of our Lighthouse OUTSIDE amphitheatre, helping us to pay artists fees so that we can encourage some of the country’s larger touring shows to come to Lighthouse, organising a Dorset Artists’ Conference to provide professional support to artists from our region, and subsidising tickets to help us encourage new audiences to visit Lighthouse. One of the major things to come out of this funding is SANCTUARY – an innovative new scheme that gives artistic practitioners the chance to use our space for free in order that they can progress their practice and develop new work. Programmes like SANCTUARY will ensure that the grant we’ve received from the Garfield Weston Foundation will have a long-term impact at Lighthouse. By using this funding to develop new artist development programmes, we will be able to unlock future funding opportunities from other trusts and foundations who will support the continuation of this work.
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Instead of Friends leaving the scheme, and despite Lighthouse being closed for large parts of the year, the number of Friends has actually increased and we now have 259 members – a clear sign that our Friends want to support us and take advantage of the benefits that bring them closer to our work. As well as their annual membership fees (starting at just £35), many of our Friends have supported our Bridge The Gap appeal – helping to raise more than £27,000 over the past year. And now that we’ve turned the corner, our Friends are starting to take advantage of their memberships once more. Many have used priority booking to snap up the best seats for a whole range of upcoming shows, and we’re hopeful that plenty of Friends will be able to join us at our first Friends event of 2021, which will be held on Saturday 3 July. It’s been a tough year, but we’ve got by with (more than) a little help from our Friends – and we couldn’t be more grateful. Tom Shallaker, Fundraising Manager
MEET OUR FRIENDS: RALPH AND JANET MARSHALL
How long have you been visiting Lighthouse? We have been visiting the Lighthouse since about 1990.
What made you want to make a donation to support Lighthouse? We are great lovers of culture and we want to encourage all aspects of it to thrive in a part of the country we first enjoyed visiting and now live in.
What do you most enjoy about being a supporter and a Lighthouse Friend? The personal contacts we have with the team at Lighthouse and are able to offer opinions on and hope this influences future events at Lighthouse.
What’s been your favourite memory at Lighthouse? Being shown around backstage and seeing what our donations have helped improve.
Which artists would you most like to see on stage at Lighthouse? We love musical theatre and are great lovers of the shows created by the composers of the 1930s - 1950s, the Gershwins , Rodgers & Hart, etc. And more recent shows like Jersey Boys. We also love live music and whenever we can put a calendar together of music we enjoy we will stay in London for a few nights to visit singers and musicians performing at one of the Pizza Express jazz venues. We have seen Jamie Cullen, Clare Teal, Marvin Hamlisch, Derek Nash with Noel McCalla (Some Kinda Of Wonderful - a celebration of Stevie Wonder), Ian Shaw, Amy Baker etc.
Stuff & Nonsense theatre company working on their adaptation of Pinocchio that will premiere at Lighthouse as part of the SANCTUARY artist development scheme.
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SAFETY FIRST: LIGHTHOUSE IN AND OUT OF LOCKDOWN Like all arts organisations and many businesses, Lighthouse has faced enormous challenges during the coronavirus pandemic, not least having to deal with the necessity to close down then reopen the building – not once, not twice, but three times. Here, General Manager Martyn Balson looks back on the last 12 months and ahead to whatever happens next...
Lighthouse had never before had to close in the face of a global health pandemic, what did it actually involve for the organisation as a whole and for you personally? We began contingency planning for likely scenarios in early February 2020 when reports first started emerging from China regarding the virus and looked at a range of short-term and long-term closures. We used this as a base for planning how each scenario would affect our people, our building and our colleagues across the industry. One of the outcomes from this was the early purchase of a range of high-end PPE which we donated to a local care home after we closed down. Realistically, none of the senior management team expected such a long closure period, but we were well prepared. Personally, the closures have meant being involved with the maintenance and security of the building as well as changing the way we work to accommodate government guidelines for operating safely on reopening.
And how do you go about waking up Lighthouse and getting it ready for customers, artists and staff again? The building has been on tick over since closing at the end of 2020. We will schedule in a deep clean and reset of all of the retail areas and the public venues. The teams have been working hard to keep the building up together and use this period for maintenance and a few licks of paint!
How well has Lighthouse stood up to the demands of the last year? Very well. We are lucky to have such a range of spaces that can be adapted for different uses. In the last twelve months the Theatre has been adapted for the studio programme of music and comedy; it has also become a cinema. The Concert Hall has had its stage extended to support the BSO and their digital concert season. The Green Room has become the testing point for staff to increase safety in the building. We have launched our Outside programme of events and Lighthouse has been used as a set for a digital escape room!
FROM 29 MAY - 24 JULY
The success of the first Lighthouse OUTSIDE season last year has seen the return of outdoor performances in the amphitheatre this summer
In the coming weeks, staff will begin a reinduction process which will cover health & safety, customer service, first aid and building familiarisation. The wellbeing of colleagues, artists and customers will be a key driver in this period as we begin increase our activity.
To what extent was it possible to draw on previous experiences and emergency plans and how does the experience of the pandemic inform future planning? Lighthouse has a contingency planning process developed with help from the experiences of the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon. It is a simple planning and recovery model which can be adapted to different scenarios which then produces actions for teams to deliver in a clear command structure. We like to think we are cool in a crisis!
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Lighthouse PPE donation – Martyn with the PPE donated by Lighthouse during lockdown
Screen On Stage, the new cinema experience in our Theatre space boasts one of the largest and loudest cinema screens in the region
THREE THINGS YOU ARE LOOKING FORWARD TO IN THE YEAR AHEAD…
1 The Lighthouse OUTSIDE programme. It’s going to be bigger and better than last year with a real festival feel to the amphitheatre. 2 Screen on Stage. During the early part of the year, we received funding for a state-of-the-art cinematic installation in the Theatre. It’s absolutely incredible, and is now one of the biggest (and loudest!) screens in the area and we are all looking forward to customers enjoying the experience in the Theatre for the first time. 3 Welcoming customers and artists back into the building. Lighthouse is a building built for people to socialise, laugh, cry and share amazing artistic experiences together. The lack of people in the building over the past year has been deafening.
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WHY I LOVE LIGHTHOUSE Matt Black & Mel Berkhauer HANGOVER HILL LTD, CURATORS OF LIVE AND UNHEARD It's true to say that every aspect of what Lighthouse provides endears it to most who experience it. From a relatively obvious perspective, the sheer variation and scope of the entertainment available to the general public within its walls (and outside now as well) puts most other autonomous centres to shame. From cinema and musical concerts, to exhibitions and theatre, provided by global stars, alongside serving a creative local community, enabling local musicians, actors, and artists to tread the same boards, work with the excellent technical staff and taste that same success, and genuinely integrate the whole spectrum seamlessly. We've made that sound easy, and the people who work at Lighthouse really do try to make things as easy as possible, but it, without any doubt, requires an experienced staff, with the qualifications and personal skills that they have, to make that engine purr as well as it does – and through Live & Unheard we've witnessed how hard they work behind the scenes. They are professional, approachable, intelligent, and innovative. The management genuinely communicate with the frontline staff; they listen to each other, there is a willingness from both floors to fulfil the ambitions of the other, to allow creativity to flourish, and that becomes part of the solution, never the problem. The flexibility of Lighthouse is also a massive asset, both in the future proofed design of the centre, and, again, the expertise of a forward-thinking management team. It's difficult to think of a situation that Lighthouse cannot handle. WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE?
Live and Unheard, our monthly unsigned music showcase, convenes for Lighthouse: OUTSIDE on Saturday 29 May and Saturday 3 July (an all-dayer featuring the afternoon ‘Bit on the Side’ and full evening line ups),
01202 280000 www.lighthousepoole.co.uk