Belgrade Theatre Annual Report 2008/09

Belgrade Theatre Review of the Year 2008/2009

Picture: Audiences taking their seats in B2 prior to ‘One Night in November’ - our sell out production about Coventry’s blitz experience.

David Shortland

Although this is the first year that I have been Chairman of the Belgrade, I have been involved with the theatre as deputy chairman, a board member and indeed, an audience member for the last seven years.

During this time we’ve seen a huge change in the theatre; both on the stage and off it.

The theatre’s redevelopment was the catalyst for the adjacent Belgrade Plaza, which not only regenerates this area of the City but also starts to define an area in which a sustainable night time and leisure economy can thrive.

When I walk from the new car park through to the theatre, past the soon to be opened restaurants and the newly re-landscaped and redesigned Belgrade Square; it makes me extremely proud to think that it was the Belgrade’s vision that has not only turned its own fortunes around, but a significant section of the city with it.

On the stages, the impetus of our reopening season has been built on this year; albeit in much reduced scale in light of both a difficult funding situation and, of course, a severe downturn in the economy.

But even with those underlying conditions, box office takings have exceeded our expectations and our commercial exploitation of conferencing &

We’ve seen a huge change in the theatre; both on the stage and off it. events and the theatre set building business have meant that, thus far, we have been able to trade our way through these issues.

Belgrade Theatre Trust (Coventry) Limited (A company limited by guarantee)

Board Members: Mr D Burbidge OBE, MA, DL (resigned 25/9/2008) Mr D J Shortland FRICS, Hon DBA, Chair Mr B C Beck BSc, C.Eng, MICE, Vice Chair Mrs C H Barnett BA Hons Cllr J Blundell Mr W H Glen LLB Ms C Malcolmson BA Hons Ms P G Parrott BA Hons, MA, MBA (resigned 29/5/2008) Mr N K Rambhai MA Hons Ms K J Reid BA Hons Mr M H Ritchely FCA, FCIB, Hon DBA (Coventry) (resigned 25/9/2008) Ms L P Shields Cllr A Skipper BA MA PGCE DipM MCIM (resigned 11/6/2009) Ms J Stephens (resigned 25/9/2008) Ms C Hamilton (appointed 20/11/2008) Mr A C Dent (appointed 20/11/2008) Mr P Fenner FCCA (appointed 20/11/2008)

Allied to that our Community & Education Company goes from strength to strength and I feel compelled to say that none of this would be possible without the ongoing dedication and enthusiasm of the theatre’s staff and management; and it is important that their significant contribution to the success of the theatre is recognised.

Funding Body Representatives entitled to attend Board meetings:

Looking forward, I see a business that is as lean and professional as it can be, one that has staff and managers who are experienced, trusted and resourceful and a theatre with a growing local and national reputation.

Registered office : Belgrade Theatre Belgrade Square Coventry West Midlands CV1 1GS

The release of a limited amount of reserves will allow us to produce more theatre in the next year or so which will provide a better balance between the visiting work and our home produced work.

I am convinced that everything is now in place for us to kick on and recapture the momentum of the reopening season.

Arts Council England West Midlands Ms S Luton (Chief Executive) Arts Council England West Midlands Ms A Gagen (Theatre Officer) Coventry City Council Ms Alice Davey (Head of Culture and Leisure) Company registered number 00593331 Charity registered number 219163

Company Secretary and Executive Director Ms K J Reid BA Hons Chief Executive and Artistic Director Mr W H Glen LLB

The Belgrade Theatre gratefully acknowledges financial support from:

It should be an exciting year.

David Shortland FRICS, Hon DBA Chairman

The Belgrade Theatre is reliant on a number of organisations who support its work in the community. These generous supporters make it possible for us to undertake our exciting and innovative programme of work. Supporters in 2008/09 included: The 29th May 1961 Charitable Trust, The Sir Barry Jackson Trust, The Saintbury Trust, The Clore Duffield Foundation, The Heart of England Foundation, and The Norton Foundation. We gratefully acknowledge the commitment of all of our supporters.

The Belgrade Theatre's vision: To become one of the most dynamic producing houses in the country.

The Belgrade Theatre's Mission: Our role is to provide a comprehensive performing arts service of the highest possible quality for Coventry and the surrounding regions and to act as an ambassador for Coventry & The West Midlands when touring.

2008/09 was a pivotal year for the organisation as it was the first full year of operation in the new extended building, after a very busy and well received reopening Season in September 2007 that successfully recaptured the Belgrade’s audiences, and began the job of re-establishing the Theatre as a major producing house.

The Belgrade is a bigger theatre with two auditoria, more staff, higher costs, and has new opportunities to earn from new sources of income, which the Theatre is very successfully exploiting.

But the year was a difficult one because the higher costs of the bigger organisation are not fully funded by the new sources of income. Half way through this particularly challenging year, the world economy went into freefall.

The Belgrade however is in good shape. The management had created as many areas of flexible costs as it could, in order to be able to keep control of as many areas of expenditure as it can and seasonal and flexible hours working continues.

However it is the Theatre’s core activity of producing own shows, programming the new second space and the community & education work that falls within the flexible cost area.

In the very tight circumstances of 2008/09, the Theatre was necessarily cautious in committing to costs and during the year only produced four inhouse shows (two of which were revivals) and B2 was only open for public performance for 25 weeks, although it is also used as a workspace for local theatre companies and occasionally a rehearsal space for the Theatre, as well as an increasingly popular Conference Venue.

At the same time, income earning has improved.

Staff have worked hard to improve existing income generation through box office and front of house sales. Belgrade Production Services (commercial set building) and Events & Conferencing; the two new businesses that run through the Theatre’s wholly owned trading subsidiary, Belgrade Theatre Enterprises, and that were kicked off last financial year, have had excellent trading years.

Both are forecast to continue to grow and both elements returned sizeable contributions to the Theatre’s operating budget at the same time as increasing employment opportunities for staff working on flexible contracts.

The Theatre has returned an excellent year result through significantly improved income generation, particularly and unexpectedly in the last quarter of the financial year, combined with an outlook now proved to have been too cautious.

Alongside this healthy financial picture however, the Theatre’s core activity was critically low.

Given the health of the Theatre’s reserves combined with the proven ability of the staff and Executive to manage and control costs and maximise income opportunities, the Board has decided to invest the 2008/09 trading surplus into the Theatre’s revenue activity over the next two years.

This will allow the Theatre to produce more work, programme B2 for more weeks and run additional Community & Education programmes than would otherwise be possible were the Theatre limited to living within its revenue means.

Plans for 2009/10 and 2010/11 will therefore see a level of activity that the Theatre considers to be much closer to its optimum and which, the Theatre hopes, will make the case for increased investment so that such activity can continue into the future.

Picture: One Night in November, (Nov 2008)

Main Picture: The House of Bernada Alba (November 2008) Hamish Glen

“I really feel that the Belgrade has succeeded in its ambition.”

It’s been a frustrating yet rewarding year for the Theatre, almost in equal measure.

This is a constant process but I really feel that the Belgrade has succeeded in its ambition.

The level of produced work for the Theatre was the main issue. There was frustration when, as a result of the substantially increased costs of running a larger building combined with the failure of core funding to recognise this, the theatre was not in a financial position during 2008/09 to deliver more than one new production (The House of Bernada Alba), two revivals (The Night Before Christmas and One Night in November) and the pantomime (Dick Whittington).

Our staff are skilled, committed and motivated and have made a significant contribution to the Theatre’s outstanding results in terms of the box office income, level of customer service and the quality of the work we do on our stages.

2008/09 therefore saw a dangerous imbalance between produced and presented work and restoring this balance remains a key challenge for the Theatre.

Happily 2008/09 was a far better trading year than was expected and we can now invest a limited amount of the surplus that has been earned into producing more theatre over the next two years.

It is this level of commitment and professionalism throughout the building that has brought us through some very uncertain times.

It is as I say, a continuous process and we cannot rest on our laurels as the economic outlook and funding situation is clearly still uncertain.

However, what I am certain of is that we, as a whole, have done everything we possibly can to make this theatre a well run business and a beating creative heart for the city and region.

It doesn’t solve the issue, but it does help our vision and aims in the short term.

This situation has come about by the rewarding part of the year, in that we set out to create an organisational culture of involvement, development and continuous performance improvement and used the closure and reopening period to design and implement this new approach.

Hamish Glen Artistic Director & Chief Executive.

Inset Pictures: From top to bottom: One Night in November (November 2008), The Night Before Christmas (December 2008), Dick Whittington, (December 2008)

“An incredibly dramatic piece of work; well acted and gripping.”

The House of Bernada Alba

“If there is any play every person in Coventry should make a point of seeing, this is it.”

One Night in November

“The Belgrade’s panto has set a standard the others are going to find hard to match” Dick Whittington

Community & Education Company The Belgrade Community & Education Company (C&E) aims first and foremost to make pieces of work that bear witness to voices marginalised in the mainstream.

The C&E Company believes that these voices are best heard if presented in original and high quality pieces of work that people want to watch and listen to.

The community work of the theatre is seen as an art form in its own right.

During 2008-9, the Belgrade’s community programme went from strength to strength, kicking off with the first In Our Own Words Community Festival in April 2008; marking 10 years of Big School, the TiE transition project that reaches at least 40 schools each year; building through the expansion and flourishing of our re-launched programme for Black and Minority Ethnic Communities, The New Black; and hurtled headlong into planning the programme for 09-10 and preparations for the 13 performances that made up the Mysteries – In Our Own Words in July 2009.

April saw the first Festival of Community Theatre at the Belgrade, In Our Own Words. The Festival was the first large

scale event organised by the C&E Company since re-opening, and saw the first of its performances in B2.

The Festival was a great success, with enthusiastic feedback from participants, audiences, funders, partners, creative practitioners and policy makers alike.

It has provided the C&E Company with the opportunity to showcase a range of its work (film, youth theatre, work with young at risk, theatre in education), and to clearly communicate the distinctive flavour of its work .

It also gave a strong sense of pride and identity to the young people participating, presenting their own work, seeing work made by their peers, being supported and serviced by the theatre as a whole with the same respect and consideration given to them and their work as a professional company.

The C&E Company see this as an important milestone in the development of their programme for the coming five years.

2008/09 stats • • •

Picture: The First Time we saw Snow

•

480 Workshops, 7810 participation Opportunities 59 schools performances, 34% of participants from priority postcodes areas, 77 different Community groups supported

Pictures: (left) Members of the Acting Out Company meeting HRH Duke of Wessex after their performance at the official opening of B2 last year.

Acting Out Acting Out, the Belgrade’s ground breaking Work Related Learning programme celebrated its 10th year.

The project works with young people who are not fulfilling their potential in mainstream educational structures.

The students complete two BTEC certificates in Acting and in Dance, which is the equivalent of 4GCSEs, at the same time as building

(Below) Some of our final year students with their BTEC certificates.

confidence and communication skills.

Their achievements on the programme also contribute to them improving their performance in school.

The final year students developed and performed their piece Look Twice at

the In Our Own Words festival.

The Year 10 students devised their performance piece around experiences of sibling rivalry which culminated in two performances for family and friends in July 2008

The New Black

“We gained more confidence at talking in front of large groups of people”.

Picture: This is us.

On 13th October 2008, the Community & Education Company launched its new strand of work for Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities, The New Black.

The Black Youth Theatre performed their first B2 show, This Is Us, for two nights in February.

The show explored young people’s experiences of being controlled whether by parents, teachers, or the church.

The show included lyrics by a former member of the Black Youth Theatre group, who had left the group in preparation for starting at Coventry

University. He was commissioned to write three songs as part of the performance.

His writing was so impressive and so articulate about the experiences of young people that he also became involved in the writing of the main dialogue.

The response from staff on this project was fantastic, and the result was a very successful piece of work that is already proving to be an important milestone in establishing links with young people from BME communities.

Also launched this year was Critical Mass. A free ‘Introduction to Playwriting’ course for young writers of Black and Minority Ethnic backgrounds.

The project, and indeed the whole strand of work, provides a challenge to staff to develop an environment where new communities feel happy to open up to a process whereby they The course is run in collaboration with collaborate with their workshop London’s Royal Court Theatre and leaders, and with other staff in the The Drum, Birmingham. theatre.

2008/09 quick facts Where did our audience come from?

Number of bookers by area1 North North South City Other

City

South

2

07/08

08/09

% increase

3066 5061 9937 3071

3876 5959 11072 3669

26.4% 17.7% 11.4% 19.5%

24,576 bookers2 in total , An increase of 16.3% on 07/082.

Notes: 1 Number of bookers figure is the number of individuals booking not the number of tickets purchased.

To allow a meaningful comparison with 07/08 (in which the theatre was open for only 7 months of the year), the figures for 08/09 also only include the 7 months from Sept - March.

55% Other

of visitors come from outside of the Coventry city area.

North South

City

This is an increase of just

3%

under on 2007/08 levels.

What did our income consist of ?

In 2007/08 we earned over 3

45% of our income through ticket sales and other revenues.

3

Belgrade Enterprises Ltd incorporates income earned by Belgrade Production Services, Conferencing & Events and ices/merchandising.