The nail-biting 48 hours that saved the arts
The news of a rescue package stunned some of the industry’s biggest leading lights. Dominic Cavendish reports
For sheer pulse-quickening drama, little could rival the past week in the arts. The sector was sliding ever closer to the abyss. Then – whoosh – the Government’s £1.5billion arts rescue package represented a last-minute reprieve – a deus ex machina moment. Incredibly, the final elements of that unprecedented intervention were only locked into place shortly before the announcement on Sunday, following a frenzy of activity at the weekend.
Many leading players in the battle to get the Treasury to open up the coffers were almost as in the dark as members of the press and public.
Rufus Norris, the artistic director of the National Theatre, was driving home on Sunday afternoon when word reached him of the impending news, which broke at 9pm. “I was aware there was active work going on behind the scenes – I knew the game wasn’t over,” he says, “but it’s safe to say that I was feeling gloomy.”
That morning had seen a Sunday newspaper report suggesting that there would only be limited financial support for the sector, loans rather than grants and that it should brace for thousands of job losses and “aggressively mothball” venues. “I read that and thought ‘Oh no’. It felt like an internal leak that was preparing us for the worst,” says Norris.
The mood, he says, had worsened recently. “About three weeks ago there was a sense of hope. The Government was talking confidently about everyone being back up and running by October. But I think the [coronavirus] spike in Leicester and some American states made everyone think, ‘Hang on, this is not going to go away’ and it felt like the temperature cooled significantly. A couple of times, we expected an announcement but it didn’t come. Over the last two or three weeks, I was thinking, ‘This might not be going our way’.”
With its finances in a parlous state, the National itself delivered grisly news on Friday – that 400 casual staff, comprising its 250-person front of house and 150-person backstage teams, were not going to be kept on after August. Even with the announcement, which Norris hugely welcomes, the budget is too tight to reverse that decision; he doesn’t expect a full reopening until next year.
At the forefront of the industry’s engagement with the Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden and his department (DCMS), Julian Bird, the chief executive of the Society of London Theatre and UK Theatre (the umbrella organisations representing the West End and beyond), suggests that the increasing tally of bad news focused minds in Whitehall. “I think the stark reality of how serious the situation was for a lot of organisations started to hit home, and was really understood by the Government.
“We impressed the severity of the situation on them. It felt like every half day there was more grim news – from Plymouth, Newcastle, the National
– it felt like there was a tsunami coming.”
Even though action was imperative, the speed of events surprised him: “On Saturday afternoon we all thought the announcement was going to be on Wednesday or later. On Sunday morning it became clear that the decision had been made to change it to Sunday evening. So we spent a lot of the day preparing for what was being announced. It was a mixture of politicians and DCMS officials working with their equivalents at the Treasury and with people like me and others feeding data and arguments in, trying to influence what that outcome might be. The press release was ready by the early afternoon. A lot of this is not formal meetings, it’s discursive phone calls and quick texts – it’s fleet of foot.” Andrew Lloyd Webber tells me that he only heard the news on Sunday night – after the press had it, to hold until after the proposed 10.30pm embargo (broken by the Financial Times at around 9pm). This is fairly astonishing given his prominence as a leading figure not only in the arts but in the recent campaign to save them. Nica Burns, leading West End theatre producer, didn’t know on Sunday afternoon, when journalists were already being briefed about the news.
It seems that many members of the arts world had been deeply involved in talks, and the NT had people working closely with the Treasury, but it was still unclear when they would jump. Says Norris: “The Treasury have had their hands full, just in the last few weeks they’ve turned their full attention to it.”
By some definition it seems that this weekend it just became the arts world’s turn. Nickie Aiken, the Conservative MP representing Cities of London and Westminster (which includes the West End) – a key figure in helping organise the economic argument for government support – explains the mystifying silence of Dowden to comment that a package was being worked on: “I really feel for Oliver. I knew he wanted to do this, but we all knew we needed a big figure – it wasn’t going to be £80million, it had to be at least £1billion, and he doesn’t have that kind of money in his budget. He has always understood the urgency – but all paths lead to the Treasury.”
She believes that Dowden’s visit to the London Palladium on Thursday to see the huge strides that Lloyd Webber has made in making it a template for Covid-safe shows, “may have given him extra confidence to go to the Treasury and say ‘Look, there’s light at the end of the tunnel’.”
But Aiken, too, was in the dark, only getting the news hours before the announcement. “I was having conversations even on Thursday afternoon saying to the DCMS team – ‘You really have got to get on this because we’ve got to give the culture sector some hope’.”
Aiken said the battle had never been ideological, just about cash: “It was always going to be about the financial argument, ideology didn’t come into it, nor did votes. That’s just not how it works.”
Dowden has converted sceptics and (along with Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor) reaped political capital and popularity from the sudden progress. That said, he caused consternation with his follow-up interview on Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday when he suggested it would be a challenge for theatres to reopen this year. Burns, the producer and co-owner of Nimax theatres, whose portfolio includes the Palace – home of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – went from being cheered to shocked.
“In all the discussions that we’ve been having, [Dowden’s] saying that it would be a challenge to open this year by Christmas was not what we expected. I take ‘challenging’ to mean ‘no’. And the critical thing is for us to be open and earning.”
Lloyd Webber, busy on his Cinderella musical, is hoping for a fairy-tale ending. “All I can say is I think that behind the scenes Oliver Dowden is doing everything he possibly can to get theatres open as soon as possible. The people who need to be convinced are the public health officials. I’d say watch this space.” The saga’s not over yet.
Andrew Lloyd Webber gave Oliver Dowden confidence to go to the Treasury