Bard of Barnsley at ‘pay what you want’ arts event
THE ‘BARD of Barnsley’ Ian McMillan will be among the performers at a ‘pay what you decide’ arts event in South Yorkshire next month.
The Barnsley Civic will be hosting its annual scratch event at 7.30pm on September 30, providing an informal chance for regional artists to showcase new work in front of a live audience.
Visitors can pay as much as they want to at the end of the night, with all donations distributed equally between the artists and The Civic to support the development of their work. A post-show question-and-answer session will also be included in the event.
Artists from the Civic Artists Residency Programme, who have been supported by The Civic to develop their new work in a creative environment, will be among those performing.
Mr McMillan, a columnist with The Yorkshire Post who makes regular appearances on BBC Radio 4, will also feature alongside composer Ben Parks, who has written and performed for film, television and theatre.
The pair will also be in residency with The Civic through late September to develop a script for a new piece Our Fathers, which will focus on father/son relationships, particularly Mr McMillan’s own relationship with his father.
The creative team for the project consists of animator Tony Comley, actor Adam Burton, director Fin Walker and writer Ed Harris.
They will aim to create an interwoven theatrical cinematic world of an actor within a film within a song.
A number of organisations and artists have tried a ‘pay what you want’ pricing system in recent years. Rock groups Radiohead and Wheatus both released albums for which they charged fans only what they wanted to pay.
A year after the 2007 release of Radiohead’s In Rainbows, Rolling Stone magazine reported that more people had downloaded the album free than had paid for it, but it had still generated $3m in total sales.