THEATRE WELCOMES CASH LIFELINE
THEATRE CHIEFS AWAIT DETAILS OF GOVERNMENT’S £1.57 BILLION EMERGENCY FUND
LEICESTER’S Curve theatre has been losing £25,000 a day in earned income since it was forced to close due to the lockdown.
Bosses at the venue highlighted its plight as the government unveiled a £1.57 billion package to try to save the arts sector from collapse.
Theatres, cinemas, galleries and museums are still unable to reopen like pubs and restaurants in most places apart from lockdown Leicester – and there is no clear indication yet of when they might be able to.
The government’s fund follows warnings more venues will fail unless they are propped up until they are permitted to raise the curtain again, restart performances and invite audiences back in.
The extra cash has come too late to save the city’s Haymarket Theatre, which went into liquidation in May, a victim of the coronavirus lockdown.
Leicester City Council invested about £3 million installing new seats and fittings in the 1970s-built theatre three years ago.
But the Haymarket Consortium , a group set up to run the venue, was forced to hand the lease back to the city council.
Curve, in Rutland Street, has been struggling after being forced to cancel a series of shows.
Its chief executive officer, Chris Stafford, said at the weekend, before the government support package was unveiled: “Unless there is urgent financial support, closure until 2021 will decimate our sector.
“On average Curve is losing around £25,000 a day in earned income.
“Mothballing is a scary prospect – and one that will take years to recover from.”
While Curve, which has been showing archived performances online in the absence of actual audiences, does not yet know how much it will receive, it has welcomed the injection of funds.
In a statement, Mr Stafford and Curve’s artistic director, Nikolai Foster, said: “We welcome this news of urgent investment to protect our word-famous arts and cultural industries.
“We know theatres play a vital role in our communities and it makes good business sense to invest in our sector which brings millions of pounds into our local economies.”
They said they were keen to see details of the funding.
The £1.15 billion fund for cultural organisations in England is made up of £880 million in grants and £270 million of repayable loans.
The government said the loans would be “issued on generous terms”.
Independent cinemas, heritage sites and music venues will also be eligible.
Funding will also go to the devolved administrations – £33 million to Northern Ireland, £97 million to Scotland and £59 million to Wales.
A further £100 million will be earmarked for national cultural institutions in England and the English Heritage Trust.
There will also be £120 million to restart construction on cultural infrastructure and for heritage construction projects in England that were paused due to the pandemic.
The government said decisions on who will get the funding would be made “alongside expert independent figures from the sector”.
Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said the grants and loans were “designed to last through this financial year”.
He said the two broad aims of the package were to preserve “crown jewel” venues such as the Royal
Albert Hall and national galleries, while also helping local institutions across the UK.
He said the government was confident the emergency package would protect the majority of jobs in the culture sector - but not all.
“Sadly, not everyone is going to be able to survive and not every job is going to be protected and sadly, of course we will see further redundancies,” he said.