Cash boost for Shoreham’s locked-down Ropetackle arts centre

The grant for £34,800 was awarded through a national Arts Council scheme to help certain venues through this difficult time.

For Ropetackle, it will cover the interim cost of necessary staffing and on-going overheads.

In common with venues across the country, Ropetackle has had to navigate its way through the period of closure – which has resulted in the loss of thousands of pounds worth of ticket sales – to protect its limited financial resources while also planning for the future. This has involved rescheduling a large number of events and anticipating what safeguarding measures will need to be place when the time comes to reopen.

Martin Allen, chairman of the Ropetackle Trust, said he was delighted with the encouragement – crucial to ticking over until the situation changes.

“We are giving it our best shot, but the realism is that we are not going to be back up to full operation until into next year. December is our real target. We would love to be able to have our panto in December, but between now and then we are going to be ticking over, trying to up our game a bit in terms of streaming and also looking at other ways of doing things. But clearly full operation is still some way off.”

Martin makes the point: it is not simply about what the government says venues can do; it is also about what their audiences will be comfortable with: “And we have also got to keep a weather eye on the economy. The last recession had a significant impact on ticket sales. If we are looking at a tough economic time ahead, we are going to have to anticipate that. But financially we are confident we will be OK when we get back into our stride, but until then it is a question of husbanding our resources.

“The difficulty within this section is that whatever the government is saying, the reality is that when we are permitted to open, it is going to be on the basis of some fairly rigorous constraints in terms of distancing. The big question is whether it is going to be viable for venues like us to operate if we can only have one third of our normal audience. And it is not only how to space people. It is also about the pinchpoints like the toilets and the doorways. And we also have to think very carefully about whether and to what extent we can ask our volunteers to do the stewarding.

“We are having conversations with performers and agents, and we have also been talking to other venues. Venues have been talking to each other, which is good. But a show that can only take 50 people of our capacity of 220 financially is not going to be viable, but we are trying to be imaginative. We are looking at the possibility of putting two or three shows on and people seeing it in batches. We are going to be experimental. And in the next few weeks, we are also going to be looking at some streaming which we will be testing to a limited audience to make sure it is OK.

“But we are optimistic about our panto. Last year we had 45 performances, and it sold out. It is such an important thing for the community, and financially December is very good for us, but really what the world is going to be like in December, we just don’t know.”

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