The Stage

Bleak future for Drill Hall after ACE pulls funding

Published Monday 17 December 2007 at 14:15 by Matthew Hemley

Gay performance venue the Drill Hall has cancelled its current production and put all its staff on redundancy notices after Arts Council England announced it would be removing its £250,000 annual funding.

The theatre, which is recognised as the country’s leading producer of lesbian and gay shows and which celebrated its 30th anniversary earlier this year, said it had “immediately closed the doors” after receiving ACE’s letter last week and had “laid off” its part-time staff. All other staff have been put on redundancy notices and contracts for new work have not been issued beyond the beginning of 2008.

Julie Parker, the venue’s artistic director and chief executive, said the venue’s future was “bleak” and added that management was looking at what the “implications will be”.

She said the doors had been closed on its current show, Bitch Slapped By God, because it was “cheaper not to be open”.

“Arts Council England have not talked anywhere about the art or the work that Drill Hall has been doing. We have been working with gay, lesbian and queer artists for 30 years, producing work that is of the highest quality and that is award-winning. They said they have serious concerns about the sustainability of the organisation. For an organisation that has been going for 30 years, that is an exceptional thing to say,” she said.

The Drill Hall has a long association with the BBC and other radio and TV production companies and has been used to record popular shows for BBC Radio 4, such as The News Quiz and The Now Show, which generates additional income for the venue.

However, Parker claimed ACE had questioned the relationship the venue had with media organisations and said: “The way we bridge the gap between public subsidy and our own income is that we work with other media and use our resources here to record shows that produce substantial income, which in turn enables us to create the work and pay the artists. It has also meant we have been able to build a new studio theatre without National Lottery money. How unique is that? But they say it is the wrong sort of fund-raising as it does not come from major trusts and foundations.”

Parker said the venue would be appealing the decision and also urged people to support the Drill Hall by logging on to its website and joining the campaign to protect it.

A spokeswoman for ACE said the budget cuts were proposals and claimed the organisation had outlined “a very detailed rationale” as to why it no longer considered the Drill Hall to represent value in terms of investing public money in the company.

She said the proposal to withdraw funding was to do with the company’s performance on a business level and added: “Our proposal to the Drill Hall is about what we consider to be consistently poor performance in terms of finance and business planning. We have set this out to them in considerable detail and if it is their view we have got that wrong, they can respond to us in as much detail as they want to.”