London Bubble in trouble as ACE withdraws all funding

Published Tuesday 18 December 2007 at 13:45 by Lalayn Baluch

London Bubble Theatre Company is in the process of appointing an insolvency practitioner and “fully envisages” issuing redundancy notices to staff, following a 100% funding cut by Arts Council England.

As part of its review of regularly funded organisations, ACE has decided not to renew the London Bubble’s £420,000 grant from next April - amounting to a 50% drop in its total annual income.

According to Sandy Craig, chair of the theatre company’s board, the arts council’s recommendation to withdraw subsidy was based on concerns about the artistic quality of its work. However, the theatre group believe that the decision did not take into account all of its creative projects.

Craig told The Stage: “Our view is that over the last 18 months we’ve had one or two reports on about seven productions - that doesn’t include any educational projects, didn’t include our major partnerships, and didn’t include our Christmas show last year. So it [the decision] was very partial.

“I think in total there are about 30 different projects, participatory educational as well as professional shows, that we do every year. It [ACE] is only judging us on a small part of what we do.”

Officials at London Bubble will now be appealing the decision, and have launched an online campaign urging the public to write to their MPs in support of the company, which is due to be assessed by an insolvency practitioner who will decide whether it can continue to function.

Throughout its 35-year history, London Bubble has worked in boroughs throughout the capital to deliver projects to youth and adult groups, as well as programmes to 33 schools annually. It attracts 43% of its participants from black, minority ethnic and refugee communities, and works with more than 10,000 children and adults every year - 15% of whom are attending theatre for the first time.

Jonathan Petherbridge, artistic director of the company, said that he was “appalled” and “gobsmacked” with ACE’s decision, particularly in light of the arts council chief executive Peter Hewitt’s recent statement that the recommendations took into account the need to increase engagement and participation.

Meanwhile, an ACE spokesperson commented: “We have had concerns about London Bubble for some time and we have made them aware of these on a regular basis.

“We want to fund excellent, exciting work that attracts new audience, but unfortunately we don’t believe London Bubble is delivering this as well as we hoped they would. So we are proposing to invest the money elsewhere. We are absolutely committed to high quality children and young people’s theatre and that is why we fund organisations such as Hackney Empire, Unicorn, Young Vic, National Youth Theatre and Albert & Friends.”