The Stage

Free theatre ticket initiative runs out of publicity funds

Published Tuesday 27 April 2010 at 14:28 by Natalie Woolman

A Night Less Ordinary, the government-launched free theatre initiative, has come under fire yet again after it emerged that the entire communications budget for the scheme has already been exhausted, despite the fact that the project has nearly a year to run and is still well short of its stated target of giving away in excess of 500,000 free tickets to under 26 year olds.

Arts Council England, which is administering the scheme, has spent all of the £100,000 that was assigned to communications out of the £2.5 million pot that it was handed down by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to support the initiative, which was launched in February last year. Over the first year of the scheme, 174,717 tickets were given away.

Meanwhile, a reduction in the arts council’s own communications resources, due to cost-saving restructuring, has led to complaints from venues that ACE is no longer able to publicise its own scheme effectively.

London venues participating in the scheme have received an email telling them that ACE was no longer able to provide entertainment publication Time Out with A Night Less Ordinary listings “following the reduced communications resources following the Arts Council England’s restructure this month”. The venues have been asked to flag up any ANLO performances themselves.

A source at one London venue commented: “It seems a shame that the arts council feels it’s no longer able to publicise its own good news story because of reduced resources.”

With 10 months of the scheme left to run, ACE has now appointed a freelance PR to publicise the scheme until December, at an estimated cost of £35,000. This extra cost has been funded from ACE’s central funds for development projects.

Director of the National Campaign for the Arts Louise de Winter commented: “It is slightly flogging a dead horse now but they’re obliged, they are kind of morally obliged, to see it through.

“What they need to be doing is using the viral marketing techniques - Facebook campaigns, all those sorts of things, which are relatively cheap and easy to set up. What they need to do is look at smarter, cleverer ways of spreading the word and spreading the message and networking and linking into younger user groups.”

Shadow culture minister Ed Vaizey added: “We now know that in order to keep the scheme going, the arts council will have to find money from a budget that could otherwise have been used to fund arts organisations at a very difficult time.

“This shows how idiotic Labour’s scheme was and, what is even more amazing, is that they say in their manifesto they want to continue it.”

ACE was unable to comment on the criticisms due to purdah, which prevents government departments and government-funded organisations issuing non-factual information while parliament is dissolved ahead of a general election.

Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Ben Bradshaw recently criticised the administration of the scheme by Arts Council England. In an interview with The Stage, he claimed that “the project management of it left something to be desired, to be honest”.

However, he added that ACE has a new strategy for the remainder of the scheme. Culture minister Margaret Hodge also acknowledged that the scheme had been rushed.

Liberal Democrat culture spokesman Don Foster has also criticised the scheme for failing to reach its stated targets. Labour originally claimed that the scheme would give away one million tickets over two years, although this figure was later revised to around 600,000.