Odds and sods: March 2024

Sorry this is late. I had two season launches in the backlog, and then I was spending a lot of time preparing two different shows. But it would be embarrassing if we ran out of April, so let’s get a move on.

Stuff that happened in March

The big news, of course, was the closure of the Vault Festival. This is a really big deal, and so got a whole article to itself.

Other than that, we’ve had quite a lot of news around various censorship issues. So yet again, I wearily weigh in to censorship debates. But we’ll get to that later. First of all.

Another new Theatre space in Sunderland

You may remember back in 2021 I covered news of two new theatres coming to the north east: Laurels in Whitley Bay and The Fire Station in Sunderland. Since then, I’ve given a lot of coverage to the former but little to the latter. This is because – although they are getting plenty of business – The Fire Station’s programming has ended up being heavily dominated by music events. That’s not a complaint: bigger venues in particular have to be mindful over what sells, and if it’s music events, that’s what you get. But in terms of a venue that gives local theatre-makers a chance to get started, there’s no comparison to what Laurels is doing over in Whitley Bay.

But now, we another venue on the way, and this one might be better bet. Theatre Space North East is a Sunderland-based company, but until now they’ve been one of many north east companies. However, they’ve just got a grant which enables them to convert a building currently used as a rehearsal/storage space into an actual theatre. A small one compared to the Fire Station, just 56 seats, but if you’re starting off, a small venue beats a big one hands down. I’m not sure exactly what the funding source is, but my reading of the story is that it was Sunderland City Council’s decision to choose this. If so, that is encouraging, because it suggests at least one local council recognises the value of giving grass roots artists somewhere to go.

Odds and sods: February 2024

Blimey. It’s a news-heavy month this Feburary. Better get right to it because I run out of March to write this up in.

Stuff that happened in February

Oh, my aching hands. Here’s what you’ve kept me busy writing up:

More woes at Brighton Fringe

It turns out I wasn’t connected to all the Brighton Fringe rumour mills. I’d known for some time Caravanserai wasn’t coming back, probably because Brighton Fringe couldn’t run a venue without letting costs go out of control. Now it’s gone public that Spiegeltent and Sweet aren’t being part of Brighton Fringe either. They are still running at the same time in May and June, but they are not registering with Brighton Fringe. (I admit, I did hear rumours of Spiegeltent doing this, but I’ve heard things like this touted so many times I didn’t pay much attention. I’d assumed that with Caravanserai being the focus of so many grievances, the main source of aggro was now resolved. But apparently not.)

This means that Brighton Fringe 2024 is going to be very messy. At close of registrations for programme launch, we have 556 Brighton Fringe registrations. That’s low. This could be an artificially low number, because with no paper programme to meet a deadline for, it’s not such a big deal to register late, but it would have to a big last-moment surge to turn things round. At the time of writing, Spiegeltent have launched their own not-Fringe programme, but I haven’t had time to analyse this yet. I will be analysing this a lot more as Brighton Fringe coverage ramps up, because the implications are too complex to go ito here.

A lot of this is going to ride on how the fringe media chooses to cover a fragmented Brighton Fringe. Will Sweet and Spiegeltent still get the coverage, or will they be sidelined? For my part, my own decision is that, for now, I will treat Spiegeltent and Sweet the same way as if they’d been part of Brighton Fringe proper (a bit like I did with Warren Outdoors in 2020, albeit under different circumstances). However, after this, I expect all parties to make reasonable efforts to resolve their differences. I’m not interested in blaming the other side as an excuse to not make a reason effort yourself – I want to know what you are doing. But we can start having that debate in July onwards. For now, I expect a truce. Get through this, don’t get in each other’s way, and any blame games can wait.

Odds and sods: January 2024

Right, it was really embarassing how late the last one was, so I’m going to get a move on with this. This time, it’s one of the slowest news months around, so I should be able to do this quickly.

Stuff that happened in January

Unfortunately, most of the news I have is bad news. There is some news coming from Edinburgh that might be better, but that news has only just broken, so I’m going to leave that till the next odds and sods when we might know more about how this went.

Apart from that, here’s what’s been happening, and it’s not great.

Caravanserai not come to Brighton

This isn’t actually January news as such. Nothing has been announced in public yet. I’ve known about this unofficially for some time – however, it is also possible to work this out from publicly accessible information. So anyone who has an active event on Eventotron will notice one notable omission: Caravanserai is not available as a venue. Caravanserai was also not mentioned at the registration launch in spite of it getting lots of coverage last year. It therefore seem very likely that the rumour mill is correct and Caravanserai is not coming to Brighton Fringe 2024.

Oh dear, what went wrong there? Caravanserai was supposed to be the answer to Brighton Fringe’s cash flow worries. We are increasingly moving to a situation where the major fringe venues make most of their money not from performances but from ancilliary income on the bars and food outlets. This is why I didn’t join in the complaints of food/drink prices there – I’d rather they made the money from something you didn’t have to buy from something that you did. Anyway, they did a lot of business and it seemed that it’s money-making objective was working. But it seems I spoke too soon. Even if you have excellent income, you can still make a loss if you lose control of expenses. That was part of the reason for The Warren’s downfall, it’s happened elsewhere, and now it seems it’s happened here. Ouch.

The most obvious effect for fringe performances is that they won’t have Caravanserai to flyer at. Luckily, Brighton City Council has been persuaded to relax rules on city centre flyering, so it shouldn’t be too much of an issue as long as you’re organised (although I have my doubts on the value of flyering outside of fringe venues). As of yet, it’s not clear what’s happening to Fringe City. Hopefully this could move back to New Road or Jubilee Street, but I’d be a lot happier if this was confirmed as sorted. What I’m concerned about more is money. Was the income from Caravanserai needed or not? Because if it is, we’re going to have to find a different plan very quickly. Last year there was grumblings that Caravanserai was going to take over Brighton Fringe. I hope I’m wrong, but that could turn out to be the least of the problems.

Odds and sods: November 2023 (and a bit of December)

Yes, this is the most behind schedule Odds and Sods I’ve done. December, as you might recall, we chocka full of catching up on reviews. As such, I considered just skipping this. But there were a couple of bit of big news from November, which need a recap. So tuck yourself in, for …

Stuff that happened in November (and a bit of December)

Luckily for me, December was the usual slow news month, which means that nothing I have reported has gone particularly out of date. Some of the things here had minor further developments after November passed, but nothing fundamentally changed.

So, two bits of big news, and two things probably nobody else cares about but I’m raising them anyway as they’re my two bugbears.

Vault festival home and dry?

So we begin with the big news – and for once, the big news is also the good news. Since February, the Vault Festival has been on tenterhooks following the shock news that the Vaults Theatre – who actually hold the lease for the space – decided they didn’t want the Vault Festival back. Unexpectedly losing your premises is very bad news for any business: if failure to find new premises doesn’t bring you down, the financial outlay of an unplanned move might. As 2023 moved on, fears of bankruptcy slowly receded as they continued recruiting for senior positions (something you wouldn’t do unless you were reasonably confident of being able to pay the salary). However, they couldn’t get a new location confirmed in time and conceded that the next Vault Festival couldn’t take place before autumn 2024.

But finally, Vault Festival has done it. They have announced they’ve secured a new venue. No announcement yet as to where it is, but it’s still in Zone 1 and, so they claim, of a comparable size to their old venue. There is, however, one crucial difference: they have rights to the space all year. The Vault Theatre did host a number events outside the Vault Festival – in this new space, however, the Vault Festival will be in charge all year. And, of course, the Vault Festival aren’t going to kick themselves out. I’m not sure how long they have the new venue for; lease renewal is a perilous business in itself and some theatres found to their cost. But we can cross that bridge when we get to it, probably at least ten years away.

Odds and sods: October 2023

This is a really late odds and sods, but i do have an excuse. Since the end of October, I genuinely have been chock-a-block busy. But I’m now finally is a position to catch up. Let’s not waste any more time, here we go.

Stuff that happened in October:

I’ve been rush off my feet, but elsewhere it’s been a quite month. But a few notable things happened.

The Rialto reincarnated

Brighton Fringe has been through lot of ups and downs in the pandemic and the aftermath, but the thing that surely left the most sour taste in the mouth was the closure of the Rialto Theatre. I don’t know the details of this; as far as I can tell it came down to the lease running out and the landlord deciding to make more money by converting the place into flats. This is a problem endemic through the world of small venues, and it’s by no means unique to Brighton Fringe. But both the Pebble Trust and the Arts Council threw hundreds of thousands of pounds to rescue other venues, most notably The Warren. Nobody could have known at the time that The Warren was a doomed cause. But had a fraction of the money gone The Rialto’s way, who knows, it might still be here now.

But wait … it seems that Rialto is down but not out. Roger Kay, who ran the venue, has been brought in by The Ironworks to programme their new studio-sized space. And this seems like an excellent idea to me. The Rialto lives on as a community of artists it built up over the years, but has no space to perform in. The Ironworks, on the other hand, has spaces to form in, but does not have a community of artists that The Rialto has built up. So joining forces is a great idea. In retrospect, there had been signs things were going that way – some of the regulars who’d previously made The Rialto their venue of choice were choosing The Ironworks as their alternative. It makes a lot of sense to formalise and strengthen this arrangement.

Odds and sods: September 2023

So fringe season over and we’re back to doing updates this way.

The big subject, which I’ve been banging on about on Twitter in righteous fury mode, is the allegations against Russell Brand. Even if the criminal allegations are not proven, this really should serve as a wake-up all to the whole arts industry. There again, there have been a lot of scandals that should have been a wake-up call to the arts industry, and they did bugger all about it. If you want to know what I think should be done, read The questions we should be asking about Russell Brand.

But other stuff has been going on too.

Stuff that happened in September

I’m not going to repeat all the Russell Brand stuff here, save that there has been a development in the last few days on a related matter – which is positive, for one. But we’ll save that for last.

Vault festival 2024 is off – or is it?

Let’s start with the disappointing news. Vault Festival have been in a crisis since their landlord Vault Theatre – previously viewed as synonymous with the Vault Theatre – told the Vault Festival they wanted them out. The original panic was money – not so much a threat of bankruptcy, but the prospect of having to lay off its year-round staff – but that seems to have abated. Where Vault is stumbling is finding a suitable new venue. To some extend, this is a quandary of the Vault Festival’s own choosing. They could have struggled on with the five satellite venues they have near the Vaults itself, but the focus seems to have been on finding the right thing for the long term. And, so far, this has not coincided with securing a place suited for them.

However, the Vault Festival has already been blighted by two cancellations, and they’ve proven themselves to be resourceful in this situation, arranging “Fringe Futures” in 2021 and a very hastily arranged “Vault Transfer” in 2022. This time, their substitute festival is “A Pinch of Vault”, a work in progress festival which they’ve done before, but this time they’re upscaling it and moving it winter as their flagship festival. You remember I said they could do a festival with their satellite venues if they wanted to? That’s not too far what they’ve done. Not the exact same venues (Vaulty Towers, for example, seems to be run by Vault Theatre and is loyal to them), but something on a similar scale. And if all goes well, the next Vault proper will happen in autumn 2024 (although still probably on a reduced scale).

Odds and sods: March 2023

It’s April, it’s getting on a bit, but at least it’s not late as last time. here’s my round-up of minor news stories from March.

Stuff that happened in March:

The big news from March was the mysterious closure of The Exchange, which North Tyneside Council insists isn’t a closure. I’ve given my full thoughts here, as this was covered at length during the launch of The Laurels’ new season. The short version is that The Exchange is it currently exists is coming to an end this month, as their lease has run out at it’s going to “Stonebanks investments”. North Tynesde Council, however, claims the Exchange isn’t closing, this scheme is part of a “cultural quarter”, and the new leaseholder is going to create something bigger and better.

Have to say, I am sceptical over North Tyneside’s version of events. One would have thought that a cultural scheme of this magnitude would have been planned and trailed months in advance, rather than left to the last moment. It also seems unusual that a property developer with no previous record of cultural activities is suddenly interested in being a part of the cultural scene. At best, this has been handled badly; at worst, The Exchange as a theatre is being set up to fail. I will keep a close eye on this.

Apart from that bis news, here’s what else has been happening.

Live Theatre playwriting competition

Since my last Odds and Sods was a proper gloom-fest, let’s open this one with something positive. Jack McNamara is still making his mark as Live Theatre’s new artistic director, and one of the new things that has come in is a playwriting competition. As many of you will know, my enthusiasm for opportunities through script submissions are limited; I’ve written a long piece about my issues with playwriting competitions and how to handle it (TLDR: if you can, produce your writing yourself rather than wait for a thumbs up that will probably never come). However, if you are going to do a playwriting competition, this one, I believe, is the way should should do it.

Odds and sods: February 2023

A late one again – apologies, but with Live Theatre’s press event being on invitation, I had to get that out of the way first.

Right, what happened in February?

Stuff that happened in February

Well, what do you know. I went through listing notable events that need raising, guess what? It’s one of the most depressing odds and sods I’ve seen. Here we are:

No end in sight for Edinburgh’s accommodation crisis

This news isn’t so much specific to February, but February is arguably the month when things started to come to a head.

Edinburgh Fringe has been criticised for pricing performers out for decades, but until this decade it was the venues coming under fire for their costs. This changed last year, not because the venue were getting any cheaper, but because accommodation costs were spiralling out of control. Without being able to mind-read each and every landlord in Edinburgh we can’t know the reason for certain, but the popular theory is that landlords who bought properties for the purpose of renting to fringers lost a lot of income they were counting on in 2020 and 2021 and are desperate to recoup it. I’m not sure if anyone did some proper statistical tracking of this, but what I can say is that I heard endless complaints about high accommodation costs up to and during Edinburgh Fringe. It never use to be like this.

However, it appears most people grumbled but paid up. That, I think, was collectively a mistake, but it seems this gave landlord the message they can get away with anything, and are upping the rents from extortionate to piss-taking. I’ve seen one-month rental costs for flats higher than buying one in a normal city. Okay, these are probably being flagged because they’re the absolute worst examples, but it doesn’t bode well for typical offers. Also, I’m hearing of big-name comedians (who previously had no problem making a profit) questioning if it’s worth it.

The other side of the issue, though, is Edinburgh locals being priced out of living in their own city. Even the most avid fringe-lovers have their patience stretched when would-be homes are being snapped up for one month a year buy to let. So the Scottish Government is planning a ban on short-term lets; Edinburgh Fringe, in response, dropped a bit of a bombshell by forecasting that it will push registrations down by a third in 2024.

The immediate question, however, is what happens this year. Will fringe performers lump it again, or is this the year the bubble finally bursts. The first batch of registrations are now announced (190 as of Feb 16th), but without any easily comparable reference points from last year it’s hard to see where this is going. My forecast, however, is that things are going to get very messy and very nasty. The only question is when.

Latest from Brighton Fringe

Whilst it’s still up in the air what size Edinburgh Fringe will be this year, we have a pretty good idea with Brighton. At the time of writing, there’s 699 registrations. This would suggest it’s slightly down on last year, which wouldn’t be too surprising given the woes from cost-of-living jitters last year, and being down one major venue (Rialto). However, it’s difficult to make an exact comparison, because this year Brighton Fringe is doing without any sort of printed programme at all – as such, the registration deadline doesn’t really mean anything. So we may have more events registering at the last moment, now that missing the printed programme doesn’t apply.

What we can be sure about, however, is that there’s no prospect of getting back to the 900-1000 high water mark of the late 2010s this year. Maybe achievable in future years if new pop-up venue Caravanserai want to grow as big as The Warren did, but let’s face it, enthusiasm for another dominant megavenue is currently zero.

I was going to express concerns about the usability of Brighton Fringe’s new website, but Brighton Fringe has been quick and fixed the problems I flagged already. The only thing I’m still keeping an eye out for is whether this works as a substitute for the Daily Diary which has been discontinued. One way or the other, we need an easy way of seeing what’s on today and when – but if they carry on fixing problems at their current pace, we should be okay.

What is going on in Oldham?

I’ve not really been paying attention to who gained and who lost with the National Portfolio funding rounds outside of the north-east. Whilst I thought the cuts in London were unfortunate, I still prefer this to perpetual top-heavy funding of the capital at the expense of the rest of the country. However, it’s been impossible to ignore what’s happening with Oldham Coliseum. For a start, this doesn’t seem to make sense with what Arts Council England were supposed to be achieving; Oldham is nowhere near London, and is in an area of Greater Manchester that doesn’t have much else in the way of cultural organisations. That’s strangely at odds with the pattern elsewhere of making sure every local area gets something.

Then the bombshell announcements came: firstly that Oldham Coliseum was suspending its programming after March 31st (when the NPO period runs out); and then that they were closing completely. Ignoring the rights and wrongs of this for a moment, this was seriously weird. The NPO funding model is supposed to have bridging support precisely to manage the transition away from NPO status (if not, it would be Armageddon every time there was a new funding round). And then, the really strange development: Arts Council England said it was committed to a cultural venue is Oldham. But not Oldham Coliseum. The closest it gave to a reason was “Oldham Coliseum Ltd has been facing financial and governance challenges for some time”.

For what it’s worth, I think Arts Council England has to be more specific. They argue they don’t make reasons public because of commercial sensitivity, but it’s concerning that they can apparently pass a death sentence on a big arts organisation with no scrutiny of their decisions. However horrible it may be to air dirty laundry in public, if an NPO organisation really has screwed up so badly that they have to be shut down, we deserve to know what it is. And we also need a serious debate on how something this catastrophic has been allowed to fester and escalate out of the public eye. And, of course, Oldham Coliseum Ltd. might be in the right – they must be allowed to argue their case so that ACE can’t make bad funding decisions and get away with it.

Someone has screwed up very badly here, it’s just not clear who. We will do no favours to the people of Oldham by hiding whatever the truth is.

Vault Festival crisis

And just when you think things can’t get any worse, shit is hitting the fan at the Vault Festival. All the festival fringes took a hit with Covid, but the Vault Festival took it the worst. They made a calculated decision to skip 2021 and aim for a relaunch in 2022, only for that to fall foul of Omicron. Cancellation just before a festival starts is the worst possible news financially, so I was wondering if there would be a Vault 2023. But there was, it’s underway – and now, out of the blue, their landlord wants them out.

At this point, it’s worth clarifying the difference between “The Vaults” and “Vault Festival”. The former is the actual physical space underneath Waterloo station. One space is permanently set up as a theatre; the rest, however, are pop-up spaces set up by Vault Festival who rent the space from The Vaults for eight weeks. Very little happens the rest of the year, so the two things were considered synonymous – but not any more. The reason, so we are led to believe, is that The Vaults wants to use the space for longer-term commercial projects.

At first, I’d put this news down to the usual Landlords are Cocks™, with someone valuing short-term profits over long-term cultural investment. But, like Oldham Coliseum, the more I think about it, the more I think there’s more to this than meets the eye. I can easily see selling a building lease to a chain pub or turning a function room into a dining room being a better money-earner if you’re that shallow, but what else is going to make you money underneath a station? If I was seeking to open yet another chain pub in Lambeth, that’s the last place I’d want to put it. Compared to the Vault Lates (effective a club night on Fridays and Saturdays), which sell out easily, I don’t understand where you’ll find a better offer.

The only thing I can see being workable is these immersive theatre experiences that seem to be getting popular in London – but one would that thought that if this was viable, that would already be doing decent business in April to December. No, I’m convinced somebody knows something we don’t. As for what the real reason is, that’s anyone’s guess. Maybe the landlords got greedy and the Vault Festival put their foot down. Or maybe Vault Festival weren’t good tenants and kept trashing the place. Or maybe it was a pointlessly stupid outcome of another pointless culture war. I’ll talk about Vault’s plans for the future when I do my roundup – but this is very odd.

1950s Beamish

Okay, now you’re all feeling depressed, let’s end with something positive. For a change, a bit of local cultural news that isn’t performing arts, which is Beamish. For my London readers, Beamish is an open-air museum that has numerous buildings made to look like buildings from the 1830s to 1940s – quite often real buildings that would otherwise have been demolished, moved and rebuilt brick by brick. For the last few years, however, they’ve been working on a big project of the 1950s – a period of history that’s always fascinated me where the hopes of a nation emerging victorious from a world war still mixed in quite conservative ideas of how to live your life.

Well, the thing I hadn’t realise is just how big this project is. At the time of my visit, there is a 1950s village hall, shopping street, and a 1950s farm, but that’s only about half of it. We still have a 1950s council estate, cinema and bowling alley to go. And these aren’t just museum pieces either. Beamish has always had cafes and bars themed to their respective time period, but this goes further. The village hall was doing a traditional village panto, and I believe the cinema and bowling alley will be available for real cinema and bowling. This project isn’t just an extension of the time period covered by Beamish, it’s also an extension of what the open air museum does.

The thing that struck me the most, however, is that sometimes things look different today – and sometimes it feels exactly the same. The 1950s council houses currently being built now look very much the same as the modern houses being built today. The insides of houses don’t look too different from ours, except that there’s no modern appliances. The traditional panto I caught a glimpse of looks like any village hall panto today. Probably the most interesting one, however, is the 1950s farm from the Durham Dales. It looks reasonably similar to a modern home except … no electricity.

County Durham and Tyne & Wear folk: highly recommend this. Should be complete in a few months’ time. A favourite attraction of County Durham has just taken on a new dimension.

Stuff I wrote in February

Apart from that, here’s what else I’ve been covering:

What’s worth watching: winter/spring 2023: A shorter list of recommendations that usual, because a lot of the picks that grabbed my eye aren’t happening until spring/summer.

We need to talk about Roald Dahl and sensitivity readers: TLDR: it wasn’t censorship, but it was incredibly petty moralising. What this business did reveal, however, was the flaws in the sensitivity reading process, and just how much power publishers have to abuse.

16 films and plays I find objectionable (that no-one else seems to have a problem with): Intended to be mostly a light-hearted piece, but intended to answer a long-running question on whether there are limits to me easy-going attitude. Prepare to have your favourite nostalgia ruined. (The last two entries on the list, however, I really do have problems with).

Love It When We Beat Them: back to the future: I have finally been invited to Live Theatre’s press events. I give my verdict on a pleasing opening to the 50th anniversary season, and give my highlights of what’s coming up over the rest of the year.

Odds and sods: January 2023

Yes, I know, it’s nearly March. The excuse I had is that for the last three weeks I was working solidly on two consecutive plays. I did think about rolling everything over to next month, but on reflection, I’ve decided to stick with a January catchup. Many of the events that started rearing their head in January have gone on to escalate into February. Those I won’t cover here, but I’ll have a lot more to say about them in February.

Stuff that happened in January

So the one thing I won’t be going over here is the business in Oldham Colosseum. Towards the end of January there were signs things might be coming to a head – now, the situation is much much more serious. As a result, I won’t be covering this here, as the small bit in information I had at the time is already wildly out of date. There were also the first signs of grumbling of accommodation for Edinburgh Fringe 2023, but again, things are moving quickly. I’ll cover those in next month’s odds and sods, where there will be a lot to talk about.

Apart from that, there’s only a couple of things left to mention:

Brighton Fringe venues

So the big news coming to a head in January is that it’s all change with the venues yet again. With no word from The Warren going into the New Year, everybody was increasingly working to the assumption that they wouldn’t be coming back to Brighton Fringe 2023, and then, on the 31st January, it was confirmed they’re not coming back ever. Otherplace Productions Ltd has gone into liquidation. I haven’t forgotten my promise to write about this and I will be doing so shortly (it’s easier to avoid writing damaging material about a venue when they’re already kaput). In the meantime, however, The Warren-shaped hole that Brighton Fringe needs to fill has become permanent.

But … we might have just the thing to step into the breach. On the Warren’s original site north of St. Peter’s Church, we have a complete newcomer to Brighton Fringe. Step forward Caravanserai. This, I gather, is something that until now has functioned as a pop-up area of music festival camp Bestival, and as far as I can tell, they will probably look similar to how The Warren did (just hopefully without the financial fuck-ups). What I don’t quite get is how they are planning to programme this at relatively short notice, but maybe they’ve got pre-existing contacts from Camp Bestival who are going to be coming on over. Whatever the plan, The Warren might be gone for good, but the kind up venue that The Warren pioneered in Brighton looks set to stay.

Odds and sods: November 2022

Sorry this is late. Was suddenly made busy with panto tech, long story. Let’s get to it.

Stuff that happened in November:

It’s been a slower news month than usual, but there were still a few things that I thought were worth reporting.

Boho Arts

The big news from the north-east is it looks like another venue is on the way in Newcastle – and this is a big deal. I’ve been saying for some time now that Newcastle needs another venue of a scale comparable to early-days Alphabetti theatre. Welcome though Alphabetti’s success is, the fact that it was so quick for its programming to be saturated showed just how much pent-up demand there was for somewhere to perform; something that one new fringe theatre alone couldn’t achieve. The recent arrival of The Laurels in Whitley Bay might relieve the squeeze a bit, but my hunch is that we need another space in Newcastle – preferably managed and programmed independently of the current venues. And now it looks like we’re going to get one. Step forward Boho Arts.

With small-scale venues in short supply, any new one would be newsworthy,, but it’s doubly newsworthy because this is being openly back by a lot of well-known Newcastle names. And, interestingly, the lion’s share of their Crowdfunder has come from the North of Tyne Combined Authority – notable in its own right as this is (I think) the first major intervention from the new regional mayoralty in the arts.

If you want to back this (and if you have any interests in grass-roots levels arts I think this is in your interests), the crowdfunder is still open here. Also (more low-key but still relevant) they are looking for volunteers here. Keep an eye on this, because it’s a big deal. In five years’ time we could easily be mentioning this in the same breath as Alphabetti Theatre.