South Hill Arts Centre's resilience through the pandemic

Bracknell’s own South Hill Park found itself in this situation in March 2020. After nearly 50 years of operating as a national charity they had entered a situation where, as an arts venue, they had never found themselves before.

Overnight, performances stopped, music and art classes were cancelled, and the lights went dark on the Wilde Theatre’s stage.

South Hill Park’s Managing director, Craig Titley spoke to me saying:

“Like every Arts organisation in the UK, when we were told we had to close middle of March last year it meant that more than 80% of our income stopped over night because we are an arts centre where we have people attending in person.

“At the time we had to cancel everything which was a huge task, as it was for all venues. We had to re-programme and at the time we rather naively thought that we would be open again in the Autumn or in Spring.”

With 65 out of 70 employees furloughed, Craig told me that the number one priority was making sure that the arts centre was still on people minds as they sat at home, either working or on furlough.

“Initially it was sorting out bookings and then looking at what we were going to do financially because it costs 1.2 million a year to run South Hill Park before we programme any arts.

“We had the same levels of expenditure whilst our income plummeted.”

“We were seeing other venues were closing permanently within weeks, so it was about keeping this building safe and planning as far as we could, given the information that we had.”

The biggest investors to South Hill Park and it’s arts centre have always been Bracknell Town Council and Bracknell Forest Council. As owners of the estate and their 2 major stakeholders, they take pride in the work that South Hill Park create for the local community as a charity and kindly continued their funding even though they were closed.

As a service provider their main challenge was how they could continue providing some kind of a service to the local residents without a building.

Titley explained: “Most of the planning that I do is a year, 18 months, even 2 years ahead and all of a sudden we were thrown into a situation where we had nothing. So, like a lot of places, we had to think about how we could move some of our activities online.”

Credit: Jayne Naylor

Throughout the many lockdowns, South Hill Park Arts Centre created initiatives which brought about a new sense of community for local residents.

“We had something called ‘On your doorstep’, where we were inviting people in the local community to film themselves, singing, dancing, or doing a magic trick and we shared that on social media.”

Podcasts were created which focused on local artists and broadcasting interviews with them.

“It was extremely different, but we were providing something, and as we moved into the new year we started a ‘sing at home’ which was our virtual choir. There were about 300 people who took part and you could just sing for an hour but know that you were doing it alongside a group of other people.”

Throughout the whole pandemic and paticularly at the beginning of lockdown in March 2020, the trustees of South Hill Park met daily to support Craig and the senior leadership team as things changed on a day-to-day basis.

Craig praises the local parish councils in Bracknell, Winkfield and Crowthorne for contributing, to ensure that they were able to open safely. This included putting risk assessments and Covid measures in place within the venue as visitors started to return.

In June 2020, South Hill Park started their fundraising campaign. With funds running out and the cultural recovery fund a long way off, they had no idea what the response would be. Over the next year their expectations were blown out of the water, raising a total of £120,00 through donations from individuals in the community alone.

Craig said: “We know that south hill park is loved locally, and we know that people feel passionately about it. I would say more so than many other venues.

“There seems to be a real sense of ownership with South Hill Park in the local community. But we were asking people to give us cash and we didn’t know how people would respond.

“In the end, there was a real sense of; we can’t afford to lose our arts centre, and they were willing to contribute.

“In the end, people really did rally to contribute. I think the idea that it could close and be boarded up permanently was a definite no-no for a lot of people.”

At the time, the appeal was launched with a video from Kenneth Branagh who as one of their patrons has a long family history with South Hill Park.

Throughout the pandemic, individuals from miles around also planned and scheduled fundraisers where they could for the arts centre. For example, a local parish councillor who is known locally for creating an annual calendar to collect money for charity decided that south hill park was the charity that he wanted to work with last year.

“By July 2020, performers and group in the area who were unable to perform unless they had an online platform started to come forward. People were returning to the park’s grounds which a lot of people do over the summer, and musicians and performers we’re willing to perform to help our campaign.”

According to the venue, the fundraising campaign has made more people aware that South Hill Park is a not-for-profit service provider charity.

They have said that as time moves on and as funding levels drop the arts centre will always rely on ongoing support from the local community in order to continue delivering the outstanding programme that they have for the last 50 years.

Tilbert said: “We may not have had that opportunity if not for covid, to really shout about the charitable status of the organisation.”

When looking back to March 2020 it is so easy to think about the negativity that the last 18 months has brought. However for South Hill Park, it has been an opportunity to think in a different way and shift their thought process to the kind of venue they want to become in the future.

To accommodate people isolating and working from home, some of the courses that the arts centre hold moved online and are now continuing to do so.

Craig said: It’s something that we’ve never thought about before and in particular accommodating people with access needs who would love to come here but either think they can’t get here because of transport or they have mobility issues.

“The more of that we can do, then those people can take part in an arts activity in their own home.

“We’re not just an arts centre, we believe the arts can transform lives. We believe that’s the arts if you take part builds confidence, opens horizons and it upskills people in what they can do. It nurtures talent and we do that through the arts.”

Right from the onset, South Hill Park have been dedicated to protecting the arts centre for the future, and took every opportunity to ensure the charities survival. This included applications to the arts council, minimising expenditure and fundraising campaigns all of which have ensured that throughout it all the arts centre has performed surprisingly well.

Craig has said:

“I’m really pleased that we didn’t have to make any redundancies and we didn’t have to cut anyone’s pay during that period. That is sadly not true of any other venues. Everyone works very hard to make sure that we are able to deliver what we do every single day.

“As an Arts centre we’ve been there to support the local community in numerous ways but we are going to do a lot more, focusing on health and wellbeing and how the arts can support various charities and organisations in our community by working alongside them. We’ve increased our ‘Learning Participation, and community engagement’ team because strategically that is important to us. Whether that’s mental health, physical, socio economc groups, children, or people who are retired.

“From 2022 we are planning a lot more of that activity where we’re using the centre and the arts to support individual groups and improve their lives even if they just have one experience.”

With relaxed performances and screenings made available for each production, everyone now has the ability in South Hill Park to experience the arts in an atmosphere of their choosing.

Craig tells me about the relaxed performances of their panto this year saying: “It’s a safe space where if you get up and dance because you find it difficult to sit down or you’re a bit vocal, nobody is going to judge you. We have had lots of families in for the panto this Christmas and we’ve had quite a lot of feedback.

“There was one young lad who was very scared just in the environment of being in the theatre and the family were worried they weren’t going to sit through it. One of the ugly sisters came down spoke to him, reassured him, made him feel comfortable and it went from one of the most terrifying experiences in life to absolutely loving it by the end of the performance.

“It’s those anecdotal stories that remind us all why we are here and why we want to do more of that to just improve people’s lives.”

As Managing director of the charity, Craig is passionate about how the charity and the local community work together to create and share so many enriching experiences. He said:

“I’ve worked in the arts for more than 30 years and I’ve worked in some nice old theatres but there is something very special about South Hill Park.

“Compared to many venues in the country, the diversity and range of what we offer, from cinema, comedy in the cellar, multiple specialists of visual arts classes and the exhibitions we showcase is the envy of a lot of venues and we’ve been doing it for nearly 50 years now, so I think people just wanted to make sure we were able to go into the next 50 in a good position.”

With things not 100% back to normal, the arts centre predicts that everything will be fully up and running in 6 months’ time with performances and screenings back to their original audience capacity. The Wilde Theatre is already performing to sell out and performances, with a full programme booked well into 2023.