Hello friends, and welcome to another update on our journey to theatreland! The levels of exhaustion, emotional fatigue and hatred of bureaucracy are high, but we are pushing on! So, here’s our latest updates:
KeyFund
We’re a bit behind on our application (shock), mainly because we hadn’t fully grasped how long a business plan is – we were confident we had all the info needed, just in a variety of places – but it’s taken longer than we thought to pull it all together. However, we should get the application submitted tomorrow which will hopefully keep us on track for an October decision date! It’s honestly been a soul-draining experience to quantify a theatre and reduce it to merely a business, rather than the living, breathing thing that it is, but there we go.
New Projects – Family Inclusion
A couple of weeks ago we finally got round to planning out our community offering for families and children. We’ve decided to run an after-school drama club, which will focus on older children (14+), helping them have fun with drama, and also showing them the various non-acting sides of theatre – lighting and sound, set design, stage management etc. We’re planning to offer these classes at a massive discount – £30 per term – with support from Awards For All. We’re getting help from Danny Antrobus, who is a lovely fundraising expert. He’s helping to write the funding application to Awards For All. The funding will pay for drama teachers, and subsidise the classes to let us run them as cheaply as possible! We’re now just waiting for our CIC registration to come through (more on that below) and we can send the application in!
New Projects – Developing Skills
As well as the children’s drama classes, we’re also asking Awards For All to fund three other programmes. They are:
- Paid internships – we will have 3 paid internships available every year, 1 day a week each for 3 months. These will track with our in-house productions and enable the intern to see a show through from casting to the final curtain call
- Theatre skills training – we will run monthly workshops on the administrative and production side of theatre – how to apply for funding, how to use Facebook marketing, basic light and sound etc.
- Lifeskills training – inspired by SlungLow (OMG WE LOVE THEM) we will also hold monthly lifeskills training classes, open to anyone. They’ll cover a range of topics such as basic finance management, cookery skills or healthy relationships
We’re really hoping that Awards For All will give us the funding we need to make these things happen. And if not, we’ll look elsewhere, because Sheffield needs more opportunities and training in the arts!
And Finally…. A Rant About Bureaucracy!
It feels like every blog we’ve written recently has had a promise that we’ll be a fully incorporated Community Interest Company soon. And friends, we have really been trying! Here’s a tweet from our Executive Director on what’s been going on:
Companies House is making me actually cry at my desk. I’m reaching the edge of my tolerance, friends, and nonsense keeps occurring anyway pic.twitter.com/RPSDhaNC1k
— Miranda Debenham (@mdebenham1) September 4, 2018
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We have, of course, resent the paperwork again now, so keep everything crossed for us to get it through this time!
Thanks for reading! We’ll have another blog soon about our exciting and inspiring time at the Edinburgh Fringe!