Memorandum submitted by Unicorn Theatre
for Children
We wish to draw your attention specifically
to one sector of theatre in Britain, namely Theatre for Children.
WHAT IS
THEATRE FOR
CHILDREN?
We refer in this submission to professional
theatre performed to children. We have great regard for theatre
work performed by children, but this is not what concerns us here.
WHY IS
THEATRE FOR
CHILDREN IMPORTANT?
Learning about the world through play and role-play
is a natural part of a child's development. Theatre and drama
provide an artistic means for this development. Theatre provides
a means to learn, imagine and empathise. It gives every child
an opportunity to both express and reflect on their outer and
inner worlds. For all children, theatre is a way of mediating
life, meaning and experience. That is why, although funding and
resources have been slow to take root, theatre for children has
become regarded internationally as a major priority.
— All the Arts, including Theatre,
give audiences a context outside their own lives and enable them
to view things in a different perspective—in brief, acts
as a "civilising" influence. This is even more true
of work for children whose minds and behaviour patterns are not
fully formed.
— The best Theatre for Children
assists teachers in the provision of education by offering new
perspectives and new ways of approaching the national curriculum;
specifically, it helps children in both oracy and literacy.
— Theatre for Children today supplies
more arts-aware adults tomorrow.
— The right of children to participate
in cultural and artistic life is encapsulated in Article 31 of
the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which the United
Kingdom is a signatory.
Yet facilities for children to enjoy Theatre
have been appallingly neglected by UK authorities.
1. In 1999, London theatres that catered
primarily for adults could offer 63,600 seats every evening—enough
for London's adults to visit a performance once every 10 weeks.
The capacity of seats in the only theatre dedicated to children
(Polka in Wimbledon) gave each London child the opportunity to
go once every 5.7 years. This statistic is changed only marginally
by the fact that some theatres dedicated to adults occasionally—uually
at Christmas—ofer a "Family" production.
2. No other theatre in the UK in 1999 was
dedicated to children, although Contact in Manchester and the
Sherman in Cardiff both work with Children and Young People.
3. In contrast, many major European cities
and capitals have their own well-resourced professional theatre
centres of excellence for children! young people. These include:
The Ark (Dublin), La Montagne Magique (Brussels), Het Palais (Antwerp),
six national centres in France including two in Paris (Montreuil
and Sartrouville) as well as the annual international children's
theatre festival in Lyons, Carousel and grips theatres (Berlin),
Unga Klara (Stockholm). Every state in Germany (including the
towns of Munich, Leipzig, Dresden, Stuttgart, Hamburg and Kiel)
and every major centre in Holland from Amsterdam to the rural
hinterland has its own theatre for children New state-funded Theatres
for Children have recently been opened in Stuttgart and Vienna.
WHY DO
CHILDREN NEED
DEDICATED SPACES?
For 32 years the Unicorn, the UK's longest surviving
Theatre for Children, offered daytime productions in the Arts
Theatre—sharing it with adult (evening) productions.
In 1998 the failure of a succession of adult,
evening productions almost caused the bankruptcy of the Unicorn,
even though its productions were both popularly and critically
acclaimed.
This sharing of facilities had other drawbacks:
(a) Dismantling and re-erecting the sets
and foyer displays twice every day meant that the designers, directors,
lighting designers and writers had to be very restricted in their
work and making such work easily able to be moved was also very
expensive.
(b) At the Arts, the facilities had to be
designed for adults, rather than for children because there were
more problems with adults attending a venue designed for children
than vice versa. For example foyer counters, display boards
and toilets were designed for adults not for children.
(c) After 32 years of Unicorn's occupation,
the Arts had a very confused identity—was it a theatre for
children or for adults? The success of the Arts Theatre in the
five years since the Unicorn moved out demonstrates how this move
has been of benefit to both the Unicorn and the producers of shows
for adults.
FUNDING FOR
THEATRE FOR
CHILDREN
Historically, Children's Theatre Companies have
been treated as the Cinderellas of Theatre.
As late as 1959 the Unicorn's founder, Caryl
Jenner, complained that "the theatrical profession and the
world in general should stop regarding children's theatre as a
rather nice hobby for amateurs". Unicorn was not funded by
the Arts Council on a regular basis until 1967—20 years
after its establishment. Productions by Theatre for Children companies
are still routinely ignored by most newspaper critics, except
at Christmas.
Many Theatre for Children Companies are created
and survive only as long as the energies and enthusiasm of their
founders. Apart from Unicorn and Polka no Theatre for Children
has been permanently based in its own building, and most companies
exist by touring productions to arts centres and schools.
IN THE
LAST FOUR
YEARS THINGS
HAVE STARTED
TO CHANGE
1. In 2001 Unicorn was offered funding to
enable it to create the first purpose-designed theatre for children
in the centre of London. Costing £12.6 million, of which
£8 million has come from public funding, this new cultural
destination is due to be opened next autumn. At the same time
the ongoing revenue funding for Unicorn was raised to the level
required to run such a venture.
2. In 2001 Dream Works opened in Warwick
providing work both for and by children. The Egg at Bath has been
designed to house (but not produce) work for Children and Young
People, and is due to open later this year and the Studio at the
MacRobert Arts Centre in Stirling has been dedicated to work for
Children.
3. The arguments that Theatre for Children
require more, not less, funding than theatres for adults have
been acknowledged and the Arts Council has adopted the provision
of theatre for children as one of its priorities.
BUT THE
TASK IS
FAR FROM
COMPLETE
Polka in Wimbledon is expected to run facilities
similar in size, but requiring costlier maintenance, with revenue
funding barely half the Unicorn's level.
Polka and the new Unicorn's combined annual
capacity is still less than half of London's child population,
allowing each child, on average, to visit once every two years.
Most cities outside London have the benefit
of, at best, a facility that is given over to audiences of children
for a small part of the year.
The arguments for additional funding may have
been acknowledged but have not been accepted.
— Theatre for Children costs the
same to produce as Theatre for adults, while its ability to earn
income from ticket sales is much lower.
— Unlike theatre for adults there
are virtually no opportunities for productions by Theatre for
Children to transfer to a West End Theatre without destroying
the scale of the venture and therefore its unique qualities.
— Changes in VAT regulations which
took effect in 2004 will, in the long term, make the discrepancy
in earning potential between theatre for children and theatre
for adults even worse.
UNICORN'S
HIDDEN SUBSIDY
The average London salary is £39,286 a
year.
Unicorn performers are paid at a rate of £17,680
a year.
People designing Unicorn productions would need
to design 13 such shows a year which is a practical impossibility,
to earn the average London salary.
Performers and designers can only afford to
work for the Unicorn by taking a Unicorn engagement between more
lucrative jobs in television or in better-funded theatres for
adults.
Salaries for the highest paid Unicorn officers
are just £36,000 a year.
In truth the Unicorn, which is better subsidised
than any other Theatre for Children in the UK, survives only because
of the hidden subsidy provided by its employees.
FUTURE FUNDING
Just before Christmas the Arts Council announced
that its grant from the DCMS had been frozen for the next three
years.
If such a standstill were to be reflected in
the grants offered to Theatre for Children Companies, the reality
would be that the better funded, more established companies such
as Unicorn and Polka would probably survive. Most of the smaller
companies, touring to schools and arts centres, would collapse.
In order to survive Unicorn and Polka would
be forced to cut cast sizes (currently averaging seven per production)
and freeze fees and salaries. This in turn would make it harder
than ever to attract good people and standards would fall. The
Children's Theatre Movement, which flourishes elsewhere in Europe,
would be reduced to perhaps only two poorly funded and poorly
performing theatres in the UK.
All theatre will suffer from any standstill
in funding, but the delicate blooms of Theatre for Children, only
recently accepted as part of the wider Theatre ecology, would
be destroyed.
January 2005
| 
