Found it…!

Here at TED2013…

My #Mojo

Outside the Oscars

Landed in LA and headed to Hollywood to see what was going on…

Lots apparently and very busy…so I decided to put my feet up by the pool that David Hockney painted the floor of instead…

The rather splendid Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard.

Artsfunding and understanding touring #brewhouse

What happened at the Brewhouse was clearly a terrible blow for the town, the staff and their audiences.

But also for the whole wider arts ecology and infrastructure. There are companies and artists who are owed thousands of pounds – and some who date back to early October last year who have not been paid.

It is highly unlikely that any of these individuals and organisations will see any of their money as they now all count as unsecured creditors.

At Pilot Theatre we know this only too well, as this is the second time this has happened to us.

I want to place our story in context. As you will be aware we have been very active on issues of artsfunding

I set up the artsfunding.ning.com site almost 3 years ago, when I could see the shifts that were looming and happening.

So when Somerset announced its 100% cut to its arts budget we were very active in raising this issue as a pending crisis.

So wanting to stand shoulder to shoulder with venues and to continue our commitment to deliver great art for everyone – we agreed to continue to bring our work to the county.

In so doing we also agreed to a significant reduction in our fee to be able to support the audiences and the venue.

Our Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner production was booked into the Brewhouse to play in November 2012.

For those who don’t realise the cost for us keeping a show with 10 actors, 4 tech team, staff director, transport, wages and marketing costs us about 14/15k per week.

Our fee normally covers this and we aim to break even.

In this particular case we agreed a lower fee of 8.7k from the Brewhouse – as we wanted to play there, and to utilise our subsidy to support them in difficult times.

So again seeing that our role as a national touring NPO was going to reach those audiences who would not have ordinarily had the chance to see the work.

This is part of our joined up strategic touring plan at Pilot Theatre.

So you can see – we have still had all our costs, and of course will not receive our reduced fee to help offset our budget line.

There are questions to be asked. At what point did the Brewhouse realise they could not pay their artists? October? November?

In which case who did they prioritise payments to? Who did get paid after October? November? December?

I have heard from companies and individual artists who have not been paid. Some of this is clearly their own money and is affecting them greatly.

So, this is a very regrettable situation and it damages the whole sector and its reputation.

We run a very tight ship at Pilot Theatre – we are a small organisation – we have to. We are all too aware of our responsibility with public money and we have a very strong and committed Board who oversees our fiscal planning and reserves policy.

As a charity our Board are personally financially liable – if we were found to be wrongfully trading when insolvent – it would be they who would have to address this.

My question is to the Board of the Brewhouse – when did you become aware of the situation?

A solution I would like to put forward is that venues and companies use escrow payments – where the agreed fee is held in an escrow account – they use this in the film industry and it would be one way the Arts Council could protect its investment in NPO’s and artists it funds – rather than leaving them to the behest of insolvency law

Marcus Romer
Artistic Director
Pilot Theatre

A new post from my phone

This is a test post from my app on my phone – yes ok maybe I am a little slow on the uptake – but I had been really happy with the 559 posts I had made on my previous posterous blog. Yep I had been posting for 4 years and found that the whole pre-app ability to post via email worked really well. So back to Moleskine and Fountain pen alongside my tech stuff – as I prepare to head to TED next Saturday…so clearly I needed a good reliable blogging platform- so testing this mobile post here 🙂

The Knife That Killed Me

So here we are – almost there on ‘The Knife That Killed Me’ movie We are all working hard and we have 7 weeks of final mixing, vfx finalising, grading to get this completed. Exciting times and it is looking amazing – There are a whole heap of blogposts from the shoot on the sidebar here too – But I will be keeping you updated as we get nearer the time