How can adapting and changing our approach to pricing and ticketing models, have a significant impact on who we see coming through our theatres?

Session Three of Spotlight, a new learning and development series of online talks with professionals within the network, we’ll be speaking to venue leaders from Colchester Arts Centre and Oxford Fire Station about how they’ve applied different models strategically and aligned them their organisation’s ethos and ambition.

Join Clara Vaughan (CEO of Oxford Fire Station) and Anthony Roberts (Director of Colchester Arts Centre) as they share their advice and experience on ticketing and pricing models at their venues over the years and their impact on audiences.

Panellists

Anthony Roberts
Director at Colchester Arts Centre

Anthony has built a career working as a senior arts manager and international producer across different artforms.

The bedrock of his practice has been as artistic director for the Colchester Arts Centre. This community based arts centre has developed a reputation for presenting radical and ground breaking performance work whilst being closely integrated in its local community. The venue is not only a thriving music venue and popular comedy club but also provides a platform for diverse voices and new artists.

Under Anthony’s leadership, the organisation has grown from a turnover of 142k to 850k. It is an established member of the Arts Council’s National Portfolio, financially resilient and can draw upon a huge range of skills and resources to further its vision. The venue is currently engaged in a £750,000 capital refurbishment project, made possible by a £499,000 award from Arts Council small-scale capital grants.

In 2015 Anthony was invited to act as Interim Director for the major contemporary arts gallery Firstsite. Whilst in post, the gallery was re-entered the arts council National Portfolio, visitor numbers rocketed and long term funding was secured.

Between 2000 and and 2014 Anthony was the producer of Escalator East to Edinburgh a talent development initiative which saw 20 different artists and companies present work at the Edinburgh festival each year. During this period the project acted as a major advocate for access for artists and audiences with disabilities at the fringe. A legacy is the access disability showcase which now takes place at the Pleasance each year.

His international work has led him to act as producer for the New York performance Troupe Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, presenting work in the UK, Australia and Northern Ireland. He has further produced and presented artists in China and France.

Previous to Colchester, Anthony worked at Old Bull Arts Centre (now Arts Depot) and Salisbury Arts Centre.

He has a specialism in live art, arts marketing and community engagement.

Clara Vaughan, CEO at The Old Fire Station

Clara is the CEO of the Old Fire Station in Oxford, an arts centre that shares a building and deep partnership with Crisis, the homelessness charity. She is an arts manager, theatre-maker and facilitator whose career has taken place at the intersection of the arts and social justice, mostly in South Africa, where her experience growing up during apartheid in a profoundly unequal society motivated her determination to contribute to the dismantling of systemic prejudice.

Clara is passionate about storytelling, connection, creativity and community. For nine years she was the Head of the Market Theatre Laboratory in Johannesburg, a division of the world-famous Market Theatre.