Download The way we work with artists

The financial relationship between Battersea Arts Centre, artists and their work
This is a description of different ways in which Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) works with artists in terms of the
presentation, development or co-production of work. This document was last updated in March 2014. Hopefully by
sharing the way that we work with artists, especially in terms of financial deals, we will make a small contribution to
opening up the debate about deals between venues & artists and producers & artists. We hope that it will generally
make more information available to independent artists to decide how they want to work with venues and / or
producers. Financial deals for making theatre can feel shrouded in mystery with lots of people working in lots of
different ways. We think it’s time to make financial deals more transparent, especially at a time of reduced funding,
so that can all work together more effectively.
Introduction to financial deals at Battersea Arts Centre
It’s worth saying that money is only one part of a deal. However this document is going to focus on the money
because that’s the bit that often doesn’t get discussed. When working with artists we can sometimes offer limited
producer time, rehearsal space, accommodation and technical time. Occasionally we can help with advocacy,
fundraising and other avenues of support. As we have secured increased levels of funding over the last ten years, so
we have invested more resource in artists. Back in the 90’s, the basic deal at BAC used to be that everyone was
offered a 50/50 split on box office takings, no better, no worse. Of course this kind of financial arrangement rarely
comes close to covering R&D time, rehearsal time, production time for the artist or venue. This 50/50 box office
split is still the basic deal for many artists working at BAC. However, gradually, we have been able to offer improve
the financial offer for some projects and shows.
Of course this improvement of the offer for some projects opens up questions of equality and how you explain why
one deal is better than another. This document is partly about trying to make it easier to explore these differences
with artists, up front, when we are making a deal together. Hopefully the document means that artists can see all
the different ways in which we work, and can make more informed decisions about whether we are the right venue
for them or not. We are consistently thinking about the best way to structure our limited resources for the greatest
impact for artists, and hopefully this document will also mean that we can get more feedback from more artists on
ideas about how we might be able to improve the structure of our deals for the future.
A note on the organisation’s income
This is a relevant question in terms of considering deals. Battersea Arts Centre is currently funded by Arts Council
England to develop new work. It’s probably worth understanding that BAC receives between 30% and 60% less
core funding than most off-west end producing theatres in London. Of course there are always some that receive
more and some that receive less. BAC gets around £690k from ACE annually. We are extremely grateful for this
public investment in the organisation. Our current overheads (including the building) are around £1.5m per year
without an activity programme. In addition to annual ACE investment we raise a lot more money from commercial
hires of the building, private fundraising & ticket sales. Over the next three years, it is our ambition to try & raise &
earn more money still, so that we can, like other off-west end venues, actually co-produce or produce more work.
This would mean that more people working on productions would be paid minimum industry pay-rates or above. Or
that we were able to offer proper sized commissions to artists to create new work. But we are not there yet. We also
recognise that we need to be flexible in the way that we work with artists and it’s not all about money. And this is
one of the reasons that we have various different ways of working with artists to try and suit different people.
Over the last five years, more and more of the kind of work that we develop at BAC gets presented in other London
venues, including Southbank, National and Barbican. One of our challenges as a venue is survival: it is a problem
when you act as a development house for artists but then are not able to benefit from selling the tickets for the
successful shows you have helped develop. But equally, what about the artists who have often created this work on
little or no wages?...it is those artists that provide theatre in London with a huge hidden subsidy that people don’t
see or understand. Another subsidy is provided by the staff in grassroots venues who work long hours and often for
low pay. By the time a show goes on to be presented in a larger venue, it has often been forgotten how the work was
actually made and how much hidden subsidy is involved. So we think artists and venues need to work together to
try and record the investment that is made. It is an idea that we will keep exploring with the artists – and we will
continue lobbying Arts Council for greater funding for independent artists and the venues that provide them with a
starting point for their work. We are thinking more about how we can better support venues that are smaller than
us: it’s an ecology.
The different deals to artists offered by Battersea Arts Centre
1. Box office splits on single gigs and runs
For touring performances or runs of work we often offer a 50/50 box office split. That means that we split the
ticket income in half with the artist or visiting producer of the show.We provide a lead producer from BAC to
coordinate planning for the show, an agreed level of marketing and get-in and get–out tech support. Ticket prices
are usually something like £12 & £9 concessions going up to £15 & £12 concessions depending on the length, scale
and reach of the work. Capacities for shows can be anything from 1 seat per performance to 600 depending on the
space in the building and the nature of the work. Sometimes we offer guarantees alongside splits – this removes
some of the risk for artists – protecting them if the box office is lower than expected , whilst giving them the
upside from box office if their show does well. However, at the moment guarantees are only offered occasionally.
2. Fees for presenting work on single gigs or runs
Occasionally we are able to supplement a box office split with a small fee or we find other ways to cover some
additional expenses of presenting the work. Very occasionally we pay a full performance fee to the artist, at the
going rate for the show, per performance, and then we keep 100% of the ticket income. These two fee models are
usually when we have secured some additional project funding in addition to our core funding.
3. Scratching work
We offer residency space, usually for between one and three weeks. We also offer opportunities to present work-inprogress or Scratch performances. The idea is to enable an artist to bring a project back for a number of
residencies at BAC over an extended period of time with a number of opportunities to Scratch their work. Scratch
performances can happen with several artists/companies presenting on one night or with one artist/company
presenting alone. Either way, the ticket price for audiences is “pay what you can”. The average audience member
pays between £2-£3 for a “pay what you can” ticket. Again the artist gets limited amounts of producer and tech
support. We do the marketing for the scratches and this time we retain 100% of the ticket income. We used to offer
50/50 split on Scratch performances as well but we often found that we were splitting box office takings of less
than £50 and this was taking huge amounts of time and admin. The box office takings from Scratch now go back in
to the same project budget and are paid to artists in other ways. Occasionally we are able to pay some of the
expenses that an artist is incurring like travel or food. The producer’s role is specifically to help the artist navigate
their way through the Scratch process of audiences feeding back on the work. We ask for a credit on the future
publicity of the work that it was “developed at BAC”. We also ask artists who are Scratching their work at BAC to
have a conversation with us, in good faith, about supporting the next phase of development and about staging the
London premiere of the work.
[For Freshly Scratched (when we offer artists who have never worked at BAC before the opportunity to try out an
idea at BAC) we are rarely able to make the same offer of support but we also do not ask for any future credit in
return. Freshly Scratched is an open access to BAC’s support programmes. Some artists who have come through
this programme have gone on to benefit from BAC’s wider offer to artists Scratching or Commissioning work. It’s a
programme that we constantly reviewing for the benefit it offers the artist versus the cost to them.]
4. Commissioning work
This is basically an addition to either number 1 or 3 above. The average commission is between £1 to £2k, so it’s a
modest investment. It has sometimes been less and it has sometimes been more. It can help lever other
commissions or funds. In return we ask for two things. Firstly, a credit in future publicity alongside other cocommissioners. Secondly, the right to present the first 2 London runs of the work. This used to be 1 London run but
it changed to 2 runs some years ago because shows were sometimes “taking off” after the first London run and we
wanted to share in the success of the second run (if it should happen) with the artist. In our commissioning
contracts there has also been a note (for the last 10 years) that if a commissioned production goes on to have a
commercial life (i.e. west end) then there should be “a percentage, to be negotiated in good faith” that supports
BAC’s future.
Note on accommodation: with all of the deals above we also now have bedrooms at BAC, and there is sometimes
the opportunity for artists to stay over if we have capacity. We provide basic food provisions to artists staying in the
bedrooms. We have also increased the amount of residency space we have over the last three years whilst it is still
in limited supply compared to the need.
Note on budget levels: across a whole financial year (beginning of April to end of March) we invest about £45-60k
across models 2, 3 and 4, depending on how the year shapes up in terms of other funding opportunities. This is
investment that goes directly to artists. Considering we host hundreds of residencies every year, it’s not a huge
amount. It has significantly increased over the last few years but is still a small proportion of the organisation’s
overall budget and something that we are constantly reviewing to find ways of increasing this investment in artists.
Whilst the building offers some great opportunities for artists (residency and performance space, accommodation
etc.) it is expensive to manage and operate. (The investment is models 5 & 6, below, was around £150k in 2012/13.)
Note on Arts Council’s Grants for the Arts : this is an important funding resource for most independent artists. It is
often is an important way of supporting all of the ways of working above. This is because BAC is not fully funded to
produce work. Often artists, working with BAC, will apply to Grants for the Arts (G4A) to cover the costs that BAC is
not able to meet. BAC’s producers try and programme as far as possible in advance to enable applications to be
made to G4A. Of course artists will not always want to apply to G4A, sometimes the programming offer from BAC
will be too late for them to apply and sometimes artists will apply but they will not be successful. BAC producers do
their best to work through all of these possibilities with the artists. For example, producers try to ensure that artists
are not put in a position in which they feel like they have to say yes to being programmed for something that is
unfunded, simply because the offer might not come round again. The key to a successful relationship is a really
open and consistent dialogue about money between producer and artist.
5. Co-producing work
We have co-produced work in various forms over the last ten years. We are trying to co-produce more work for two
reasons: firstly, on co-productions we take additional responsibility to ensure artists get paid and the real cost of
production is more closely met; secondly, it means that if the production goes on to be financially successful then
both the artist and BAC get to benefit from the success, even if that’s just to have some of the early investment of
creating the production paid back to both parties. But we can only co-produce when we raise specific project
funding: sometimes this is through sponsorship and sometimes from G4A.
All our co-productions seek to identify when either the artist or the venue is doing something for free or subsidising
the co- production. We try to keep track of any amount of hidden subsidy in creating new work. For example, any of
the artist’s time that is not paid for at an industry standard rate (as described by ITC guidelines) gets recognised as
unpaid and becomes part of a “recoupment” target if the production goes on to be financial successful: to get paid
back to the artist.
So when we co-produce work with artists we seek to help fundraise for the work in partnership with the artist. We
can seek co-commissioners, we help with the administration of creating the work, build a budget for the work,
provide dramaturgical support, technicians to develop ideas, overnight residencies including food and
accommodation. We work with the artist on presentations of work both at BAC, and then help tour the work (if it
ends up getting finished) nationally and internationally. So it’s a full production partnership.
The core principle at the heart of the co-production model is a shared record of how much it costs to make the work
including all the time that the artist and BAC have invested. The existence of this shared record means that both the
artist and BAC can fairly represent the work, time and resource they have put in and represent this to funders to
support the project. And potentially to show that shared record to future producers or venues who want to take the
work on – so that we can show how much has gone in to making the work. The copyright of the work obviously all
remains with the artist or artists who have made the work and royalties to artists are negotiated as part of
production budgets if the work goes on to be successful.
A basic principle of most co-productions is that the two co-producers share financial upside and downside for the
production. It is often the case that the artists we co-produce with are not able to carry risk of financial downside. In
normal circumstances, the party who owns all the risk owns the upside too. However, because our goal is to
support artists, we tend to make an agreement with the artist that we will still carry the risk but share the upside
according to what the two parties have put in. This is the kind of thing that we work out production by production.
6. Producing work
Very occasionally, we fully produce work: BAC productions. For example, Mouth Open Story Jump Out in 2012/13
was a BAC production created by Polarbear. This is when we fully pay for all fees and costs associated with making
work, negotiated with artists in advance. We do this in the way that other producing theatres do, applying ITC
standards to the creation process. Again, we have always secured additional project funding in order to be able to
do this. All the copyright of the work remains with the artist. We are still learning how to co-produce and produce
work. We are learning as we go along and welcome dialogue with artists and venues about good ways to do this that
are most favourable to the partnership between artist and venue.
7. Artist support programmes
Aside from our financial deals for creating and presenting work, we are currently working on several artist support
programmes. These are not explicitly about making productions but provide a wider support structure for artists.
These schemes are based on the principle that we offer something to artists but that we also ask for something in
return. For example, there is the Artist Host programme in which artists receive three or four months free
accommodation at BAC. In return we ask the artist to host the artists in residence at BAC and carry out basic
weekly duties to help host other artists. We are also revisiting our week-to-week programmes of support which
include a mixture of accommodation, investment and producer support. We are also looking at what we might offer
artists and producers who are looking for a base (from start-up office accommodation to a London base for
regional companies) for when our capital project is complete in 2015/16. In addition to these support programmes
we will continue to pay artists fees for workshops and participatory work. This is another area of our work where are
continuing to strive to get to industry standards.
A principle of deal making
We think one of the key principles we all need to work on is transparency. We are aware that when artists are
looking for a gig it is sometime too easy to take a bad deal because you want the gig. Very few of BAC’s deals offer a
scenario where there is enough money for everything. So one of the things we are working on as a team is to try and
ensure artists take time to reflect on whether they can afford to work with us. We think about this question too in
terms of what level of activity we can afford to deliver. The conversation between artists and venues needs to
continue exploring the difficult bits as well as the exciting opportunities to create & present work together.
We will probably continue to offer a range of deals to artists. We know we have a duty to try and pay artists better.
We also know that different artists want different things. For example, some artists prefer to have a straightforward
box office split with us because they want us to be a receiving house and don’t want to get involved with any
commissioning or co-producing relationship. The key is transparency on both sides and trying to say the unsaid
things, to get them out on the table and talk them through.
End note
We are all ultimately trying to work together to create & present work to audiences. BAC is interested in feedback
from artists about how our financial models can be improved. We are also interested in opening up conversations
between venues about ways we might work together, more effectively, to provide better connected opportunities
for artists. Email any of your thoughts to David Jubb, Artistic Director [email protected]
Updated March 2014