Blog: Reflections as Theatres Trust Director

As he prepares to step down, Jon Morgan looks back over his time in the role, his aspirations and achievements.

In December I will be stepping down from my role as Theatres Trust’s Director after eight years. Taking on the leadership of such an established and respected body was a huge privilege and responsibility. The year I joined was Theatres Trust’s 40th anniversary and there was much to celebrate. Set up following the loss of more than 800 theatres in the early-mid 20th century, it was thanks to the Trust’s work it became, and still is, extremely rare that a theatre is lost without there being a suitable replacement. Moreover, the Trust had been successful in helping breathe new life into many former theatres that had fallen into disuse and disrepair, with more than 80 theatres from our Theatres at Risk Register now in active use as performance venues.

Changes

Given the Trust’s august history, I was faced with a dilemma – what to preserve and what to change? You might ask, well why change anything? This is a question people sometimes ask when the Trust is considering plans to revive or upgrade our beautiful historic theatres. To my mind, the answer to that question is simple. The best way to ensure a long life for the UK’s theatres is to make sure they evolve with the changing needs of the time. That means responding to new production and technical needs, making theatres more welcoming, democratic and accessible, diversifying community engagement and income streams and reducing theatres’ carbon footprint.

A theatre preserved in aspic will quickly become irrelevant and unviable, and that is the most certain way it will end up redeveloped as flats or demolished completely. The same is true of any organisation. From the start I wanted to respect the values and the undoubted strengths of the Trust, but I also wanted to modernise to ensure the Trust was fulfilling its function as effectively as possible.

What are those strengths? Theatres Trust is an independent body, we don’t have a membership and we don’t represent a particular constituency. Alongside that we have a highly capable and expert team across a range of specialist areas, which is backed up at board level, and by an extensive network of wider stakeholders and supporters. This means we are able, as far as possible, to reach a balanced and independent expert view on what is in the interests of an individual theatre or theatres as a whole.

So the independence and integrity of our decision making has been the most important thing I have sought to preserve in my time at the Trust. But I also hope I have helped the Trust modernise and evolve with the times. The main thing I wanted to modernise was our reach and profile. Theatres Trust is not a governing body, we can’t make anyone do anything. We are, to use a fashionable term, ‘an influencer’. To have influence, people need to know who you are and to know what you stand for. With the input of expert colleagues on the team and Board, we have really increased our profile and strengthened our engagement with stakeholders, particularly with theatres and local authorities.

This has led to much greater awareness of our work and an increase in theatres seeking our advice on a wide range of topics and not just when they have a capital project or when they are ‘at risk’. In our view the best way to save an ‘at risk’ theatre is to help it avoid getting into difficulty in the first place, so we support theatres wherever they are on their journey. Similarly, local authorities are much more aware of our work and consultation rates on theatre plans and local plans have improved dramatically.

Achievements and regret

What has been my proudest achievement and what is my biggest regret after eight years at the Theatres Trust? Thankfully there have been very few regrets and these are greatly outweighed by those things I’m proud we achieved, including better protection for theatres and wider cultural infrastructure in planning policy in England and Scotland, and supporting the development of Theatre Green Book, which continues to grow in impact across the UK and beyond.

But the achievement I’m most proud of is how we as a team supported theatres during Covid. At a time when other organisations were furloughing staff, we decided it was more important than ever to be at full capacity so we could support theatres face the greatest existential threat in recent history. We engaged with government to feed into decisions about Covid-safe practice, reopening and funding for both revenue and capital needs through the Culture Recovery Fund. We successfully argued for critical changes to planning law to provide additional protections for theatres. We helped theatres raise over £2.5m through the Save Our Theatres campaign and we were a strong public voice for the sector, giving interviews and being called upon to comment by a wide range of newspapers and on radio and TV.

And my biggest regret? I never managed to make the case for serious, targeted public investment to protect and improve our nation’s theatre buildings. In spite of working with a number of expert colleagues, internally and externally, to create a strong evidence base and to make the case, there is still no dedicated fund to support the maintenance and improvement of theatres. While some theatres have been successful in raising funds from national and local government without a dedicated and significant central fund, it will always be a lottery as to which theatres get the investment they need and which ones don’t.

Thanks

It has been inspiring working with so many passionate and knowledgeable people across the sector, from theatre operators, community groups, architects, theatre consultants and industry suppliers, all working to create theatres are resilient, inclusive and sustainable.

I’m grateful to the incredibly talented team at the Theatres Trust for all their energy, commitment, skill and tenacity, and likewise the incredible support I have received from the Board. I also want to thank our many funders, Friends, Corporate Supporters and sponsors without whom none of our work would be possible.

And I want to thank my predecessors as Director who all did so much to build the Theatres Trust from its humble unfunded beginnings. It’s been the greatest privilege to take on responsibility for continuing the work of Theatres Trust and, as I pass on the baton, I know my successor Joshua McTaggart will build on all that has gone before, and I look forward to observing Theatres Trust go from strength to strength under his leadership.

Looking to the future

Theatres continue to face many challenges of which we are all too well aware. And the challenge to the Theatres Trust will be to continue to evolve to help theatres meet those challenges. But in spite of this, I am optimistic for the future of Theatres Trust and I am optimistic for our nation’s theatres. The death of theatre has been presaged many times in the past with the advent of cinema, then television and then the internet.

And yet in spite of this, that human need to gather together and to share stories about life and about what it means to human is undimmed. As long as that is the case the lights in our theatres will continue to burn bright.