Scottish creative ambition

How do you chart a clear course for future success in an ever-changing landscape? This is the challenge faced by many Scottish arts organisations – including Capital Theatres – as we embark on a new five-year strategy designed to support the long-term resilience of our organisation.

The Scottish arts industry is in the throes of an unprecedented crisis. With ongoing uncertainty around public funding of the arts, urgent action is needed to secure its future. Ultimately theatre is a team sport, and we firmly believe that meaningful collaboration with like-minded partners is the key to achieving our creative ambitions and helping to build a more sustainable future for the Scottish arts ecology.

Urgent needs of wider industry

At the heart of our strategy is a vision to share extraordinary live experiences with everyone through a range of quality work on our three stages, while building a sense of belonging through the strength of our creative programmes and partnerships.

We operate three venues in Edinburgh – Festival Theatre (1,915 seats), King’s Theatre (1,124, currently closed for major redevelopment) and The Studio (155 seats) – which host over 700 performances annually across a wide range of genres.

While our strategy is designed to ensure Capital Theatres’ growth, success and sustainability flourish throughout the next five years and beyond, it also chimes with the urgent needs of the wider industry. We are committed to presenting relevant and exciting work that audiences will love, while also supporting the development of the sector by creating an environment where individual artists and producers alike can thrive for the long term.

Our strategy in action has already demonstrated our willingness to be an out-of-town home for large scale producers to premiere new titles on our stages prior to their West End openings, through provision of rehearsal space, as well as marketing and technical expertise, starting with Ricky Allen’s Treason.

We want to encourage new and existing producers to come to Edinburgh to test their work, while providing our audiences with exciting opportunities to be ‘on the inside’ of something new.

Collectively enhancing impact

Collaborations such as this with large scale national and international producers collectively enhances our impact across the cultural sector, spreading the financial risk and supporting the growth of local artistic talent.

Musicals continue to play a crucial role in the commercial success of not just Capital Theatres, but many venues across the country. For example, the Scottish premiere of Hamilton at the Festival Theatre was the fastest selling show in our history and attracted a record-breaking audience of over 130,000.

To reflect this increasing popularity, we are working with National Theatre of Scotland, Pitlochry Festival Theatre, Dundee Rep and others to support the future of Scottish musical theatre talent and develop new shows that could one day appear on stages across the country.

Another initiative, launched in 2020 in partnership with Pitlochry Festival Theatre, is our Musicals Commissioning Hub. Production on a new musical is already underway Shonagh Murray’s beautiful Nessie – set to premiere in our Studio in March 2025 for its world premiere.

We recently embarked on the second round of the hub, hosting a scratch night for three further potential new musicals. Furthermore, during this year’s Edinburgh Festivals, we also collaborated with Birmingham Hippodrome, Mercury Musical Developments and Musical Theatre Network in hosting a networking event to let the Scottish ecology and beyond know that we are open for business in supporting the evolution of new talent in a genre that can be difficult to get right.

Continues…

Creative engagement

Support of early career artists and producers by fostering creativity and nurturing emerging talent is vital for the long-term health of our sector. The demand is evident: over the past two years, our Open@TheStudio artist development programme (which provides residencies, seed funding and scratch nights) has received almost 400 applications.

Our strategy not only focuses on the variety, scale and quality of work on our stages but also in the deeply held belief that the lifeblood of theatre and the health and wellbeing of the nation can be radically enhanced by providing all ages with access to the arts in all its forms. Our ambitious Creative Engagement programme is designed to spark curiosity, build skills for life, improve social inclusion and develop a passion for culture.

We support heritage storytelling across our beautiful, listed buildings and design our world class dementia friendly work around the very personal journeys of the people we work with every day – supporting them ‘where they are’ and seeking the positives in what they can do, and not what they may have lost.

This strategy of co-creating with the communities we serve is reflected in the UK Theatre Award for Excellence in Inclusivity that we were thrilled to receive in 2023.

Raising career aspirations

We share the growing concern across the sector about the sustainability of our future workforce. The pressures facing schools and further education providers, compounded by the stark skills drain post-Covid, means Capital Theatres strategy is focused more than ever on collaborating across the sector to raise career aspirations for young people in the arts.

Our skills building programmes include hands-on technical apprenticeships, archiving and cataloguing skills through heritage engagement activities, work placements around programming and producing as well as sector mentoring on finance, facilities management, fundraising and marketing.

Overall, Capital Theatres’ unwavering focus is to share the extraordinary, nurture everyone’s creative journey, collaborate across the sector and contribute to a more diverse and inclusive cultural offer across Scotland.

Scotland’s creative sector has always punched above its weight. Now, more than ever, we must work together to achieve the bold vision that reflects the true value of culture in shaping the country we want to become. The time is nigh – we mustn’t lose this moment by under-investing in the very thing that will help us thrive.