Byre Theatre goes dark owing around £200k

Creditors of the Byre Theatre, St Andrews, are owed £470k and the likely deficit after the sale of the theatre’s assets – some 9,000 items – will be around £200k, according to liquidators Henderson Loggie. Unsecured creditors are likely to see no more than £0.31 for every pound they are owed. “Poor income over recent months” is cited as one of the key issues determining the fate of the 80-year-old Theatre, which was placed into Administration in late January when the Board identified a cash shortfall by the financial year-end of around £75k. Their report on the background to the winding up has blamed reduced grant funding: “Despite funding being available for one-off projects, which allowed a number of outreach projects to be carried out for the benefit of the community, existing general funding did not cover the overheads of maintaining the Byre Theatre and the staff needed to operate it.”  The Byre’s new building, which opened in 2001, created a financial burden that has proved unsustainable in the wake of the decision by the former Scottish Arts Council to end its regular funding in 2011. Increased use of volunteers, the franchising of the café-bar and restaurant, a successful pantomime and large audiences for live film streaming from the Royal Opera and National Theatre all contributed to revenues, as did grants and donations, but in the end these proved insufficient to cover costs.
The Theatre was due to be transferred to Fife Cultural Trust in April 2013, a new body set up by the Council to manage local arts venues, but the poor state of the company’s finances could have delayed the transaction, which would have compounded the cash problems. Attempts made to secure short-term grant funding to plug the gap were too late to influence the decision to close.