The Spring Arts Centre in Havant and The Ashcroft Arts Centre in Fareham tell all about their fight to survive the coronavirus pandemic

After more than four months of closure due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Havant site’s fire alarm system failed a pre-opening check.

The venue’s director Sophie Fullerlove recalls: ‘We had pages and pages of plans, and we'd got all our signage and sanitiser, and a machine which fogs the theatre. We'd done all this work and spent all this money.

‘I was literally about to send the email to say: “We're reopening, we can't wait to see you!” And the fire alarm failed its test. It was just awful.

‘We were suddenly told not only can you not open to the public, but you as staff can't be in the building either. So we had to lock up the building and it was just empty.

‘The worst thing was we had paid to have a billboard on Emsworth Road saying we were reopening and that went up and we were closed – there was nothing we could do.’

The Spring eventually reopened in September, but it alone was forced to cancel 189 performances and film screenings, 175 workshop sessions, more than 1,350 hours of community activity and three exhibitions.

But along with The Ashcroft in Fareham, arts centres have been working hard to keep providing a service for their communities during lockdown and beyond. And this week there was some good news in the shape of Cultural Recovery Fund grants – The Spring received £94,000 and Hampshire Cultural Trust, which runs 23 sites across the county including The Ashcroft, was given £480,000.

Sophie explains the importance of the money: ‘At the moment, it has very much been about being open at a minimal level.

‘It would have been cheaper to remain closed, to keep our heads down and to not do anything at all, and ride out the storm, but we felt quite strongly that our role in the community is to be here for our community.

‘We wanted to reopen as soon as possible, even though financially that was quite challenging. The money we have now been awarded makes it viable and means we will be here and we can survive this next little bit.’

At The Spring it means bringing staff back to their full hours and putting on more shows and activities. However, under social distancing rules, their theatre has gone from a maximum of 145 seats to 37.

‘It's been tricky to put anything on that is financially viable,’ explains Sophie. ‘The income from 37 tickets doesn't cover the cost of anything you can put on the stage.

‘We have been very cautious and we've had to work with people who we know will do us some favours and will work with us because they like us. Which is always nice, but we don't want to take advantage of artists – the money means we can subsidise events, and we're still doing what we think everyone needs.’

With the return of a live programme Bridget Floyer, artistic director of the HCT’s three arts centres, says: ‘We're back up at about half of our live performance programme, but at really restricted capacities.

‘I know from talking to other venues in the area that everyone is doing things slightly differently because there's no perfect system, and I think that's what's been so challenging is that a lot of the things we've had to do are things we'd never normally want to do – it goes against all of your instincts to try and keep people apart.

‘We try and be as flexible as possible, but we've prioritised being really safe. It feels really important – we're arts centres for the community, and we're for as wide a section of that community as possible. It's important that people trust us and people feel safe coming to us and that means as many as possible.

‘There are some people who still aren't up for coming out to live performance and that's totally understandable, but what's important to us is that those who do come know we will look after them and we won't put anyone at unnecessary risk.’

When the centres were forced to close Bridget recalls how the staff ‘rose to the challenge’ of keeping things moving.

‘It all happened very quickly in one respect, but the scale and the impact of what was going to happen has dawned slowly.

‘For some people, the initial emotion was just: ‘Right, we've got to deal with it”.

‘Coming out of the end of the summer there was hope of things getting back to normal in autumn at one point, and we were optimistic and enthusiastic about being able to open. Now it’s the impact of knowing that probably going to last at least until March, possibly longer.

‘It's the long haul which is really hard. Emotionally, some of those harder bits have come later on, rather than at the start where we all went into crisis mode.’

One way the centres stayed in touch during lockdown was by moving classes and workshops online.

Bridget says: ‘We basically got up and running lots of different classes online, some of them live on Zoom, some pre-recorded, and we shared those across the arts centres, so anyone could buy into anything that was happening.

‘It's been really interesting for us as a model and they did far better than we even expected, but it was a massive learning curve for all of us, including our tutors – how to get things online, what works, what doesn't. Our wider teams of artists we work with have been absolutely amazing, supporting us to get that all up and running.’

And Sophie adds: ‘We talked a lot about taking events online, and we did do that a lot, and we will continue to do some of that because we want people to be able to access our work if they can't come into the building, but we don't want to take everything online.

‘We're about people connecting in a space, and I would rather do that with fewer people in the space, but still have people together than do everything remotely.’

For now, both venues continue to offer workshops and things like book and film discussion groups online.

‘They're great,’ says Sophie. ‘That means people can stay connected and are taking part in cultural activity, but I think live is important – the shared experience is important, so we want to be able to continue to do that safely and to do that we needed some funding.’

The Spring now has a new project called Signs of Solidarity. ‘We're working with the Gobbledegook Theatre company who like to do activism via art. They have “infiltrated” Havant and the area's Facebook groups to try and find out who has made a difference to people during lockdown – who has made the community brilliant?

‘And then they're making hand-painted signs which thank people, and these are going to start popping up over the borough.

‘Then in our building we've got more signs and placards with quotes on people sent us during lockdown, and that's our way of thanking them for sending those messages – people saying we were the light at the end of the tunnel, or how proud of us they are.

‘Basically anything which made us cry in lockdown when we were working from home, we've got on placards now! We want to remind people that it hasn't been all bad – there have to be some silver linings.’

The money for The Spring will also help the charity Music Fusion, which is based there. They won’t have to pay rent for the rest of the financial year, which is worth the equivalent of more than 200 hours of direct engagement with at risk young people.

And now that the arts centres have reopened, they want the public to come back.

Sophie remembers the first day: ‘It was absolutely fantastic – we had a queue of people waiting outside for the first few days, desperate to come back in.

‘For the first day we were open I took my laptop down into the cafe and sat there chatting to people all day because I didn't want to be hiding in the office, I wanted to see everyone.’

While both directors are quick to praise their supporters for hanging in there with them, they know there’s still a long way to go – and although the CRF money will help a lot, it’s only designed as a stopgap through until March.

Bridget adds: ‘The important thing about the CRF money is that it's core funding for the trust, it's plugging the gap of the income we just won't be getting, and the trust supports all of those venues.

‘It's about being able to survive and to come through this and be sustainable. We now can rest easier – it's a massive relief, it's amazing that we've got it and we can now carry on with what we wanted to do over the next six months.’

SHOWS COMING SOON

The Ashcroft Arts Centre, Fareham

* October 22: Polly Gone Wrong & the Kites, 7.30pm

* October 24: Comedy treble bill: Rachel Fairburn, Jamie D'Souza and Maisie Adam, 7.30pm

* October 31: Bearface Theatre: Adventures in Educating Aliens, 11.15am

* November 3: James Alderson & Friends Comedy Night, 7.30pm

* November 5: Kitty Macfarlane, 7.30pm

* November 14: Made from Scratch at Ashcroft, 7.30pm

* November 19: Provincials with Krista Green, 7.30pm

* November 21: Andrew Lawrence: The Pale, Male and Stale Tour, 7.30pm

* November 28: The Selfish Giant, 2pm

* December 1: James Alderson & Friends Comedy Night, 7.30pm

* December 17: Ben Water, 7.30pm

Go to ashcroft.org.uk

The Spring Arts Centre, Havant

* October 31: The Noise Next Door, 2.30pm, 8pm

* November 4: South Coast Comedian of the Year 2020, 8pm

* November 6: George Egg: Movable Feast, 8pm

* November 7: Strange Creatures, 11am, 2.30pm

* November 11: South Coast Comedian of the Year 2020, 8pm

* November 12: Gothic Tourism, A talk by Cheryl Butler, 7.45pm

* November 13&14: Joe Wells Doesn’t Want to Do Political Comedy Anymore!, 8pm

* November 27: The FB Pocket Orchestra, 8pm

* December 3&4: Separate Ways, 7.45pm

* December 11: Not The Rolling Stones, 8pm

* December 12: South Coast Soul Revue, 8pm

Go to thespring.co.uk