New theatre plans approved – but bosses admit Coliseum may not survive

Reporter: Charlotte Green, Local Democracy Reporter
Date published: 28 February 2023

Bosses have green-lit plans to build a £24.5m new theatre in Oldham despite admitting they don’t know whether the Coliseum will survive to run it when it is due to open in three years time.

At a cabinet meeting last night, councillors agreed to ‘recommit’ to the development of a new theatre in the borough, which would replace the historic Fairbottom Street venue.

Councillors also formally accepted £1.84m of Arts Council England funding to provide cultural activity for the next three years.

It comes as the Coliseum Theatre says it will close permanently at the end of March after being dropped from the Arts Council funding portfolio, after the body deemed it ‘high risk’.

On who would run the new theatre, which chiefs say would open in 2026, council leader Amanda Chadderton said ‘the honest answer is we don’t know yet’. She added ensuring the survival of the Coliseum was ‘not the responsibility of the council and we cannot ensure that’.

The meeting followed a protest outside by members of Equity, the performance union, and saw councillors grilled over the closure of the historic theatre – with residents calling for more ambition from the council, which was also accused of ‘ineptitude’.

Town hall chiefs want to open a new ‘more modern’ theatre – which would be smaller than the 585-seat Coliseum – at 84 Union Street, in the Old Post Office and former Quaker Meeting House.

The Union Street venue would have an auditorium with between 300 and 350 seats, as well as a 120-seat studio. It forms the third masterplan for a new theatre in the past ten years, with previous projects deemed ‘not deliverable’.

It would also include enhanced backstage facilities, and front of house areas such as a bar and a café. And education, event and rehearsal spaces would also be part of the designs, the council states.

But resident Jane Barker said that around half the seating capacity was ‘not really good enough’, and would lead to vastly reduced ticket sales and ‘thousands less’ being spent on the local Oldham economy at bars and cafes.

“Where is the ambition and aspiration of Oldham Labour councillors to put Oldham on the map and create a visitor attraction that we can be proud of?,” she asked.

Council leader Amanda Chadderton said: “Running theatres and theatrical organisations are not the expertise of the local authority, they never are. We empty bins and we cut grass and we safeguard vulnerable people.

“The proposals for the new theatre have been made in line with conversations with Arts Council and the Coliseum as well and it is those that put forward what they think would make a viable theatre going forward.

“We’ve also as well looked at other comparable well-performing producing theatres in other towns of a similar number across the country. This number is not out of the ordinary and our ambition is for Oldham Coliseum to remain a producing theatre.

“We’re still developing final designs, I think it’s important to note, both with arts organisations but also with external experts and they will help us as a local authority scrutinise the detailed plans to make sure that they are profitable and it is workable.

“For a local authority to be committing £24 million in a climate of austerity and challenges to our budget is an absolute marker of our ambition and aspiration for this town.

“It has taken bravery for us as a Labour administration to put down and say we will invest millions of pounds to ensure that there is a theatre in Oldham going forward. I wouldn’t want my child to grow up in a town that doesn’t value arts and culture and heritage and I don’t want that for any other child as well.

“We’re investing because we know that a theatre in Oldham is an important part of a successful and thriving town centre. We also have a hugely successful theatrical background in Oldham

“But we’ve also got to be realistic. A new theatre has to be sustainable and it has to be financially viable, so its operator has to make money all year round and not just from one production a year.

“I don’t want to be sat here in ten years time because the new theatre was not financially viable – we have to look at a new model. Theatres have to evolve and they have to change.”

Coun Chadderton said that in terms of pantomimes, which are hugely popular at the Coliseum, they had offered the new theatre the use of the new event space that will be created in Spindles shopping centre which she said has a capacity of 750.

Kevin Leach, a resident and the technical manager at the Coliseum, asked how Oldham could keep people who work in the arts in the borough once the Coliseum closes.

He said: “Given the ineptitude of the council over the years in delivering a new theatre in Oldham and planned closure of the Coliseum, what is the council planning to do for the 70 staff who have given so much to the town and invested in it?

“These skilled workers will be lost and move elsewhere. Their faith in the town will be lost also.”

Coun Chadderton said the decision to close the theatre and make staff redundant was ‘one for the Coliseum alone’.

She told the meeting the council had never reduced or withdrawn its £138k annual funding to the Coliseum, and that funding would be retained for theatre in Oldham over the next three years, along with the ring-fenced £1.8m the Arts Council have allocated for the borough.

The report states that the Arts Council has stipulated its funding must be used to ‘engage with communities and stakeholders in the development and delivery of a new theatre for Oldham, develop an appropriate leadership and governance structure for the new theatre and create a programme of performance that tests new approaches to programming, creative learning, talent development and audience development’.

It must also meet the principles of the Arts Council’s ‘let’s create’ strategy.

Coun Chadderton said the plan had always been for the Coliseum to vacate the Fairbottom Street theatre, with that date originally set at the end of 2023 or the start of 2024, but this had happened ‘earlier than anticipated’.

The report to cabinet states that a ‘growing list of maintenance issues’, along with problems with accessibility, and asbestos, meant the building was given a ten-year lifespan in 2012, which it has now exceeded.

“The scale of the issues found and Oldham Coliseum’s requirement for better facilities meant that renovating, refurbishing, re-purposing or re-investing in the building was not possible,” officers stated. The report says that it has cost the authority £20k a year for a decade to keep up with the maintenance and keep it compliant with health and safety regulations.

Coun Chadderton said: “We continue to hope obviously that the Coliseum can play a role in Oldham’s cultural life and we’re having conversations with the Coliseum to support them in what is a really difficult time.

“The Coliseum have been saying to us for over a decade that that building is coming to the end of its life, and we’ve actually got to the point where it’s got to the end of its life.”

She said remaining at the site would cost the Coliseum and the council millions of pounds over the coming years.

Speaking on behalf of the performance union Equity, Chris Clarkson asked whether the new theatre will be a producing house, and who would run it.

“On the issue of who would run it, the honest answer is we don’t know yet,” Coun Chadderton responded. “The Coliseum isn’t run in the same way by the same people as it has been over the past 135 years.”

The news of the impending closure ‘came out of the blue’ as far as the authority was concerned, she added.

She said it was not in the council’s ‘gift’ to guarantee it would carry on as a producing theatre but they wanted to commit to ensure it is a producing theatre and one is retained in the town.

In response to another question from Mr Clarkson about what the council would do to ensure the Coliseum survives until the new theatre is ready, Coun Chadderton added: “To be completely blunt it’s not the responsibility of the council and we cannot ensure that. The Coliseum is an independent organisation.

“The council have submitted a proposal to the board to help secure a future for the arts and for the Coliseum, and we’re still working on that with the Arts Council to try and find a solution.

“The reality is that there were quite serious concerns from the Arts Council about the financial viability of Oldham Coliseum. We are custodians of that theatre, but I will not spend millions of pounds of taxpayers money on something that is not financially viable.

“It would have been absolutely reckless to do that. The conversations are about how we have a theatre that washes its face for the future.”

The leader added they were having ‘daily conversations’ with the Coliseum and the Arts Council to ‘find a way forward through this’.

The report states that the Arts Council had deemed the Coliseum ‘high risk’ and raised concerns about the theatre’s financial management, leadership and governance.

Coun Elaine Taylor, the cabinet member for culture and leisure, said they would be putting forward a programme of events so that the company can continue to operate while the new building is under construction.

Coun Shaid Mushtaq, who had previously held the portfolio for culture, said that when he had attended the theatre outside of the pantomime period ‘it wasn’t as well used as ideally it could have been’.

“We talk about the state of the building, but actually it was a dangerous place for people to be and this is coming from a senior member of staff who took me round the building,” he said.

“It’s a really sad moment for all of us, it’s part of the fabric of Oldham but moving forward I think we have to be positive and look forward to a different type of theatre in the future.”

The report states that a planning application for the new theatre is expected by the summer.

The previous masterplan, laid out under then-council leader Jim McMahon to move the Coliseum into a state-of-the-art £27m new venue was shelved in 2018.

While the new theatre is under construction, the council said it had anticipated that the Coliseum would produce and perform in other venues in and outside of the borough.

The new theatre would be partly funded by £6m from a successful Towns Deal bid, as well as the authority’s own capital funding.

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