Funding: Local heroes

I was acting and directing at Helmsley Arts Centre last week, in a little piece of ‘café theatre’ performed in the bar to an audience of only 50. But it was a sell-out every night and, I hope, a light-hearted distraction for the citizens of my Yorkshire town from all that gloomy talk about cuts, more cuts — and who deserves to be cut most.

I was acting and directing at Helmsley Arts Centre last week, in a little piece of ‘café theatre’ performed in the bar to an audience of only 50. But it was a sell-out every night and, I hope, a light-hearted distraction for the citizens of my Yorkshire town from all that gloomy talk about cuts, more cuts — and who deserves to be cut most.

Our arts centre, I should explain, is the very model of David Cameron’s Big Society writ small. We raised the money to create it out of the shell of an old Quaker meeting house and we have run it successfully, with a handful of staff and a large volunteer force, for almost 20 years.