Background
- Give a brief description of your venue /organisation.
Rosehill is an intimate 204-seat theatre with an attached studio space (The Barn) situated on a hillside outside Whitehaven overlooking the Irish Sea. The Theatre presents a year round programme of drama, dance and cinema together with classical and traditional music.
- Summarise the main aims and objectives of your initiative.
To provide reliable and subsidised child care provision thus enabling parents to book in advance for films, shows or courses knowing that this facility was available and affordable. The theatre’s proposed solution was to use the attached studio space as the basis for the creation of a Local Authority licensed crèche.
Practicalities
- Describe the activities and resources that you used.
As Rosehill put its plan into action, serendipity intervened in the form of a local businesswoman who set up a private children’s nursery on the other side of the Theatre’s car park! This unanticipated development proved to have substantial and positive advantages for the Rosehill project. Rosehill was able to enter into an arrangement with the adjoining nursery, which enabled the theatre to access the knowledge, expertise and services of childcare professionals without incurring the overheads and administrative structures that relate to running a nursery. At the same time, within that contractual arrangement, it still proved possible to offer places at the nursery on a subsidised basis. With this arrangement in place systems were set up to allow the booking of nursery spaces through the Theatre’s box-office at the same time as performance tickets.
- Identify some specific outcomes that you wanted to achieve.
The main outcome we wanted to achieve was the creation of a crèche facility with usage targets as follows. We aimed to get 4 children in the crèche for 135 performances. This would result in 540 users of the crèche; we achieved 62 places in the initial period .The positive outcomes of the lower take up rate means we can now provide the service for longer.
We also identified the following outputs/outcomes; as a consequence of the project Rosehill found itself with:
- A space ‘The Barn’ that due to preparatory work was registered as a ‘safe environment for children’ and which therefore could be used as a facility for local groups such as church clubs
- A new culture among staff and volunteers that took the view the”yeah we can cope with that”
- The ability to charge £2 per individual child’s place at nursery.
- A body of new attenders at the theatre who seemed to have been attracted by the nursery service.
- A means of running children’s parties.
- A facility that could be used to attract potential sponsors to the theatre.
- A major public relations opportunity fro promoting Rosehill in the local media
The following unexpected outcomes were also identified;
- Changes in child protection legislation required a staff presence in the crèche of at least two adults at all times but which –by virtue of the association of a private partner-had no adverse affect on the financial running of the project.
- The fact that patterns of usage were variable across the week, with the weekend being more in demand than other times.
- It was easier to recruit new volunteer staff to the theatre thanks to the additional child care service that was available
Marketing and Audience Development
- Who was your target audience and how did you reach them? How did you publicise your event/project? What worked and what didn’t?
The target group is anyone who is precluded from attending Rosehill Theatre more often or at all due to the nature of their arrangements for childcare. This may take the form of either not having any provision at all for baby-sitting or the preferred baby-sitter may only be able to give an answer at short notice therefore precluding booking tickets or Adult Education Courses too far in advance, or it may be the cost of childcare that is prohibitive.
This is a target audience that may apply to any venue however it was considered to be of particular importance to Rosehill. The areas major employer BNFL’s Sellafield plant tended to attract an essentially migratory workforce of engineers and scientists who had moved from elsewhere in the country to work at the plant. These individuals thus lack the traditional networks of immediate family living locally that could typically provide a basis for childcare arrangements.
We send out direct mail questionnaires to theatre attenders who had already attended a children’s show or film at Rosehill asking if they would be interested in this service and inviting them to view the facility at certain times. We offered a child’s ticket for a film as an incentive for returning the questionnaire.
Further awareness of the facility was promoted through a special panel in Rosehill’s programme brochure, by way of press advertising and through a leaflet dedicated to the nursery arrangement.
- How did you measure/monitor the success or otherwise of your project? How did you collect evidence to show that your targets were achieved?
We kept a record of attendance/usage of the crèche and we sought informal feedback from the users of the facility.
Lessons learned
- What would you change if anything about your approach to your initiative or the initiative itself? Do you have any other tips/advice for others embarking on projects?
Rosehill’s director Chris Lloyd is firmly of the view that setting up and providing a crèche facility can have significant benefits to an organisation. These take the form of attendances from new visitors (and thus an increase in overall attendance) the creation of an enhanced experience of the organisation and certain spin-offs (such as the ability to attract paid and voluntary staff, and to provide new product offers, e.g courses for lone parents).
However it seems advisable for organisations intending to set up a comparable facility to consider identifying a suitably qualified and immediately local private operation with which a contract to provide the service could be put in place.
The Future
- Will your project continue? Do you have any other plans to introduce any other initiatives?
Yes, the funding will continue to subsidise places at the crèche. The success of the crèche project has enabled the theatre to consider a number of further measures. These are as follows:
- To carry out rigorous research into patterns of need and likely take up for the crèche facility among attenders and non-attenders with this research being linked to detailed analysis of its relative cost and benefit.
- As the remaining funding from Rosehill’s grant is used up, to try increasing the price at which crèche places are offered from £2 to £3 or £4.
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