Former head of Peterborough’s Vivacity outraged by “cultural vandalism” as Key Theatre and Werrington Leisure Centre to close

Stewart Francis, the former head of Vivacity.

Stewart Francis, like many in the city, was shocked at the decision to close the theatre and leisure centre; with the city’s libraries potentially set to follow.

The council announced the decision last week as a response to its dire financial situation.

Vivacity had run the services for a decade prior to 2020 but was forced to stop due the financial impacts of the pandemic.

The Key Theatre which is to close on January 17.

This saw arts, culture and heritage services transferred to City Culture Peterborough (under City College Peterborough which is a function of the council) and sports and leisure services to Peterborough Ltd, a wholly owned company of the council in September last year.

This is a decision that Mr Francis has criticised as it saw services taken out of the hands of experts in the industry.

He said: “I think it’s incredible they put all these lights up in Flag Fen for a week and then they plunge the Key Theatre into darkness. It’s a theatre that’s been for 40 years and could be there for the next 40 years The mismanagement of this is horrendous. You’ve got people operating these services that don’t know how to do it.

“The people running leisure in the city are the same people that empty the bins. Culture and heritage was also left to be run by a college. What did they expect was going to happen? This was the same for the gym business, which was the cash cow to protect the Key Theatre, museums and the libraries.

“With everything Vivacity did, we were able break even. The leisure side with the centres and the gyms etc, generated the funding to be spent on culture, the arts and museums etc.

“To hear it be said that to get the Key Theatre to be profitable is as good as impossible is simply not true. It is difficult to manage small regional theatres, but it is not impossible.

“The sums to support the Key Theatre are minute compared with expenditure on all the other services the council provides. For the entirety of all the leisure services. The council used to provide a grant to Vivacity of £2.1m; Vivacity turned over £11m. They said themselves that the losses of the Key Theatre can be listed in tens of thousands. Even if it was a couple of hundred thousands; these are extremely small sums of money. Given the right people running those services, we probably could have overcome those difficulties.”

Peterborough City Council has suggested that the closures will save the council £150,000 in the first six months of 2022 alone. In the current financial year, the Key Theatre is forecast to make a loss in the region of £300,000.

The leisure facilities are forecast to make a net loss for 2021/22 of £190,000, increasing to £205,000 for 2022/23. They will be closed until the start of the new school year in September 2022.

The decision has, however, cast doubt on what the cultural future of the city will look like; something Mr Francis is extremely concerned about. He added: “This is nothing short of cultural vandalism. This is a city we are told that has aspirations to be City of Culture in 2029 but it’s closing leisure centres and theatres. Somebody has got to stand up and be counted on this. We know there is a huge financial gap but is this the price the people of Peterborough are prepared to pay? I don’t think so. There are people young and old that are absolutely shattered by this.

“I’m concerned for the cultural services in this city. What is this city going to look like? Is it just going to be just flats and warehouses or is it going to have a heart, soul, colour and a place that people can be proud of? What are the kids going to do this winter? Where are they going to go? What games are they going to play? It’s devastating. Once you lose a service, does it ever come back?

“With Covid, everything was going to be extremely difficult but with Vivacity, you had a professional organisation as a charity that would have been doing its best to ensure that this didn’t happen. As a charity, we were raising sponsorship funds and bringing money in from other places in the city. The council simply did not get that you have to view it as a commercial operation; competing with other theatres, and whatever else is going on in the city, cinema, football matches etc.

“It is exactly the same with leisure, competitors to Vivacity were huge organisations. You had to have an organisation that knew what they were doing in that field. You had the expertise and the people that could do that. The problems of the pandemic, would have still been there, whether it be vivacity or the council but who would have been best placed to try and get us through this?”

The PT has approached the city council for a fiurther response.

Peterborough’s Key Theatre and Werrington Leisure Centre to close in January

Peterborough youth theatre group ‘devastated’ at planned closure of Key Theatre

Two petitions started in bid to save Peterborough’s Key Theatre in just a few hours

Peterborough’s New Theatre bosses to help save the Key Theatre

Vivacity leaves ‘a legacy to be proud of’ as it prepares to hand over Peterborough culture and leisure services