Plymouth’s Barbican Theatre is celebrating the impact of a year of selling all their shows as Pay What You Decide tickets, which has encouraged risk taking and brought in new audiences.
The Pay What You Decide events offer audiences the opportunity to pay whatever they feel an event is worth to them – including no payment at all. Audiences can pay when they book or after they have seen the show.
During 2021-22 over 3,100 Pay What You Decide tickets were issued generating income of £17,224 and the theatre’s data shows that over 60 per cent of those attending were new audiences.
Laura Kreifman, Barbican Theatre’s chief executive said:
“We’re fuelling a new consistent audience, with shows selling extraordinarily well and with our ‘small’ venue achieving a reach of over two million people in the last two years.
“Our passion has been about creating new routes into seeing ‘culture’ and that means we have to rethink everything from price, value, how you talk about money, coded and biassed language and advertising, what copy and images actually say to totally new techniques to reach different audiences.”
Jo Cann, Barbican Theatre’s marketing and communications manager said:
“Feedback from audiences has been incredible, and proves to the Barbican team that Pay What You Decide is making a huge difference to who can attend and benefit from the experience of culture and live events.
“We have spent a great deal of time making sure the language used to communicate how Pay What You Decide works is both accessible and transparent and it’s genuinely so great to see how this has really worked for us and our audiences.
“We now know that the average price people can actually afford to take a risk on seeing a show is just over £9 a ticket.
“While this has an impact on our box office yield, we’re fuelling a consistent new audience, with shows selling extraordinarily well and with our small venue achieving a reach of over two million people in the last two years.”
Barbican Theatre was able to commit to a year of Pay What You Decide thanks to the support of the Esmee Fairbairn and Garfield Western Foundation.
Another new season of Pay What You Decide events has been announced including Malaika Kegode & Jakabol’s Outlier (gig/theatre October 14-15), Scratchworks’Hags: A Magical Extravaganza’ (comedy/ theatre October 28-29) and Vincent Dance Theatre’s Hold Tight (dance/ theatre November 12).
Tickets are all available at barbicantheatre.co.uk
