Battersea Arts Centre to move to pay-what-you-can model from spring 2021

Punters at London’s Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) will not pay anything or only what they can afford from spring 2021 onwards, its artistic director and CEO Tarek Iskander has said.

The news emerged during the Achates Philanthropy Foundation’s Art, Audiences, Money conference on 12 November.

Iskander later confirmed the plans on Twitter, saying: “This is definitely our ambition and something the team are currently working on.”

The BAC’s programming and deal-making with artists has undergone a “radical shift,” Iskander told the panel, according to The Stage.

He promised that a pay-what-you-can model would “not disadvantage the artists in any way.”

He added that the pandemic had forced “horrible decisions and cost-cutting” on the BAC.

The executive director of Donmar Warehouse, Henny Finch, also discussed a “move away from relying on funding from individual donors,” The Stage reported.

She said that 50% of revenue at the West End theatre comes from donations, half of which is from individuals.

“Given that we have only 250 seats, if you want to make space for new audiences to have a space to sit down, you have to drive down the number of donors in the audience without destabilising the model too much,” she said.