The recent Smalltown and Dullbridge Town Council White Elephant Enclosure Mismanagement Committee meeting saw Councillors discuss the latest user figures for the venue. Yesterday SomersetClive brought you the community use numbers and today we take a look at the alternative use for the WEE – namely the one-off musical/theatre/anything that might bring in an audience events held at the WEE over the past two months.
The Tim Pretty Tribute, which saw a 70/30 split of ticket sales between the act and the WEE, saw 116 tickets sold at £19.50 each, giving the WEE £678.60, which is at least a small amount over the usual £400 hire fee.
Unfortunately the number of tickets sold for the Tim Pretty Tribute was also included in the user numbers for the period January/February and at that time was said to be 125. This second inclusion of the same event in the figures is straight out of the Smalltown Culture and Arts Manager’s (SCAM) handbook – ‘If all else fails add in the same number again.’
The screening of the classic film – Cabarnet – which cost £87.50 to hire, fares about as well as all the other classic film screenings, with attendance claimed as 20 people. However, only five tickets were sold, so this appears to be another classic SCAM ploy – ‘Multiply the number by four to get your answer’.
The final event held at the WEE in May was the Smalltown Literary Festival, behich saw 362 tickets sold for the various events and workshops held over two days.
The organisers of the Festival hired the venue for two days, paying a reduced hire-charge as community users.
The most popular of all the Literary Festival events was the talk by famous local author Nicholas Voyd, who read out extracts from his soon to be released new book ‘Dead Emails‘, much to the enjoyment of a capacity crowd of women-of-a-certain-age, all of whom clung to his every word and laughed in all the right places.
If only Mr Voyd could be persuaded to appear on the WEE stage every night the headache of trying to increase bums-on-seats would disappear instantly.