Aberdeen Performing Arts continues to “grapple” with the challenges of rising costs as it suffers another loss-making year.
Pressures from utilities, staffing costs and the stoppage of Covid financial support have all played their part.
More than 700 performances took place at His Majesty’s Theatre, the Music Hall and the Lemon Tree throughout 2023/24 attended by more than 356,000 audiences.
Income for the charity hit £12.2 million for the year ending March 31 2024, a drop from £13.1m in 2023.
However, costs were £12.6m, leading to an overall £365,000 deficit.
‘There’s some good and some bad’
It’s yet another year of losses for the group which also previously recorded a £360,000 loss for the 2023 financial year.
Matt Godfrey, APA finance and commercial director, said: “We’ve had a similar year to last.
“In terms of underlying performance we are not in bad shape. We are seeing growth come back to us but we are obviously facing the same challenges that every charitable organisation is.
“The National Insurance increase will have an effect and we are still not through the effects of our utilities contracts.
“We were fortunate enough to have longer term gas and electric contracts but the gas contract is out this year so we’ll have the impact of that down the road.
“It’ll be a sizeable increase. But sustainability wise we try and do our best to reduce our consumption and make the organisation more sustainable so that work will help us offset a little bit of the impact there.
“Like everybody there’s some good and some bad and we face the normal challenges around inflationary increases which will impact.”
Strong programme for audiences
Despite this Mr Godfrey has been encouraged by the amount of people attending the venues.
Programme highlights in 2023/24 included Come From Away at His Majesty’s Theatre and Granite Noir
Come From Away was described as “a stand-out, an incredibly powerful production which generated instant standing ovations at every performance”.
Crime fiction festival Granite Noir was attended by just under 20,000 people across it events.
Mr Godfrey said: “We are still facing some challenges however, we’ve had a lot of positives in terms of audience returning back to us.
“There’s strength in our programme and strength in trading aspects. We’ve got The Terrace restaurant which has now been open for a full year and we are getting the benefit from that.
“For us the key priorities are making sure we are continuing to show the importance of culture in the north-east and retain of funding levels.
“We’ve got a good programme coming up with three weeks of The Book of Mormon to run but like any other organisation we are still trying to grapple with some of the challenges around staff wages.
“National Insurance will be a big key one. As a charitable organisation there’s no extra support to deal with the impact of that.”
Youth arts festival Light the Blue, held in June and September’s Aberdeen Comedy Festival have both been described as upcoming highlights for this year.
Conversation