Will Theatre Deli’s closure blow up Sheffield’s ‘talent pipeline’?

Good morning, readers — and welcome to this week’s Thursday edition of The Tribune.

On Friday, Theatre Deli Sheffield — a charity-run venue dedicated to developing artists early in their careers — made a shocking announcement. Their theatre in Arley Street, their third home in the city since the charity branched out from London a decade ago, will close its doors permanently at the end of May. 

Even their Facebook post acknowledges it was never meant to end like this. “We had planned to stay for longer and will be sad to say goodbye to the beautiful space we created,” it reads. Said space only opened in March last year and was made beautiful using a £50,000 grant and £100,000 loan from the Key Fund. At the time the funding was awarded, CEO David Ralf said it was particularly cheering “after a string of recent news stories revealing the precarity of essential Sheffield arts venues and infrastructure”.

Now, though the charity insists it hopes to reemerge in Sheffield at some point, Theatre Deli has become yet another saddening news story about the state of the UK’s performing arts. We spoke to the charity and others to find out what went wrong. To read the full piece and all our members-only journalism, join today.

Editor’s note: In our piece on Tuesday about the future of the former Debenhams building on The Moor, we spoke to the chair of the Sheffield Property Association Martin McKervey about several potential options for the building. Following that piece, we have been asked to make it clear that as an organisation, the SPA does not have a position on the future of the building and is not leading any discussion on what should happen to it. We are very happy to do so.

Your Tribune briefing

🔒 We broke the news yesterday on X but, in case you missed it, the owner of the Abbeydale Picture House has evicted arts charity CADS (again). The charity, which is also a key player in today’s main story, was recently awarded £300,000 by the government to help them buy the building and repair it. Judging by the eviction notice posted to the door on Monday, its owner Phil Robbins is not keen on the idea. (Check out our story from earlier this month for more of the backstory.)

🚕 Dozen of Sheffield taxi drivers working for Veezu protested outside its headquarters yesterday in a row over pay. The company recently reduced fees in a bid to attract customers and has also changed what percentage of this fee is paid to drivers, introducing a sliding scale from 12 to 35% based on how many jobs they complete. Veezu driver Aftab Ahmed told the BBC: “The company decided they wanted to help customers by reducing fares, but they have decided to take money off the drivers to pay for it.” Veezu, meanwhile, insists drivers are free to “decide which operator they use”.

🤢 A care home in Burngreave has been rated inadequate by the CQC, which has promised to take further action unless there are “rapid and widespread improvements”. Alan Stephenson from the CQC said staff at Norbury Court described having to give bed baths to residents instead of proper showers “because there weren’t enough towels” or leaving them in pajamas during the day due to a lack of clean clothes. He added: “Additionally, we saw the home was dirty and needed a deep clean… there was a strong, unpleasant smell in some parts.”

Things to do

🧵 Shop small and shop local on Saturday as the regular Craft and Flea Market returns to the beautiful surroundings of Sheffield Cathedral. There will be a huge selection of products available on the day including art, vintage bric-a-brac, plants, jewellery, sustainable goods, food, ceramics and candles. The market runs from 11am-5pm and tickets are £2.50 (under 16s free).

🎻 Tomorrow night, Firth Hall is hosting a concert from the Verona Quartet, a string quartet described as an “outstanding ensemble…cohesive yet full of temperament” by the New York Times. They’ll be playing pieces from Mendelssohn, Bacewicz and Beethoven. Full-price tickets are £17 but student and those under 30 can grab one for £8.50 — get yours here.

🪩 Also tomorrow night, Hatch is offering a lineup of the “best names in DIY electronica,” including Heavy Lifting, who featured in our article on algorave. The headliner is Flora Ocean Parkin, who promises a DJ set full of “high energy Techno, DnB and anything else that gets the blood pumping”. Tickets for this are just £9 and are available here or on the door.

Will Theatre Deli’s closure blow up Sheffield’s ‘talent pipeline’?

In early March, Theatre Deli Sheffield publicly acknowledged for the first time the “financial pressures” that are now forcing it to abandon its latest home. In a statement on its website, the theatre explained all performances would have to grind to a halt at the end of April. Executive producer Daljinder Singh acknowledged this would be an immense blow to the city’s artists, especially those early in their careers. “It goes without saying that a vital talent pipeline will be severely disrupted in our city, region and beyond.”

Behind the scenes, it had been clear things were going badly wrong since the end of November. Theatre Deli struggled to scrape together the £4,000 it owed in rent for that month, and has not paid rent since. The latest annual accounts for Theatre Delicatessen Ltd, the subsidiary company running the venue in Arley Street, show it was more than £132,000 in debt at the end of February. 

Dan Butlin from CADS, the local arts charity which subleased the theatre its space in Cuthbert House, insists his employer made as many concessions as possible. “We tried to work with them to find a solution,” he tells me, when I visited the building earlier this week. “We really wanted to try and help them survive in that space because they put so much work into it. It by no means looked like this when they took it on.” When the theatre came to him at the end of November and admitted they couldn’t afford next month’s rent, they were given a three-month rent holiday starting in January, which has since stretched to five months. As for the rent they owed for December, which they were supposed to pay back in January, Butlin says that debt was “kicked further down the road”. 

The hope, he says, was that the theatre’s application for funding from Arts Council England would be granted by March. It was not. Theatre Deli then came back to CADS with a proposal which would allow them to stay put, which Butlin says entailed a significant year-long rent reduction, but sadly the other charity had to decline. “It wasn’t affordable for us,” he says. “If we accepted what they proposed it could have put [CADS] at risk, so they could have ended up without the space anyway.” Perhaps, he muses, they could have managed it two years ago but, more recently, CADS has had its fight with the owner of the Abbeydale Picture House draining its resources. “We couldn’t take the risk.”

But he doesn’t view it as any fault of Theatre Deli that they were unable to make the numbers add up. “We’re noticing it a lot with our studio holders — we’ve got 40-odd across our four buildings and we’re starting to see people leaving or finding it difficult to pay.” Doing what Theatre Deli does without regular funding or wealthy patrons has never been easy, and with the price of everything rising (particularly the energy bills needed to keep the stage lights on), it’s only getting harder. “They’re responsible for their own bills and, in some of our other buildings, bills have tripled.”