A memory from Hilary Elder (then Metcalfe)

I arrived at the Giraffe House in April 1989, a fresh-faced 23 year-old from deep in the northern wilds, to take up my second job in arts administration. Carlisle born and bred, I’d been Arts Officer on my home turf at Cumbria County Council for the past two years. Now I was branching out into a world with many more people and much more arts but far fewer sheep.

The culture shock of the big city was exactly what I wanted, and I loved the YPT from the beginning. I can still remember the chalky scent of the Giraffe house as you entered, and how much I loved my desk, next to Norman’s. Being a non-hierarchical company was very different from local government, and working in a multicultural area and with a multicultural team was brilliant. I remember going ‘home’ to Carlisle at Christmas and being shocked that everyone was white.

What was unexpected was the discovery, a few months into the job, that the company was almost definitely going to fold. At that time, we had rather little to do with the Main House, who treated us with what I remember as benign neglect. They undoubtedly had high regard for what we did, but basically let us get on with it. I don’t remember being asked to report into board meetings about what we were doing, for example, and I don’t remember anyone from the main house ever popping across to the Giraffe House to see us for any reason. However, once the crisis came, it quickly became clear that there might be a chance of saving the Young People’s Theatre part of the company. If we could set up as a new legal entity and demonstrate that we could operate soundly both financially and with good governance, the funders might fund us. It was a lot of ifs, and no one could promise anything.

It was then that Deborah Bestwick and I attended a couple of Half Moon Board meetings. The company was deep in trying to save itself, or at least to fold in the best way it could, and was very gracious in giving its blessing for us to do all we could to save the YPT part of the operation, although it could offer no practical help – which we had not expected. Their benign trust in us held.

We then had to trust each other. We were mostly a young company and we really believed in the work we were doing. Everyone wanted to do our best to save the YPT, but there were no guarantees it would work, so it was a hairy few months. No one would have been blamed for jumping ship and there were moments when we had big arguments. It was mainly Deborah and me who met with legal people and funders to negotiate, and we would come back and report to the rest of the company. We would tell them everything, including that nothing was guaranteed and we couldn’t promise them they would keep their jobs, and they, sometimes, would accuse us of hiding things, which we weren’t; things could get difficult.

It was a huge learning curve, from small things like learning how to do payroll to crunch things like making sure our limited company with charitable status was correctly legal to bizarre things like understanding what it might mean that the lease on 43 Whitehorse Road was to include the air directly above the building (I think – I don’t think it specified for how high or whether we could charge birds or planes for flying through it).

In the end, we all held together. The YPT had excellent connections in its community and found a strong group of people to be its new Board. It had an impressive track record and all of the funders came in with full funding for the new company. We found new rented premises and made a budget that balanced and on one day in April, almost exactly a year after I arrived, we were made redundant; and the next day our new company employed us. It remains one of my proudest professional achievements, because the work has been able to continue, to grow and develop and flourish – and it could very easily have gone the other way.

Looking back, I think there were some key things that made it work:

• We were all-in. No one bailed out. No one spent energy on back-up plans. We put all our energy into trying to save the Half Moon YPT.
• Allied to that, we were very clear about what needed to be done and we stuck to it, all the way through. I was massively helped during this time, especially by Norman, who took on a lot of what the Administrator would usually have done to give me time to do the rescue work.
• The work was really good and important and valued by our customers and our funders could see that. Some of the things the YPT did, such as the Bilingual theatre and the Theatre Training Courses, were risky, but they were done properly and well and they worked.
• It was helpful that I had come in from the ‘other side’ – my last job had been working for funders. Cumbria County Council wasn’t the same as Tower Hamlets or GLA, but it was really handy in negotiations to have an understanding of the funder standpoint and I’d got myself involved in wider networks like the Association of County Arts Officers, which gave me extra knowledge and perspective.
• It was probably helpful to have been so green. There was a lot I might have been more fearful of if only I’d known more about it!
• Deborah and I had a really good relationship. Looking back I am amazed by how much faith she had in me, but we knew, even though we’d not known each other long, how to trust each other to do the different bits that needed to be done. I can’t remember us miscommunicating or disagreeing during this time. She took the lead, quite rightly, but she listened to me also and we worked very well together – I didn’t realise how well at the time, because I hadn’t had very many working relationships to compare it with, back then!

 

My time at Half Moon YPT formed me in key ways and there are some values I hold that Half Moon helped to shape.

• It’s the only time I’ve worked in a non-hierarchical company and it certainly brought its challenges, but so does any way of working and I hope I approach any group with an expectation to give and receive respect and an expectation of equal worth, if not identical contribution. Half Moon helped me with that. It still surprises me when others don’t – and it happens often!
• There’s something about the relationship between the admin and the work that I’ve been wrestling with ever since my time at Half Moon. Too often I find myself in situations where creatives and other ‘doers’ talk down the admin, often without realising they’re doing it. I’ve been on both sides now and I won’t have it. Being non-hierarchical didn’t solve this – for example, the creatives were never late for rehearsals but almost always late for company meetings, always with good excuses! – but we were at least wrestling with it, and during those months when we were in rescue mode I needed a full understanding of the creative work in order to do what I had to do. It was helpful that I led one of the Youth Theatre groups, as well as being in on discussions about the reasons and processes of creating bilingual theatre. In too many spheres in life this divide remains too wide.
• We were lucky to survive. The late ‘80s were harsh times for the arts and we were in the East End, but we were in a bit of the East End where there was some funding to be had and were in the right place at the right time and found the right people to speak to. But we also knew our why. If we hadn’t had a powerful understanding of what our work was and why we were doing it, we would have fallen apart. I learned at the Half Moon to follow your passion, but not blindly. You have to get curious about it, to explore it, to understand it.