Annabel Turpin is the new Chief Executive at Storyhouse:

I have worked in arts Centres all my life and and I’m passionate about them. I’m new to Chester so very much trying to understand the place and the area as much as the organisation

How did you come to Chester?

I’d been in my previous job for 15 years and I absolutely loved it there. The ARC in Stockton on Tees is like Storyhouse but smaller. However passionate about a place you are, however much you challenge yourself, you’re still one person with one view of the world and it just felt like it was time for me and the organisation to move on. I hadn’t applied for any other jobs. I saw the job here and I knew about Storyhouse.

What did you know about Chester?

Not a lot. I was drawn by the job and the scale and ambition of Storyhouse. It felt like absolutely the right thing. I came for my interview and that was the first time I’d set foot in Chester. It felt busy and lively, it was exciting to be in a city. It felt like Storyhouse was a real beacon and everywhere I went without prompting people mentioned Storyhouse. It felt like there was a lot of love for SH in the city. Its easy for people to view city’s and towns in a narrow way. Chester: lots of interesting old buildings. But no place is like that, everywhere has a mix of people and communities and areas. I suppose from the beginning I wasn’t blinded by that.

What is your role/ day to day job?

My job is to lead the organisation to help develop it’s future strategy and implement it. As I’ve said to a lot of people I’m not here to make all the decisions, I’m here to facilitate the decisions being made. I firmly believe in distributive leadership where everyone is a leader in their area of work. Internally that’s the job. In terms of future strategy for SH, its a very young organisation, a new building where the focus has understandably been inward looking .

My job is to be a bit more outward facing and to go out and look at what the potential for collaboration is , to position SH as a contributor to the city and a leader in the city, again in that facilitative way, and to be really look at how we reach beyond the people that we are currently reaching. When you build an amazing place like this there are lots of people that feel immediately at home here, but as an organisation ages you want to reach out to communities you aren’t reaching. By communities I mean communities of place, but also of identity, need, action and interest.

What changes will she be making to better support community theatre groups? For example Tip Top Productions- I think they have done 2 shows here in 6 years.

The honest answer is its too early to say. It’s week 5 for me. Part of what SH should be doing is helping everyone in Chester and the wider area including Wales, that’s a big part of our catchment area. Its about fulfilling the creative potential. If there are people being creative in the area we need to work out how we can best support them. Sometimes its about doing it here, and sometimes it about working with people in different ways. Its absolutely our intention to fulfil this, exactly how we do it I don’t know. I’m very up to meeting anyone that wants to come and chat to me about what they’re doing.

What support /involvement do you envisage for local creatives and freelancers?

Again I think its a little bit early to say exactly what that’s going to look like . It goes back to what I said about creative potential- there are clearly a wealth of creative people in the city that we want to be working with. It probably sits a bit more with the Creative Director and the creative team, but the arts sector thrives on freelancers. They are a key part of our workforce, but its about working with people to find out what we can all do together. There are already some opportunities within the organisation, there are freelancers that we’re already working with, but there will be more, we need to get to know them.

When will there be more public access computers in Storyhouse? Many are not working.

Absolutely I’m not going to pretend that they’re working in the way that we want them to and nor are the systems that we’ve got. I think its fair to say that IT has been quite challenging from a recruitment part of view. We don’t have an IT manager at the moment, we are recruiting someone this week. That’s why they aren’t working, we don’t have anyone to fix them. We hope to have someone in post by the beginning of January and then we can get everything fixed!

You’ve been praised for your ground breaking and influential work at ARC Stockton. What project or focus of work from ARC would you like to see embedded within the work of Storyhouse and what project or initiative are you most proud of?

That’s a really good question! Its never about just exporting a model and planting it somewhere else, but what I’m really proud of is the way that we developed relationships with so many different communities and that takes time. It relies on trust so you need to build trust with communities so that they feel safe to come in even when their starting point is ” the arts isn’t for me” because they don’t see themselves there. Part of ARC’s mission was to present art that was relevant and that’s something I’m really hot on. In terms of what I’d want to take from there to here, its learning how you engage with those communities so we can broaden and diversify the range of people that we’re engaging with. I’m still learning about the communities here, so there will be tools that we use here, but it will be nuanced as its a very different area. There’s also a bit about supporting artists but ARC has a lot of small spaces where we could do that.

In terms of what I’m most proud of, one of the things that ARC is most known for internationally is Pay what you decide. There’s a theatre in Philadelphia that even uses the logo we designed because we made it open access. It was a project I’m really proud of, it was originated by a theatre group called Slung Low in Leeds, it wasn’t my idea, but we were the first to use it and it got copied around the world. It’s an audience development tool, not an income generating tool. Its a way of making work accessible to audiences, and it worked really well for the demographic we were in. You book a ticket but you don’t pay any money and at the end you’re invited to pay what that experience was worth to you. It gets over the affordability bearing in mind that Stockton is a very deprived area and lots of people can’t afford to come, it removes the risk of paying for something you might not enjoy. If we’re selling Kinky Boots, people know if they’re going to enjoy it, if we’re selling Jimmy Carr etc, we didn’t do it on those type of events. But where it was a new show telling a story that wasn’t known, its a big risk! It removes the risk but puts a lot of trust in the audience.

How can SH promote more inclusivity surrounding all the arts. And particularly what has or will story house do to reach more into communities that might necessarily not have the funds or resources to attend shows?

I think the starting point is getting to know them. Its very easy to employ “charity models” giving people free tickets because we think you can’t afford to come. There is a place for that but its very top down. I’m interested in going out to communities and finding out what they care about , what kind of experiences do they want, how can we as an organisation respond to that , and how can we make it accessible in terms of price and all the other barriers people face. Not just money, transport and all the other physical things. Often its the barrier of “it doesn’t feel like its for me”. People might look at it and say , “that’s not relevant to me, thats not a story I want to hear”. We have to understand what people want, and then sprinkle the magic on that so that they come out thinking “wow that was amazing!”

Would SH consider working with the schools of Chester to bring theatre to school halls?

We have quite a big schools programme at the moment. ( A list of 18 schools was later provided including Blacon High, Dorin Park, Kings, Cherry Grove, Upton High, Chester Blue Coat etc) Theres always a difficulty with such a big organisation as SH , just actually explaining all the things that we do. A lot of the focus publicly goes on selling tickets to the general public. When we’re promoting our schools programme we’re going directly to schools. If you don’t work in a school or you don’t have a child at one of the schools, you wouldn’t know about it. That is a challenge for us and its one we are taking on. We are working in schools all over Chester and beyond. Its a mix of activity, the young Storyhouse team talk to staff and find out needs and how we can support to increase the creative opportunities for young people.

What do you feel a theatre should ” be” to its local audience?

Fundamentally it should be a place where you can feel at home. People should feel safe and welcome and it should be really friendly. I know that’s nothing to do with the arts, but if we’re getting those things right then people can then go on whatever journeys they want in the building. That goes for work that we do outside the building as well. The second thing is to be somewhere that helps you understand the world. Ultimately what art does is allow you to see the world through someone else’s eyes. If you’re looking at a painting or a sculpture or you’re watching a film, you’re seeing a story that someone else has created. I think the world is a better place when we all understand each other . I want people to come here feel safe and experience something that helps them make sense of the world. Not in a worthy way! Come and see Cinderella and you will see a brilliant exciting magical musical show, but I’m sure there will be elements about it that will make you think.

How do you propose to join the dots in the city: collaboration between Storyhouse and all other key stakeholders in the city?

Its something I’m really excited about doing and something I’ve done a lot in other areas. I think things are always more exciting if you do them with other people. SH is a big anchor institution in the city and we need to be playing our part in bringing people together. Theres so much scope , and I’ve been meeting lots of external people and everyone feels really up for it. I don’t believe in the traditional view of competition, we’re all better when we’re working together . That’s on us, we have to get on and do it. I want to invite people and have conversations and ask people what they want to do together.

Will there be any more exhibition space for local photographers/ artists?

SH has not been designed as a visual arts space, its not a gallery. But are there other ways we can work with partners around the city to make sure there is exhibition space? There are other organisations with buildings that could house things that we can’t. I can’t promise anything, we don’t have plans to knock walls down or change it. In the rolling conversations I am sure we can help with it on a wider scale.

Do you plan to offer Ticket discounts for seniors in line with what Picture House as competitors are offering?

There is a gap in my knowledge , I am not exactly sure of what our ticket concessions are yet but I will find out. Picturehouse is a great asset for the city to have: we want the whole city to grow. SH is a charity, we are a single screen independent cinema, we have our own programme of events that happen in there, over and above just watching a film. I hope people will carry on supporting us that want that kind of experience. Cinema despite what people thought as we came out of Covid is actually growing, its still really popular. People still want that collective experience. If together we can encourage more people to go to the cinema then that’s good for both of us.

Why is the youth theatre group not included in this years Christmas show?

The honest answer is I don’t know. There are lots of good things about having young people in a production. It can be a little “this is the show and we want you to be in it”. I’m more interested in how can we support children and young people to make work that they care about. This decision was made before I arrived. We want to provide opportunities to work with professionals because that’s great for development, but sometimes children can be put into shows because it helps to sell tickets. That isn’t the best for those children and it certainly isn’t cultivating a sense of independence because its not a show that someone else has created.

What is the new space inside the old Boots in Town Hall square to be used for ?

That is Studio by Storyhouse. Its a home mainly for our young people’s programme. Its about giving them their own space, allowing them to have a bit more ownership. Previously a lot of the work has been done in the Garret studio, which is a performance space, so we haven’t been using it much because of all of this wonderful activity thats been going on it. This feels like the best of both worlds- they’re getting to use their own space , and we’re getting the performance space to develop more of a programme there. This allows us to bring in new voices, new stories and hopefully in the longer term, we can look at how we can support artists and theatre makers to create work as well. Using this space helps us to take our strategy forward. Its also being used for rehearsals for some of our productions, which means they aren’t in a Church or somewhere 6 miles away.

Storyhouse has been a massive success since it opened and helped transform Chester. How can we make it even more successful ?

I think, we want SH to mean something to everyone in Chester. Balance is a word I use a lot in my job. Its about balancing the books, balancing the activity , the resources. That’s the challenge and beauty of arts centres over and above things that are not just theatres, or just libraries or convert halls. To have that opportunity to balance which is amazing. Its about growing our audience in numbers, and also in terms of who they are. Its never about beating people over the head and telling them they must like theatre or art. People should make a choice, some people like football and some don’t and that’s fine. I want to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to make that choice. There are still partnerships we can forge.

How do you think Storyhouse sits regionally in terms of theatre? Do you foresee any changes in the programme to direct people here rather than Manchester etc ?

Shows that go to 2000 seat venues are not going to play in 800 seat theatres because it wouldn’t stack up for them economically, for them or us. We have to play to our strengths and bring in work in different forms that work as this scale. The catchment area is interesting because I think its different for different things. If you’re a parent or carer with 4-5 year olds, you’re probably not going to want to travel far to go to a show unless its super special. Generally family audiences come from a much tighter catchment area, whereas if your favourite band are playing 2 hours away you might book to go. Theres no point in trying to get family audiences to come here from Manchester. I think its about understanding our community and their mobility options and making sure that we cater for them.

I think theres work to do in terms of profile because we are still so young. Talking to peers across the country, they feel like they should know a bit more about Storyhouse. Building our profile will help us get the best work here. That’s what makes people what to play SH, because its brilliant here , the audiences are great, the staff are fantastic, its a great place to go, I can have a meal afterwards or whatever the reasons are. We’re all human beings and they’re will be venues that people don’t go back to because they’ve had a bad experience.

How have you found the city since you arrived?

So positive and so welcomed. Theres always some trepidation when you move somewhere new and I’m very conscious of being an outsider. I think there are some benefits to that because you come with fresh eyes and no baggage. I need to get to know the people and the communities so I’m on a learning curve. I’ve been made to feel so welcome by everyone. I really am having a great time and I want to say thank you to everyone.

How far in advance do you make plans?

I’m planning for next year and I want to make sure we all know what we’re doing in the next (financial) year. A lot of the building blocks are in place, in terms or influencing and facilitating those decisions and discussions theres a little bit more work to be done . I would always want to have a three year plan so theres been work going on behind the scenes to think about our strategy. We want to position ourselves so its clear we are a charity, and as soon as the first year is nailed we will look at what the three year plan might look like. The key things are how do we get the best work here, how do we engage a broader range of people and how do we balance the books, make the most of our assets, how do we collaborate more and make a bigger contribution to Chester. That’s what we’re here to do.