The Beck Theatre is on a mission to ‘enrich the lives of the communities it serves’. The venue’s Theatre Director, Steve Sargeant, tells us more.

The Beck Theatre is a 600-seat Commercial presenting theatre in Hayes, West London. Over recent years, Hayes has seen a substantial evolution of it’s demographics and now sits as one of the most diverse areas in West London. The London-wide ‘Crossrail’ infrastructure project has bought significant amounts of investment to Hayes and the area around the Beck, with an additional expected 22,000 inhabitants within 20mins walk of our front doors.

This presents a rare set of opportunities for our theatre, and over the past four years myself and the Beck team have been interrogating what a culturally relevant commercial operation looks like within the context of increasingly diverse communities.

As part of that work, we have had to recognise that we can no longer rely on ‘traditional theatre audiences’ to fill the house year-round, and instead we’ve focussed much of our work on ways in which we can develop a more flexible approach to better meet the needs and expectations of a wide range of audiences. This has required new approaches to Technical management, Marketing, Hospitality and our overall customer experience in order that communities who may never have been to the theatre before feel immediately at home at the Beck.

We have also had to challenge the usual ways of programming a regional theatre. We believe that for theatres like the Beck, there is an opportunity to programme shows for specific communities, who in time, will become regular theatregoers. What we have found is that there is a lack of appropriate commercial product that speaks directly to diverse communities across the sector, and I believe this has led to many people feeling like mainstream theatres just aren’t relevant to them. As a result of limited product, increasingly we work directly with diverse artists to create live shows for our stage. This has seen us present some extraordinary events and rapidly build new audiences in a short space of time.

This approach has seen us work with producers to bring artists across from Europe, India, Pakistan and the Caribbean to perform on our stage. It has seen us represented at the Asian Arts Awards, kick-start a resurgence in live Lovers Rock concerts and we’ve seen small companies who we have nurtured, go on to produce sell-out national tours. Over 25% of our commercial programme speaks directly to diverse communities and these shows are some of the most commercially successful we present.

By deconstructing the traditional ways to programme and operate a commercial Theatre and honing a new approach, we have unlocked audience development, commercial sustainability and cultural relevance in an area of rapid change. We plan to continue to celebrate diversity across our programme and are committed to being as culturally relevant as possible for the audiences of Hayes, West London and beyond.