Join our #RefundRescue Campaign

Join our #RefundRescue Campaign

Our audiences and local community are the lifeblood of Norwich Theatre’s three venues. We are extremely grateful for their loyalty and dedication and for the support they have been giving us over many years.

As a registered charity with no public subsidy, we rely on ticket sales for 80% of our income and the bars and restaurants in our buildings for a further 15% . As we enter an open-ended period of closure, we are facing particularly challenging times ahead and ask for your support and generosity to help us to survive this crisis and continue the work we do once it is over.

While we appreciate there is disappointment at not seeing eagerly-anticipated shows, our #RefundRescue campaign asks theatregoers to kindly consider donating the cost of their ticket rather than requesting a credit note or refund. This will support our venues to recover from the impact of closure caused by the Coronavirus and will allow us to ensure we hold together the incredible staff team that are part of why audiences and customers love our venues so much.

Please help us by becoming a Refund Rescuer.

We have just launched this campaign because…

Over the past few days, due to the rapid onset of COVID-19/Coronavirus and the rapid escalation of the Government’s response, Norwich Theatre has been dealt a huge blow to its future viability.

We are currently estimating that it will cost us around £1.5million to recover from this crisis although this could increase if we see a period of closure beyond the estimated 12-14 weeks that forms the basis of our current scenario-planning.

In light of this, and knowing how much our audiences love our venues, delight in the productions that we stage and value the impact on local communities that we have, we are now asking all of our customers to consider supporting our #RefundRescue Campaign.

Here is how it works…

Supporting this campaign is simple and you just need to give us permission to turn our refunds to you from cancelled shows into donations to help rescue our much loved venues, save the jobs of our hard working staff during periods where buildings will be closed and speed up our ability to recover all of our activities, especially our community and education work, when we are able to re-open.

Where shows are cancelled at Theatre Royal you will receive an email which will ask you whether you would like a refund, a credit to your account or if you would like to donate the full value or a portion of your tickets. We will then do the rest from there and you will have nothing more to do.

Your support goes towards…

Your support will be matched against the unavoidable expenditure that we will incur during a period of closure which is not matched by income. This will include staff costs and the general running costs of our buildings however our first priorities for investing your support will be:-

– to protect our staff (especially casual and freelance staff) from financial hardship and support their mental and physical good health during the period of closure;
– to save our award-winning programme of learning, education and community engagement work.

In the first instance we are aiming to raise £100,000 from the Refund Rescue Campaign and this will be split 50:50 between these two priorities. If we exceed this we will announce where the next tranche of funds will be directed.

For more information, click here.