Riverside Studios is West London’s premier independent cinema, theatre, restaurant and television studios.
David Hingley, Head of Arts, Heritage & Culture, Peridot Partners speaks to Tony Lankester (pictured), Executive Director / Joint CEO at Riverside Studios about the challenges they’ve faced and the way they’ve responded since.
Riverside Studios has played a pivotal role in London’s cultural landscape for decades, providing a unique space with a commitment to artistic innovation for both established and emerging artists. When you arrived, however, you were faced with a highly challenging situation that required a radical and ambitious plan to avoid complete closure. Faced with such an existential challenge, what were the key things you put in place to establish your roadmap for recovery?
When I joined Riverside it was facing a perfect storm of adverse events – it had just re-opened after a lengthy redevelopment period, which had exposed it to significant levels of debt; the Covid pandemic was a couple of months away from decimating live theatre audiences; and the spiralling cost of living was putting huge pressure on our audience’s levels of disposal income as well as impacting our own operating costs. Any of those factors on their own would have been enough to put paid to any similarly sized and resourced theatre’s plans. In combination, they were exponentially more ominous.
The pathway out of that required a calm focus. We had to manage and somehow reduce the levels of debt we faced while, at the same time, continuing to operate, containing costs where we could and rebuilding revenue by creatively reimagining our purpose.
We addressed the debt question by making the difficult decision to enter Administration, forcing a restructuring of the debt by, ideally, selling the business’ assets to an investor who would allow us to keep operating on the premises on more favourable terms. We achieved that goal toward the end of 2024 and were able to exit Administration which, in itself, is an unusual feat in our sector.
The underlying business still needed our attention, though. We had to adopt a more flexible approach to negotiating hires from incoming productions and producers, doing whatever it took to keep the doors open and audiences flowing.
We decided early on that consistency would be key, so we had to establish ourselves as a reliable and stable institution to maintain goodwill and the affection of our core audience and market. We kept our food and beverage operation going, even through the darkest days of the pandemic, ensuring that we kept our presence in the community and could build revenues more readily once we were more stable. We also continued our fairly extensive community programme, largely funded through a Covid relief grant from Arts Council England. And we got a lot more creative in the types of offers we took to customers – memberships, subscriptions, ticket bundles – and the channels we used to get our offers to market.
The Administration period introduced a new level of rigor to how we made our day-to-day decisions, which, although painful, kept our funders on side and enabled us to develop a new realistic and achievable business plan from the ground up. It was this business plan that ensured we could emerge from Administration with a solid roadmap in which future investors could have confidence.
What was the importance of having the right team in place to help you achieve this?
Having an “all hands on deck” outlook was critical to our success. Going into Administration, we knew that we would likely lose some key team members and that recruiting would be impossible in that environment. So our approach was to be completely transparent with the team and, as far as possible, take them on the journey with us with care and empathy front and centre. Fortunately, the levels of attrition were really low, and even though we lost some good people, we were able to shuffle the team around and guide team members into new roles, often unearthing some hidden talents and passions that could be explored. The flexibility and positive attitude everyone brought to work meant that we could keep the lights on, and the organisation emerged stronger and more resilient.
What were the key learnings and was there anything you would have done differently?
In a complex operation where dozens of decisions are made daily, there are always things we probably could have done differently with the benefit of hindsight. But even the ‘mistakes’ were learning opportunities. Inculcating that kind of learning culture into an organisation is so important when you’re facing difficult times. We would often reflect on how A, B or C went and build any learnings into the next cycle. Ultimately, we are operating in a sector that is fragile and imperfect but is important nonetheless. While we might aspire to get everything right all the time, we know that it isn’t always going to be the case—how we deal with shortcomings is as important for the business’ future as the successes.
