Annual Review 2019/20
From the perspective of early 2021, reflecting on the fantastic achievements of 2019/2020 evokes powerful and complicated feelings of pride, delight, sadness and tender memories of life before COVID-19. We hope you enjoy the journey through a very busy year of work onstage, on the big screen and online, from a world premiere production to the continued growth of our talent development and young people and community engagement work. As we look back on the achievements of 19-20 we remain hopeful that 2021/2022 will see brighter new adventures for us all.
Executive Summary
665,331 TOTAL ENGAGEMENTS WITH OUR ACTIVITY
544,086 live audience members
421 performances
26% first time attenders
83% total tickets sold across all public performances
34 venues
23 countries
95,978 cinema admissions with 1,440 cinema screenings
491 workshop sessions
7,712 workshop attendances
Introduction
2019-20 was another successful year for New Adventures, one of our busiest since joining the Arts Council England National Portfolio in 2015.
We toured three large-scale productions, giving 418 performances to 542,386 live audience members across a cumulative total of 59 weeks nationally and internationally. We sold 83% of all tickets available and 26% of our audiences were first time attenders.
With a focus on young people, Romeo and Juliet gave its world premiere and involved 78 young people in local casts, with 16 young dancers giving their professional debuts, and was the first large-scale dance production to engage Young Associate Artists in creating its sound, lighting, set and costume design alongside orchestration, conducting and choreography.
Swan Lake travelled across Japan, China, South Korea, and the USA following its UK tour, and The Red Shoes completed almost half of its UK tour before COVID-19 closed theatres around the world
Through strong collaboration with our partner organisations, we were able to engage with young people and communities all over the UK and in support of our Swan Lake tour to the US. This included a partnership with Dance United Yorkshire and Studio 3 Arts which resulted in the creation of Civil Blood, a project developed with marginalised young people that performed in Leeds and London. We are immensely proud to have engaged with people in nearly 500 curtain-raisers, workshop and residency sessions that took place in schools, colleges, care homes, and at festivals across the country and were attended by just under 8,000 participants.
As ever, all of this could not be achieved without the expertise, commitment and enthusiasm of the entire staff and the wider New Adventures family including supporters, funders and our Board of Trustees. Thank you to everyone for making this another wonderful year for New Adventures.
On Stage
New Adventures is proud to be a truly national dance-theatre company, touring annually across the UK. We are Britain’s leading exporter of dance.
In 2019/20 we toured for a cumulative total of 59 weeks with 3 large-scale productions, in the UK and beyond.
"A truly outstanding company" - Herald Scotland
Talent Development
New Adventures is committed in supporting the next generation of dancers and artists as well as providing continuous professional development opportunities for company members and Dance Artists.
Young People & Communities
We are passionate about diversifying the dance landscape and investing in the future of dance, through delivering inclusive projects for people of all ages, abilities and backgrounds. We deliver work across the UK but the majority of our community work takes place in the South East, our home base.
7,712 attendances
491 workshop sessions
2 live curtain raisers and 1 digital curtain raiser film
Green Adventures
In July 2018 we launched ‘Green Adventures’, our environmental sustainability strand of work which is our area of sector leadership as an Arts Council England Band 3 NPO organisation. In 2019/20, we are proud to have continued this work towards sustainable touring.
Digital
This year, we created some truly innovative digital content that provided an insight into the unique world of New Adventures, enabling audiences across the country to engage with our shows, and pushed the boundaries of technology and its use in the arts.
95,978 cinema admissions in 18 countries
10,000 views on SkyArts
150 hours of footage captured by TEAFilms of the Romeo and Juliet local casts
International
New Adventures is proud to be the biggest exporter of UK dance-theatre and annually tours its productions and delivers engagement projects across the globe.
131 performances of Swan Lake across the USA and Asia
186,511 live International Audiences
21,133 International Cinema Admissions
1 Curtain Raiser
1,157 High School students attended a schools matinee in LA
263 In Our Shoes project participants from 12 high schools in LA
Audiences
"It’s so important for all young people regardless of their backgrounds to access extraordinary art. Thank you New Adventures for enabling us to watch your triumph of a dance work!"
Rachel Deadman, Programme Director of The Dance Movement.
1,190 free tickets used for our project participants & low-engaged groups
26% first time attenders
Two-thirds of UK tour venues delivered audio described performances
7,325 people attended a post-show Q&A
Equality, Diversity & Inclusion
We are committed to ensuring that New Adventures is a welcoming and inclusive organisation and we are working towards achieving equality and diversity across all areas of our work.
Finance & Governance
Our Arts Council England annual grant of £1,294,000 enabled us to achieve 665,311 engagements nationally and internationally resulting in a per head subsidy of just £1.94.
INCOME
91% from show related and touring activity
9% from Arts Council England and donations from other supporters
EXPENDITURE
91% on developing, producing and touring our shows
6% on workshops and engagement projects
3% on support costs
The Company 2019/20
79 Dancers
78 Local Cast
6 Young Associates
52 Backstage Crew
26 Dance Artists
6 Leadership Team
12 Staff Team
9 Tour Managers
5 Associate Artists
7 Trustees
3 Patrons