30 July - Love Arts payment increase to 60p from Monday 2 August

In the last ten years, nearly 2 million people have walked through our doors. However with success there comes a price – the wear and tear on the buildings.

Obviously we have been doing our best to keep things up to date in this time we have spent over £600,000 on maintaining and upgrading the Queen’s and Landmark theatres. As a charity and not-for-profit company, everything that we earn we plough back into our activities.

But, for every £1 we take at the Box Office, 66p goes to the artists, producers and promoters and 17.5p goes in VAT and licences, leaving us just an average of 16.5p towards our overheads.

Since we launched our Love Arts fund in November 2008, we have raised over £37,000 which has enabled us to:

Repair some of the worn seats at the Landmark
Install a new sound desk at the Landmark and a new lighting desk at the Queen's
Purchase essential kitchen equipment
Purchase lighting equipment for use backstage
Install air conditioning in the Gallery Café at the Queen’s
Repaint and renovate the Queen's Theatre facade

With spiralling costs and the much-publicised challenges that are facing the arts in the UK, it has however become necessary for us to make a small increase to this payment. From Monday 2 August we will be adding a 60p per seat payment to our Love Arts fund for each seat sold.

Thank you for your support; it really does make a difference.