Fancy hanging out backstage with the Rolling Stones? Or how about taking home a unique work by Sir Antony Gormley, meeting renowned performance artist Marina Abramovic or dining with Spandau Ballet brothers Gary and Martin Kemp? Well, your luck may be in.
These are just some of the extraordinary auction lots available at the upcoming gala night for London arts venue the Roundhouse, as it seeks to raise more than £1m to help provide young people with access to training in the arts.
“It’s a very lively, full of beans, positive, forward-looking event,” says the venue’s chief executive and artistic director, Marcus Davey. “It’s all focused on our goals of working with even more young people and enabling young people to access the arts who otherwise wouldn’t be able to.”
The Roundhouse Gala – dubbed Rise up for the Roundhouse – takes place on March 20. The arts venue will host a reception and a dinner with a live and silent auction. Performers at the event include Simon Le Bon, Melanie C and Shaznay Lewis, and it will also showcase performances from some of the young people who have come through its programmes.
The organisation hopes that patrons will give generously as it seeks to support more young talent. Mercury Award-winning singer Little Simz, Oscar-winning actor Daniel Kaluuya, rising star singer Raye and Jack Rooke, writer of acclaimed sitcom Big Boys, all took part in projects at the Roundhouse early on.
Other lots in this year’s Gala – chaired by Gary Kemp and the BBC’s director of music Lorna Clark – include a private concert given by Brit Award winner Tom Odell for 90 to 180 of the winning bidder’s friends, as well as the chance to have a portrait painted by Jonathan Yeo, who has been commissioned by celebrities, prime ministers and members of the British royal family.
It comes at a time when arts budgets and provisions are being cut by local councils, there is standstill funding from the Arts Council even as costs spiral, youth centres are long-closed and arts is being ever more devalued in the state school curriculum.
“It’s a tough time for young people and the reduction of arts in the curriculum means many schools have arts spaces but don’t have teachers or they don’t have budget,” says Davey. “We’re in a very problematic state.”
And yet, each year, the Roundhouse works with thousands of people aged between 11 and 30 in projects that span performing arts, broadcasting and digital work. Opening a new building, Roundhouse Works, last year meant it could support even more. “We will work with more than 8,000 this year,” Davey says. “The next three or four years, we will increase the numbers substantially, if we can raise the money.”
Of the young people it works with, 60 per cent are from areas ranked among the most deprived, and 58 per cent of the people are from the global majority. These courses can offer life-changing opportunities to develop skills, to grow as individuals and possibly turn their creativity into a career, Davey says.
But we don’t just have to take their word for it. In 2023, the organisation commissioned a study to examine the impact of its film, digital and audio programmes. Social Change UK, an agency that works with government, public sector and commercial clients, found that those projects, on which the Roundhouse spends around £85,000, created a “social return” of around £3.7m.
The Roundhouse said, “The results demonstrate the social impact of young people having access to creative opportunities, and the technical and transferable skills that impact other facets of their lives. The numbers are particularly high due to the positive employment outcomes experienced by young people.”
Davey explains that the social impact is the value the young people gain when they enter employment. “So many go from the projects we run straight to work. There’s a significant value in the amount we invest in them. It’s not like they earn £2m on day one, but they go into well-paid work that can drive them for a lifetime.”The results, he added, were startling. “Even Social Change UK couldn’t believe how brilliant the projects are in the way they achieve for young people.”
The Roundhouse has worked with young people for around a quarter of a century and continues to look at different ways to engage them in the arts. Some use the studios as rehearsal space, there are programmes in dance and circus, poetry to DJing for beginners, mobile filmmaking, how to turn gaming into a career and much more.
Davey says that only this month he was talking to Kaluuya, now an associate artistic director at the venue, about setting up a youth theatre company. “We want to be open access to everyone. A lot of the young people who come through end up in a range of jobs in the creative industries.”
The Roundhouse is non-profit so the Gala, which started in 2008 and takes place every two years, is crucial to raising money for its youth programmes, which cost around £3.5m each year. “The gala is hugely important and we are endlessly thankful to those who buy tickets,” Davey says, “as well as donors and all those who have given lots for the auction.”
