Update: we met with the Vice Chancellor
PLUS: Ruth Wilson, Theo James, and Ros Eleazar voice their support
Welcome back! In this update:
New words of support from (Golden Globe and BAFTA winning) Ruth Wilson, Theo James, and Ros Eleazar
An update from our meeting with the VC on March 20th
Where this campaign goes from here
We need your help (design and social media)
Right, let’s get into it.
New words of support from NNT alumni
The list of incredible testimonials from former NNT members just keeps growing and growing. We’ll let them speak for themselves:
Ruth Wilson, Luther, Down Cemetary Road, The Affair, His Dark Materials:
“Without my time at NNT I wouldn’t be where I am today. That may sound like a grand statement, but it was at NNT that I explored and nurtured my greatest passion. And what is University for, if not that. During my time there I devised, produced, directed and acted in many plays, I built long lasting friendships and on-going collaborations with like-minded souls like Carrie Cracknell, Mike Longhurst and Tristan Goligher. It was an incredibly creative and invaluable period of my life, and that is why it is shocking and upsetting to hear that the NNT has been left to such ruin. Whether or not you end up pursuing a life in the arts, the NNT provided an essential and vital creative outlet for students at University.”
Theo James, The White Lotus, Divergent, The Gentleman, Downton Abbey:
“Nottingham New Theatre was a seismic part of my young adulthood, in many ways shepherding me into the career that I chose. The freedom to create, perform and express myself in an environment run and beloved by students was formative. Improvisation, dramatic work and everything beyond was introduced to me during my time at Nottingham University and the New Theatre. It is a precious little gem for future performers, directors, stage managers, set designers and more. Please keep it funded for new generations of talented young people.”
Ros Eleazar, Slow Horses, Missing You, Misty Green (upcoming):
“The news of the New Theatre’s closure broke my heart. That space was my home, the place where I was happiest, where I found my people, and where I truly became myself. I remember my very first production there, 7 Minutes 31, directed by Anthony Lau—now a celebrated theatre director—a bold, unusual new play about the precise time it takes for an ambulance to arrive, told through the tender complexity of human relationships. It was unlike anything I’d experienced, and I was hooked. The intimacy of that space was irreplaceable; it created something rare and electric between performer and audience. My love of acting grew into a full-blown passion within those walls, and without the New Theatre, I genuinely doubt I would be doing what I do today. So many alumni have gone on to build extraordinary, edgy, fearless careers across the creative world as producers, directors, writers, and actors, and so many of us trace it back to that theatre. For the next generation, it is essential that a place like this exists: somewhere to play, to take risks, to expand your mind and find your tribe.”
Thank you also to all the alumni from whom we’ve received many more messages. If you’d like to submit your own, you can always email us at savennt@gmail.com
Our meeting with the VC
We met with Vice Chancellor Professor Jane Norman on March 20th. Here’s who was there:
Professor Jane Norman (VC, UoN)
Matthew Bannister (SaveNNT)
Matt Leventhall (SaveNNT)
Charlotte Reay (President, NNT)
Jonathan Ashford-Smith (Acting Head of Alumni Relations, UoN)
Here’s a short summary of what we discussed:
We presented our argument for the importance of an autonomous, standalone building, providing quotes from high profile alums who spoke to this explicitly
We also relayed and underlined the level of support the campaign had received, including the number of people who had written in to offer their support
Charlotte Reay outlined the difficulties of the current space NNT operates in inside the Portland Building: no backstage, no workshop, no dressing rooms, and not enough height for the proper operation of lights
While Professor Norman was sympathetic to everything we said, the fundamental response is unchanged: the university, like much of the rest of the higher education sector, is facing acute financial difficulty.
In her follow up letter to Matthew Bannister after the meeting (the full text of which we’ve linked to below), she said:
“The University is facing a maintenance backlog of hundreds of millions of pounds across its significant estate and is having to prioritise its limited financial resources on its core teaching and research facilities. The needs of our estate far outweigh our financial capacity, so we are constantly having to make difficult choices. While bringing the New Theatre back into use is a long-term goal, we are currently unable to allocate funds for this.”
Full letter from the VC (Google drive link)
Where the campaign goes from here
Hearing the stark reality of the financial situation has been a bitter pill to swallow, and we have found it hard to decide on what to do next. Should we… what, wait? Give up? Try to run some kind of huge PR campaign? Buy lottery tickets?
You will, we hope, be glad to know that we’re not giving up. And, while we recognise the difficult position the university is clearly now in, we believe that if nothing else, we need to remain top of mind when the relevant university bodies are discussing what to prioritise.
And they will be discussing priorities. Here’s another quote from the same letter:
“I mentioned that we will be prioritising our capital spend by September this year. I agreed that we would consider repairs to the New Theatre whilst conducting this prioritisation exercise, although I mentioned that there are many other competing priorities”
Because here’s the thing: we believe many people working at and running the university simply aren’t aware of the sheer scale of the social and cultural impact that the NNT has, and the impact it has had on so many UoN alums. To be sure, until we started compiling everything as part of this campaign, perhaps some of us didn’t either—when you write it all down in one place it’s nothing short of mind-boggling.
So that’s what we’re now going to do: pull everything together into a single campaign pack that we can use to get in front of, and get onto the agendas of, everyone else in university management in Council, the Senate, and as many others as possible—not just the Vice Chancellor. Work on this is already well advanced.
But in the meantime…
We need your help (again)
Writing the pack is one thing, but actually making it and getting the word out there is another:
Designers: we need help designing the campaign pack. If you know your INDDs from your CMYKs, or if you’re really good with Canva, we’d love to hear from you.
Social media: are you extremely online? We’re thinking about setting up an Instagram account, but only if we can find a volunteer capable of running it.
Please email us at savennt@gmail.com
One more thing
We’ll be back in touch when there’s any significant developments, or if we have something else worth sharing. As ever, please keep sharing around so that we can grow the support for our campaign.