An update from the Corn Exchange

An update from our director, Katy Griffiths.

It is now 6 weeks since the Corn Exchange closed its doors and, like all of you, we have been coming to terms with this extraordinary situation and what it means for our activities.

We have been overwhelmed by the public support, both in terms of the generosity shown by people donating over £37,000 to our Love Your Corn Exchange appeal and by how many people have taken part in our digital activities since we moved our work online. Over 300 hundred people took part in online choir workshops to create the West Berkshire Virtual Choir recording of I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing and we have seen people of all ages enjoying parent and baby music sessions, art classes, poetry workshops, dance classes and story times, all from the comfort of their own homes.

As the situation continues, the arts industry is having to adapt and long standing plans have had to change. We are now working with a significantly reduced team having furloughed staff to help reduce our costs while we have to remain closed, and we have seen increasing numbers of touring productions reschedule as they have not been able to rehearse their shows or commence their tours due to the social distancing measures in place. We have therefore had to make the difficult decision to put our live season of events on hold until September.

Our team have already done an amazing job rescheduling as many events as possible and keeping in touch with everyone who had tickets booked. They will continue to work through the changes that are being made to our programme, and we will be in touch.

As for September, we are busy working to prepare for a safe return to our buildings and putting together a fantastic autumn season for you to enjoy with music, comedy, theatre and films plus the much-anticipated Corn Exchange pantomime, Aladdin. We look forward to sharing these details with you all in June and, for those of you keen to snap up your favourite seats, tickets for the pantomime are still on sale.

We can’t wait to welcome you back to the Corn Exchange, and if government guidance makes it possible for us to open our buildings sooner than September, perhaps for some our regular courses and classes or screenings of your favourite films, we will be doing everything we can to make this possible.

In the meantime please do look at our website for details of all the different online activities we have taking place, and stay safe.

Very best,

Katy