Northern Arts Review
Northern Arts Review is a team of volunteers who promote the best in theatre for the north of England. We publish reviews, interviews and publicity material for all the major theatres across the north and as many of the smaller ones as we can. The team includes about a dozen reviewers along with admin and IT support.
Over the last 4-5 years, NAR has become a valuable and much appreciated site for theatres who use quotes from our reviews to promote their shows and events on billboards and advertising material, and unfailingly tweet our reviews online. We don’t have axes to grind and love theatre with a passion, so our reviews – while always honest and critical where needed – are positive and written with encouraging people to come to the theatres in mind. With times being hard for northern theatres to survive economically, they need good reviews and publicity more than ever. We are arguably the most important review site for northern theatre and certainly the most useful.
We’re looking for a sponsor who also loves theatre and has a passion to keep theatre alive. Your name as our sponsor would appear on every review, interview and promotional material, as well as being on the website main page and Twitter/X account. Your name as sponsor would also be on all communications with theatres, who would know you are a patron of the arts. As we cover the whole of the north of England, your name will potentially be seen by everyone who comes to the theatre regularly or is planning a visit for the first time.
Target Audience
The age range of our work is huge! We cover children’s shows as much as the deep and philosophical so that means we’re trying to encourage 5 year-olds as much as 50 year-olds to come to the theatre. Our audiences are reading our reviews because they want to know what’s going to give them the most magical and memorable experience when they go to the theatre.
Key Dates and Timings
We would love to be working long term with a sponsor who wants to see theatre flourish in the north. We’re open to short term sponsorship but ideally would love a sponsor who would work with us for at least a couple of years.
As soon as we receive sponsorship that would allow us to concentrate on even more productions, take on more reviewers and work harder at showing the public why theatre is fantastic and they should go see for themselves.
Specific Opportunity Details
Northern Arts Review now covers so many theatres (well over 40 on a regular basis with dozens of others reviewed from time to time) with so many shows (we have the potential to cover a show every week night) now that it takes several hours a day to do all the admin including communicating with theatres, editing reviews after our reviewers finish writing them and then publishing and promoting on Twitter/X and so on.
The north of England has a population of around 15 million people and it is estimated that around 14% got to theatres at least twice a year. We have a following of around 1500 on Twitter (mostly of theatres and related people) with tweets regular amassing 500-1500 views each. A sponsor for our organisation would allow us to do even more and their name would be circulated on every review, interview and publicity material that is quite literally reaching millions of people online and at the theatres.
All our reviewers are volunteers but we really need to start providing reasonable wages for admin and editorial staff and cover the costs of expenses – including running the website. A sponsor would enable us to keep staff, cover expenses and develop more projects.
Features and Benefits
A sponsor’s name would appear on every page of our website and be embedded in the text of every review, interview and publicity. Their name would appear on our social media platforms and also be embedded on all communications with the theatres. We communicate with dozens of theatres every day.
Other Partners
We have no sponsors currently having grown from a labour of love of just a small handful of theatre-lovers to now being so busy we need to fund the work we do.
Investment
Ideally we’d love to cover the equivalent of one full time member of staff per year with a salary of around £40,000. That money would actually be spread between different part-time staff members and cover expenses. We’re open to all offers however.