Daniel Buckroyd: ‘We thought: is this a bridge too far? But local culture was at risk… we couldn’t be knocked off course’

One huge advantage of bringing the Barnfield under the aegis of the Northcott is that it gives the organisation a city-centre presence – rather than just having the existing building on the university campus at the edge of the city.

“This is about the way that the Northcott seeks to connect with, and be useful to, the constituency it serves. It gives us a footprint in the city centre, and it’s a much more informal building. It’s easier to get to practically and easier to access psychologically. It’s a different kind of front door.”

Beyond that, though, the Barnfield plays a key role in Buckroyd’s vision for culture in Exeter. About 12 years ago, the Northcott was “hitting the rocks”. When Buckroyd arrived in 2018, it was in a more financially stable position, which allowed him to start to think about long-term strategies. The theatre has moved away from its commercial focus and moved towards a model that involves community participation.

“When the Bike Shed closed four years ago, something was lost to the city. We’re not suggesting we can just replace the Bike Shed as a different entity, but it’s taken us this long to come up with a response that is a hub for theatremakers in the region. We want to be an organisation that holds space within which other people’s creative endeavours can find form. Sometimes it’s about giving space, sometimes it’s about resourcing those ambitions as well.”

Buckroyd trained at the Regional Theatre Young Directors’ Scheme – his first solo directing gig was at Exeter Northcott 30 years ago – and he made his name as artistic director of Colchester’s Mercury Theatre, which he ran from 2012 to 2018. During that time, several big hits emerged from Mercury under the Made in Colchester producing banner. Buckroyd also wrote and directed several of the venue’s pantomimes.

That model is not replicable in Exeter. The funding situation is different; the audiences are different – so he’s taking a different approach. He sees himself far less as a director now. “When I was an RTYDS trainee, I was being trained for something that doesn’t exist anymore. I have lived and worked through the transformation of regional theatres – from cultural bastions to community creative exchanges. It’s complicated and it’s exciting. For me, the role of artistic director is absolutely not about holding power. It’s increasingly about holding space and facilitating a multiplicity of voices. Being a cultural leader is about the leadership it takes to be able to share and give away and become more egalitarian.”

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The theatre has just moved to a co-chair model rather than having a single chair, and Buckroyd is keen to expand that system of “dispersed leadership” across the organisation. “It’s proving really powerful,” he says.

But there are obstacles to the Northcott’s vision. There are two numbers that define the work that Buckroyd can do there: “The rock and the hard place is that we have 460 seats – not enough for some shows, too many for others – and only 4% of our funding is from the Arts Council. It defines the room for manoeuvre in what we can achieve. We’re not going to be a fully producing entity like the Mercury was. So the question is whether we become a less useful backwater to funders such as the Arts Council, or we become the forefront of defining new models of how regional theatre organisations connect to, work with and amplify the ambitions of the communities they serve.”

It’s a difficult balancing act. Even if Buckroyd wants to shift focus away from the shows that hit the stages, the fact remains that Northcott gets 85% of its income from “selling tickets and ice cream”.

“This is no different to the balancing act that other establishments have been dealing with. It’s about what you can see on stage, but it’s also about what you can do – and increasingly about identifying the ways you are being creative and what we can do to help you with that.”

Buckroyd and the board have just finished their application for the next national portfolio organisation round. Soon they will find out if the Arts Council agrees with their strategy and whether that figure of 4% will shift either way – at the moment, Northcott is the second-lowest funded NPO in the southwest. Until then, there’s a lot of work to be done at the Barnfield.

“We’re taking it steady. We’re not trying to run before we can walk. The building needs a lot of investment – and the investment landscape is brutal. How long it will take us to realise the building’s potential remains to be seen. But there’s been a fundamental change compared to when I was starting off as a director. Now it’s about the resources you have and the mechanisms you put in place to give those resources away."