‘Financially efficient, educationally beneficial and embraced by audiences’: Angela Dixon on 10 years of Saffron Hall

It’s taken me 10 years to fully understand why I left a prestigious international role as head of music at the Barbican in 2013 to come to Saffron Walden, a small market town in Essex, to run a new concert hall in a comprehensive school. At the time, I was asked many times why I made that decision. A decade on, now that so much has been proved, it’s easier to explain what makes Saffron Hall so special.

Saffron Hall is a unique place. An experiment in which world-class artists and school and community participants regularly perform together and work together in our numerous school and community programmes. When the curtain first went up in 2013 it was unclear if the experiment would work, but since then the calibre of artists performing in the Hall, the number of tickets sold and the thousands of lives we have touched have exceeded all expectations.

The Hall was the gift of one anonymous donor, an amateur musician whose children had all been through Saffron Walden County High School. He wanted to see world-class music in his hometown outside London and he wanted to redress the balance between public and state education, and all of this before ‘levelling up’ had entered the common vernacular. The result of this private enterprise is a world-class concert hall which was entirely unique. For me, Saffron Hall was an opportunity to integrate schools and community work from the very start and to work at both a grassroots and an international level every day. Most arts organisations are moving in an ever-decreasing circle, but Saffron Hall had the potential to grow – and grow rapidly.

'In the next ten years we intend to spread what we have learnt across Essex and seek to establish the model nationally.' © Paul Ecclestone

The Hall is owned by the school (it is their school hall) and they take care of the fabric of the building. Saffron Hall Trust, the separate trust which runs the public concerts and school and community programmes, contributes to the maintenance and takes care of the higher spec elements. It is financially efficient, educationally beneficial and embraced by the audiences and community who effectively crowd-fund it. The dual-use model means that the space constantly teems with life, and boundaries between generations and amateur and professionals are entirely broken down as the school community mixes with audience members, and the amateur and school participants regularly perform with professional groups.

Saffron Hall has 740 seats, it has a retractable seating bank and a sunken pit of seats that can be covered creating a large flat-floor space. By pulling out an adjustable header and movable tormentors (vertical flats that serve as wings), it is easy to transform the space into a theatre-like ‘black box’ setting, ideal for amplified concerts or staged productions like opera.The sunken seats can also be removed to create a large orchestra pit. This flexibility is also reflected in the hall’s acoustics. A long series of doors in the ceiling run the full length of the Hall on both sides. When closed they give a reverberation time of around 2.8 seconds, but at the push of a button the doors can be opened and in 40 seconds the reverberation is cut down to 0.5 seconds. The difference is miraculous. If we close the doors during an orchestra rehearsal it is always interesting to watch the conductor and the performers as they become aware that something significant has happened to the sound. It is as if we are going from black and white into colour.

The financial model, like the conception of the Hall, is unconventional. Despite the fact that there is no music NPO in Essex, no public money went into building the Hall and it receives no regular contribution from the arts council, local authority or county council. Uttlesford District Council provide welcome free office space, but there is nothing for core funding. The only funding that has been received has been for specific projects. It is highly unusual, if not unique, for a Hall of this size and artist programme to receive no public funding for core costs, but it may well prove to be its saving grace. What we’ve never had cannot be taken away! As my colleagues stretch every sinew trying to mitigate cuts and lost revenue whilst simultaneously taking on board an ever-growing list of National and regional agendas and mitigating the demise of music education in schools, Saffron Hall is listening to its funders – its audience, participants, and community – building engagement with school children who are already on site and many more across the county. Saffron Hall’s regular funding comes from its devoted members, a clutch of loyal concert sponsors and supportive small local businesses plus a handful of trusts, principally local ones.

Resident orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, rehearses alongside Saffron Walden Choral Society (Image courtesy of Saffron Hall)

When observing professional discussions within the music business, I am often dismayed at how infrequently the audience is mentioned. Arts Council England have now built consultation with communities into some of their grassroots programmes, but that is not quite the right approach either. When you receive no funding, listening to your audience becomes vital for survival. However, if you don’t take those audiences on a journey, they will quickly become bored. We have walked that tightrope at Saffron Hall: on opening, audience numbers grew rapidly and largely sold-out audiences have been maintained. During the pandemic Saffron Hall was one of the first Halls to reopen and we presented 79 socially-distanced concerts on cabaret tables, engaging over 770 freelance musicians. Crucially, we kept engaging with audiences and even picked some up – over 44% of the audiences during this time were new to the Hall.

As we look to the future, our second decade will be focused on the second part of this model. Now that we have a successful ecology in Saffron Walden, how can we reach out to communities beyond our district? How can other communities and schools in Essex benefit from the models we have built, tried and tested here? In Saffron Walden and the surrounding area, quality arts provision is embedded and valued within the community. I believe that this is the future of arts provision and in the next ten years we intend to spread what we have learnt across Essex and seek to establish the model nationally.

We enter our second decade full of hope that the pioneering spirit of Saffron Hall and the transformative power of the arts will endure.

Saffron Hall is celebrating its 10^th birthday with a weekend of celebratory events running from 1 to 3 December, including a performance of Handel’s Rodelinda with The English Concert/Harry Bicket, an evening with Jess Gillham and the Britten Sinfonia and more. You can find out more at SaffronHall.com