The Inititive has far reaching implications for audiences in general and the ROH in particular and we make no apology for an early release of a piece in our April Magazine :
Widening of access to ballet and the high arts

"Access by a socially desirable mix of people is the key"

I think that line says it all, and they're really going for chic rather than social inclusion.

I remain very sceptical

Last time I was offered a free drink - on a disastrous opera night when they couldn't do the production because of technical difficulties, so we got the whole cast in costume performing on a bare stage instead - it turned out to be a tiny espresso-sized sip of house wine.

I'm sure it made up for being charged up to £160 for the evening.

It was a paper cup!

It was quite surreal. Don't suppose anyone can find any links about this ?

Here's one link for an item headed "Scheme to widen theatregoing flops" in Monday's Times:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,170-629654,00.html

At the end of the day the type of performances that the ROH hosts are only likely to appeal to a certain proportion of the population. Most of my friends have no interest in watching adult men & women pretend to be fairies & princes when they prefer contemporary culture & music & would rather be at a bar or club than having to endure the stuffy atmosphere that pervades ROH.

Even if they try to reserve seats for certain groups, this cannot be enforced. Older people will buy on behalf of grandchildren & use the tickets themselves etc. The management are really deluding themselves if they think they can attract some groups, I work in social housing where many families survive on less than £200 per week & struggle to feed themselves & wouldn't contemplate £80 a ticket. What the ROH really means is that they need to encourage middle class suitably wealthy ethnic minorities through the door to make up the quotas that the arts council insists on.

Sorry to be so cynical, but each year the ROH goes on about widening access & every year their prices go up & become LESS accessible to the public which deters people from attending. The National Theatre for example are really making an effort to draw new audiences with a package of lower prices, different types of productions & auditorium configurations. At the end of the day its a challenge to get other groups to attend events outside of their culture & what sort of message does dsicounting to those groups send out, it could be interpreted as quite patronising. There isn't an easy answer, but I would expect a more imaginative answer from the professionals in access & the arts council that our taxes fund.

'although this year's initiative did appeal to young people, they were concerned that the Mayor had invested thousands of pounds in promotions without proper evaluation of whether they have reached the target audience.

One of Mr Livingstone's key pledges in his culture strategy was "to make the arts more accessible to Londoners and celebrate cultural diversity". But Meg Hillier, the committee chair, said: "For the past two years, the theatre-ticket promotion has been marked by woolly objectives, an absence of rigorous evaluation and questionable claims of success.

"Without a fundamental re-examination of the promotion, we are concerned it risks becoming a 'feelgood' event which subsidises existing theatre-goers without contributing substantially to generating new audiences or supporting culture in other parts of London." '

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/theatre/news/story.jsp?story=392777