Aim: The Cambridge Shakespeare Festival needs at least £50,000 in order to survive into 2021. We receive no external funding whatsoever.
The Cambridge Shakespeare Festival has been in existence for 33 years. Our aim has always been to give something of cultural value and significance to Cambridge and, indeed, the whole country, since our audience is both national and international.The Festival presents eight, fully-staged Shakespeare plays each summer (four performances each evening) and the performances are all open air in the gardens of the University Colleges. The Festival has a charitable focus, too, and has raised over £100k for our nominated charities - St John's Hospice on the Wirral and the Children's Hospice in Cambridge. In the 33 years of our existence we have never received any Arts Council funding, or indeed any external funding of any kind, and we are proud to have survived and flourished by our own hard work and dedication. The Festival in 2020 has had to be cancelled because of the pandemic, which means we face at least 22 months without any income, which is crippling for us. The Festival normally costs in excess of £200k to produce. The costs of the Festival are met entirely from ticket sales, but we always need a certain amount to set up the Festival before the performances start. In order for the Shakespeare Festival to survive we need to generate 'start-up' funds of at least £50,000.