Cinema Tickets for Plymouth's Key Workers

We’ve been Plymouth’s independent cinema since 1947. The local community is a vital part of who we are and we would love to give something back to the many, many key workers in our city who are giving their all to keep our services going during the COVID-19 crisis. 

We need to ensure we’re continuing to look forward and invest in our facility for the whole city when our cinema can reopen.

Buy a cinema ticket and we will give it to a key worker, to thank them for their hard work and dedication through this difficult time. If you would have taken a trip to the cinema in the past few months,'Pay It Forward' and donate the price of your ticket to our campaign. Any funds raised will be invested back into the cinema. 

Like every other cinema in the country, we temporarily closed our doors in March 2020. Our dream is to reopen at the end of September and celebrate with a series of much loved films - sing alongs, classics, and cult favourites, and invite 300 key workers to take an evening off and come to relax with us in front of the big screen.

Cinema is unique as a way to bring people together. Everyone has been streaming films at home during the lockdown, but it is no match for the joy of being transported somewhere else as a collective experience in front of the big screen. We never laugh as much at a comedy, cry as much at a weepy or scream as much at a horror as when we are watching with a crowd of people. We want to grow and continue to expand our investment in the cinema to support the city in the long term.

However it is clear that this pandemic will change cinema forever. 

It has been a rocky few months for Plymouth Arts Cinema without any income from ticket sales and we are determined to make sure that we are still here when the crisis is over.  

Our team is busy working out a safe way to reopen when the time is right. Our aim is to open at the end of September, in line with our venue at Plymouth College of Art. We will be introducing enhanced cleaning, protection for staff, and social distancing measures. All of these things are costly, and the social distancing procedures will result in a greatly reduced capacity in the cinema, which will reduce the amount of income we are able to make through ticket sales. 

Your generosity will: 

• Allow us to treat a key worker to a special cinema event.
• Help to bring stability to our organisation in this difficult time by guaranteeing us an income when we reopen, and introducing a new audience to our cinema. 
• Allow us to continue to invest in the cinema to support the city and the growth of Plymouth in the long term.

How will it work? 

These are the essential workers we have listed so far: NHS Staff, Carers, Firefighters, Police, Delivery Drivers, Refuse Collectors, Supermaket Workers, Teachers, Social Workers. If you feel we haven't included a job here, let us know and we will add it to the list.

We will allocate tickets and champion passes via a ballot and will release details on how people can apply for this in the coming weeks.

Please note you can't nominate who the ticket(s) you buy will be given to, but you can share the information with key workers you know and would like to thank, and let them know how to enter the ballot for a chance to win tickets.  

How we’re supporting culture in Plymouth

Plymouth Arts Cinema, formerly Plymouth Arts Centre, is an iconic organisation. As an independent cinema we are an essential part of the city’s cultural landscape and are in a unique position to bring our community together through the magic of film. We are working hard to put Plymouth on the map as a beacon of culture in the South West and in the past year have been awarded National Lottery funding from the BFI.

We screen films from around the world that you cannot see anywhere else. We host talks with special guests from the film industry, support local filmmakers, and work with The Box to run archive film screenings. We provide a service to the community with our Bringing in Baby Events, Dementia and Autism Friendly Relaxed Screenings and popular outdoor screenings at Tinside Lido.

In early 2019 we moved from our original location in Looe Street to a brand new purpose built cinema within Plymouth College of Art. As the city grew, we grew. We had a brilliant year and welcomed over 18,000 people to our venue to watch the best of independent cinema from the UK and around the world, as well as big Hollywood releases and a few old classics.  

What we’ve been up to during lockdown

The cinema may have gone dark during the lockdown but we are very much still here! We have continued to connect with our audiences and support local film makers with an extensive free programme of free online activity.  If you’re missing the experience of coming to the cinema, please join us.

We run a weekly Sofa Cinema event on Facebook where we pick a cult classic or a new independent film to watch and then chat about it. 

We are working with excellent local film makers to bring you an online programme of short films on our blog. 

We are partnering with Reclaim The Frame, a national project to bring wider audiences to films by and about women, to stream exclusive live Q&As with filmmakers from all over the world, including Australia, France, Saudi Arabia and the US.

When you’ve made your donation, hop over to our website and social media to see what we’ve been up to. 

A heartfelt thank you from the Plymouth Arts Cinema Team.