Dynamic Pricing
ARC’s policy is to set ticket prices based on demand, like budget airlines, which means we set a price when the event goes on sale and then sometimes put the price up or down depending on how the show is selling. Usually, the price will increase as we get closer to the event, so it is advantageous to book in advance, although sometimes we will put special offers on and reduce the price. Our website will always show the current ticket price.
ARC’s theatre and dance performances are priced on a Pay What You Decide basis, which means you don’t have to pay until after you have seen a show!
We want to encourage more people to come and see shows at ARC, more often. Pay What You Decide not only allows you to pay what you can afford, rather than a fixed ticket price, but also removes the financial risk of buying a ticket for a show in advance without knowing whether you are going to enjoy it or not.
Tickets are available to book in advance as usual, but there is no obligation for you to pay until after you have seen the show. You can then decide on a price which you think is suitable based on your experience, which means if you haven’t enjoyed it at all, you don’t have to pay anything.
All money collected will help ARC pay the artists who have performed, and we therefore hope you will give generously.
Please ensure you have arrived and collected your tickets 15 minutes before the show starts in order to secure your seats. At the end of the show, you can decide what to pay, either by cash on the door or by card at the Box Office.
Michael Colwill is a painter and mixed media artist, many of his paintings use Hawthorne Dene as a starting point, a place he regularly escaped to as a child growing up in difficult circumstances. The surreal landscapes Michael create often feature a mysterious heart shape of unknown origin which insinuates itself into his work. Michael was a talented artist from a young age and had a chance to study art at Sunderland age 15. Instead he was sent down the mines he finally found an opportunity to study art in the 1980s and is currently a studio holder with Navigate North ART.
‘My work is grounded in landscape taken from elements of a small journey around Hawthorne Dene and Easington Colliery coast where I used to play as a child. The dene was a special place for me, a place of security and refuge. I use the drawings and photographs I created during my BA (Hons) based on the journey to Hawthorn dene and used them to help compose my work. Opposites such as hard edge, soft edge, near and far, in focus out of focus, curves and straights, thick and thin areas, touching almost touching are important to my work which helps create a tension across the piece. I use multiple layers which I build up and wash off at points of drying which leaves a history of what has gone before rather like the land being worn away by the elements and brings an important element of chance to the work’