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Hosted by Ben Thompson, the Oxford Business Podcast is a monthly podcast featuring conversations with experts in a range of fields including marketing, finance and sales.
Ben Thompson
Welcome, you're listening to the Oxford Business Podcast of the Oxford Business Community Network. We're delighted to be at Story Ninety Four's wonderful podcast studio in Oxford, the only in Oxfordshire. So if you haven't been, do come and have a look, get in touch with the team there. Today I'm also delighted to be joined by Mike Woodward of Opera Anywhere, an amazing business, an amazing guy. So welcome, Mike.
Mike Woodward
Hello, how are you?
Ben Thompson
So well, so well. Mike, thanks so much for joining us today. Let's start by introducing you, for those who don't know you, and also Opera Anywhere.
Mike Woodward
Well, we set up Opera Anywhere back in 2000 at the start of, well, to celebrate the millennium. It was quite a bizarre sort of accident, really, I suppose you could call it. We were, and my wife and I were, running an amateur opera company and getting a little bit frustrated with the lack of ambition and we started thinking about setting up our own company. But we were kick-started by an initiative in our village in Sunnywell, where they were looking for a big event to celebrate the millennium and the parish council at the time said to me, "Mike, just think completely out of the box. what in your wildest dreams do you think how we can make a big impact to celebrate the millennium? And we were really encouraged to be really wacky and completely think outside the box and we came up with this idea 'cause in the centre of Sunningwell, actually Sunningwell was built around in the eighth century, built around this natural pond right at the centre of the village and in the 1960s, I think, for some reason, decided to put a concrete base in the bottom of this pond, I think maybe because it was getting a bit muddy maybe, and just getting not visually attractive. So they put this concrete base in, so the water levels are always quite high, but it does give it a solid base. And we were aware of this, so we thought, well, if we really wanted to do something really wacky, let's build a stage in the pond and get the road closed and have all the audience in the road and also in the art school car park which is adjacent to the pond and we basically built this production all around this stage in the pond and it was just a two-night, I think we called it 'Proms on the Pond' to begin with, and we just had two performances of classical music. But this developed over the years into a festival of music and arts and we had all genres, rock, folk as well as some opera performances. But anyway on this first performance, I said to Vanessa my wife, "Blimey you can perform opera anywhere can't you?" and you know we're doing this in the outside at the elements with all the elements all around us we're doing it on water you can perform opera anywhere and that's how we came up with this name Opera Anywhere.
Ben Thompson
Amazing, what a nice story, what a nice story and something you touched on in your intro there from the amateur days is that you were getting frustrated by I guess the quality or how serious people were taking opera. How has that changed since 2000 or has it changed since 2000? Talk to the listeners a little bit about where opera is across the UK now.
Mike Woodward
Well obviously opera is big in the big cities in terms of the big opera houses like the Royal Opera House in London and English National Opera up north in Manchester and Leeds, well Leeds actually, Opera North have a great big theatre and in Wales there's a great big theatre in Cardiff and Glyndebourg obviously down in the Sussex hills and those are the big grand opera houses that people flock to every year throughout the year, not just in the summer. But there are a number of small touring opera companies over the years. There was a company called Garden Opera that had been operating for about 10-15 years and setting up in small locations in people's gardens but we've noticed over the last 10 to 15 years this has been a real growth market and people love opera in more intimate settings they don't want to be lost in an audience of 2,000, they really appreciate opera when there's perhaps only 200 people in the audience or 100 people in the audience and this is what I suppose has really helped us because of this growth in the market for more intimate community base and the other thing of course is who can spend…? Not too many people are available to spend £100 or £200 on the ticket with our performances and some of our competitors performances you'd only be thinking about £20 or £25 a ticket. So that makes opera much more accessible to the man in the street. And also if they're not really sure if they've never been to opera before, spending £100, £150 on a ticket is quite a big risk and we find that people come to us to see if they like it, you know, and as well as having genuine opera lovers or experienced opera fans come to us because it's local to them and it's in their community. We also find a lot of people new to the genre and the wonderful thing, the really wonderful thing that really warms my heart is they often bring their children and their children, you know, as young as five or six can be sitting on the front row absolutely gobsmacked with all this music and drama and activity around them. So this sort of community of opera is really building and developing and it's tough times for the arts in general and it's a business which is full of risk because very often you don't know whether you're going to get the audience numbers that are going to help cover your costs and also obviously with weather, last year we had a great time in the summer, but we boiled on stage because we were exposed in the, you know, in the summer months when we were doing a lot of outdoor performances. In the year previously, we've got wet, you know, so it's full of risk and it's full of challenges. But at the end of the day, the British audience are wonderful and they'll bear with us. They'll be very loyal to us. They often sit in really bad conditions, weather conditions, as long that you know they know what they're coming to they'll come prepared with the right clothing and stuff but we're hoping after last summer might not be good for the climate but for in terms of outdoor theatre and music, having these dry sunny evenings brilliant from our point of view.
Ben Thompson
Absolutely, absolutely. One of the things you touch on a little bit there is it's been hard for the art sector and I know we along with your wife Vanessa at Sunningwell School of Arts. You're both really big advocates, aren't you, of the arts locally, indeed of your support of the local parish and the running club, etc. So can you just share with those listening just a little bit about, I guess, during COVID and coming out of COVID, of what have been the challenges and really where the business of arts is now?
Mike Woodward
Yes, well I think during COVID, the Arts Council were able to help a lot of arts organisations with, they found some money, I guess the government had given them a bit of money to help the arts to survive through the pandemic, and like every other small business, we were trying to do things online and on Zoom. Obviously, that doesn't really play to the strengths of live performances, but at least it kept us going. It enabled us to continue to employ our performers. We did quite a few things online on Zoom and actually with the art school funding and some trust funds as well, we were able to build some online resources, which actually helped us with our push into education and so, you know, some really lovely things and actually the Thames Art and Literary Festival filmed us doing some live performances around Oxford. This is just after the lockdown was unlocked and we went out into Oxford in a deserted Oxford with a number of our performers and we were able to perform some things actually out in the streets and they put this wonderful film together which we were able to publish on our website and so we actually came out of the pandemic in quite a good state and actually a lot of the theatres that would have booked us for indoor performances were then thinking well how can we attract audiences just after the pandemic when they're still nervous. So a lot of them have found outdoor spaces in their towns and cities and actually, it really took off. So again that helped Opera Anywhere, we're known for being thinking outside the box and prepared to do outdoor performances. Not too many other opera companies are prepared to do that and so that actually provided a bit of a spurt in and to help us all regrow and develop our business in a new way. So through this we've discovered some amazing outdoor venues that have grown out of it. There's this wonderful, absolutely glorious venue in Suffolk which was born out of the pandemic. It's a farmer who created this amphitheatre out of this bomb crater from the Second World War that was in his woods and he's made this theatre out of the trees that are all around. There's still loads of trees all around, so it's still woods, but right in the middle of this bomb crater he's made all the seats and all the surroundings all out of the local trees all around and it's created this fantastic amphitheatre where you can get three or four hundred people sitting comfortably and with fantastic sound and it's truly inspiring, you're right in nature and there are several of those kind of situations around and this summer actually we're doing an outdoor performance at the Cotswolds distillery in the Cotswolds and so they're popping up all these outdoor venues are popping up all over the place.
Ben Thompson
Amazing, amazing. No, no, thank you and certainly I think the big word that was over everything during COVID was pivoting, wasn't it? And you've done that as a flexible of venues. I just want to go back a little bit to the business side of what you do, because one of the things you touched on a few moments ago was sometimes the challenge of what you do is that you put on a performance and then it could rain or you put on a performance and how many tickets will sell. So how as a business owner do you mitigate that risk or do you not mitigate that risk and how does that work from a business point of view?
Mike Woodward
Yeah, it's an excellent question because at this time of the year when we're just coming up to a really busy period, we've got about 40 events that we've just published the dates for and right at the beginning of the season, so this is like in a couple of weeks time, we've got some early performances and if we hadn't got the experience of the last 10-15 years, we would be stressed. But we know that even if you have several performances that don't go according to plan in terms of audience numbers, that it balances out over the season and we just have to keep that in mind and you just have to keep faith 'cause it's so easy to crumble under the pressure. And we know that this upcoming year is gonna be our best ever year.
Ben Thompson
Oh wow, amazing.
Mike Woodward
We know that's gonna happen and we just have to believe it. We really just have to believe it and overcome, you know, if the next few performances don't match to our expectations, we just know that in the long run, it's gonna be okay. we'll continue and we spend a lot of time talking to the Arts Council trying to extract some grants from them and we try and get some trust fund grants to help buffer it but it inevitably we know that 95% of our income will come from ticket sales.
Ben Thompson
Absolutely. One of the other things I know about you is that you're a big collaborator so you look to do things in the community and I know So something you did with Mike Foster quite recently is turn up in boiler suits at his Women in Business event and burst into opera and I know that you do work with the Cherwell Boathouse and how have collaborations worked for your business? And why are you such a big advocate of collaborations?
Mike Woodward
Well, we love collaborating with situations in people's towns and communities where they perhaps provide some amateur local singers to help bump up the chorus in certain situations. So with a lot of our productions, there are a number of musical items that can be performed very well from an amateur chorus. So we try and do that wherever we can. We do that on a number of performances, a come-and-sing type event. So we use our professional performers to actually perform the main roles, but then we collaborate with music societies and orchestras as well, actually, we collaborate with orchestras around the country for doing joint performances. But I think what you're mentioning in terms of the Cherwell Boathouse and the corporate entertainment side, that's another strand of our business which we would love to try and do more of, because it means that it probably takes a little bit of the risk out of our overall business model and so if you can get some corporate entertainment, if we get some corporate entertainment type. I mean, the thing that's all the rage and it has been very popular over the recent years is singing waiters where you pop up in certain situations, mainly at dinner after a wedding or a special event, a black tie event and you know, we're pretending to be waiters and then suddenly we create this incident where we suddenly pop up and perform a number of items and one particular memory I have is when Theresa May was one of the guests of a big event, I think it was in Reading, this is about three or four years ago, and she was on the top table and she had loads of security guards all around and we had to tip off the security guards what we were up to because they obviously they don't like any shocks.
Ben Thompson
I can imagine.
Mike Woodward
Yeah so we actually… there was quite a few well-known people on that top table but Theresa May was one of them and we created this incident between two waiters arguing about cutlery. You make a big noise in the middle of this dinner where everybody's being very well-behaved, you make this big scene between two waiters and then you suddenly pop up to perform a duet and it just so happened that we were standing right behind Theresa May and the duet started "Oh false one, you have deceived me." So it was obviously out of context to the opera, but it really fitted in if you were wanting to criticise anybody politically or whatever, which was actually Gilbert and Sullivan. That was a Gilbert and Sullivan item and they were very kind of political anyway. So, you know, it all fitted in there and we had a, I mean, the audience loved that kind of thing and so we do a lot of that. Well, we don't do a lot. We'd like to do more, you know, that's a great, great, another element to our business and it's very enjoyable with Cherwell Boathouse, that's something different again, we perform opera on punts. So we'll invite a group. We had a group last year of 30 people, spread over four or five punts and they know what to expect. They know it's an opera on punts type event, but it's a wonderful two or three hours along the river. Cherwell Boathouse with picnics and champagne and opera you know a very light accessible opera you know real popular favorites so they're not gonna do any Wagner to them or anything you know it's just really popular stuff.
Ben Thompson
That sounds opera on a punt at Sherwell Boathouse I don't think you can get more Oxford than that especially with a picnic can you?
Mike Woodward
It's wonderful it really is it is one of my favourite things to do it's so It's just, it's so escapist. You know, you can just escape from reality for two or three hours.
Ben Thompson
So, Mike, I think the other thing that I think is really good for us to build on is, I guess, really kind of the world of opera. So we spoke at the start of the podcast about opera's becoming more popular and it's on the rise, but how can people get involved in opera? So if somebody's listening and think, "Do you know what? I've always been interested in opera. I would like to get involved? How can people get involved in opera? And I guess from yourself, it'd just be quite interesting to learn what could they expect from the world of opera and how do you go from having an interest to being an amateur to being a professional, which I presume would be near impossible for most people?
Mike Woodward
Well, I wouldn't say impossible. I think obviously it helps if you're young to start. I mean, I came into opera very late and it's not easy for somebody like me, but all our performers generally have gone to a music school or conservatoire and studied music and performing and singing for several years. So for me in particular, I've come from an amateur background and then had to go on lots and lots of courses, singing courses. I have a regular coach that I go to see regularly and develop and the thing is about the voice, you can continue to develop it and develop it and develop it and when you get to a certain age like myself you have to be very careful about what roles you choose so these days I tend to choose obviously older roles and comedy is my particular thing but our young performers, in fact the ones that we've got at the moment there's a lovely new one that we've just employed. Who's, I think she's a post-grad in Manchester at the Royal Northern and she's on a third-year post-grad, if I'm right. So she's done six years, basically, studying music, performing, singing and that's the kind of training that you'd need to have if you want to do it professionally. But obviously there's loads of amateur. There's great Oxford Operatic Society, brilliant. Abingdon Operatic Society brilliant and they don't do just opera they do musicals so that's another little route into the performing arts that is fabulous and look we're so lucky in Oxford because loads of these and as youth companies we're very rich in this area actually.
Ben Thompson
And just sort of building on that so if you didn't want to do it professionally so just purely amateur and you were just really interested and wanted to learn, do some of these clubs be quite open so somebody who's never sang in their life could you just turn up and say you want to want to get involved.
Mike Woodward
Oh absolutely, yeah no you can, you can become a member of a society and they'll give you small roles in the chorus as only to start off with. Yeah absolutely, yeah. It's very accessible, the whole thing is.
Ben Thompson
Yeah, amazing. We have touched on Vanessa a couple of times and I always admire you both in terms of what you do in Sunningwell. So I'm just quite keen for you to share to the listeners a little bit about the Sunningwell School of Arts if that's okay.
Mike Woodward
Oh yeah sure.
Ben Thompson
I'm sure Vanessa will do a brilliant job herself, but let's talk on behalf of Vanessa. Is that alright?
Mike Woodward
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So she's the admin director at the art school and she keeps the place going and the beauty of having the art school, some employment with the art school is it's just down the road from where we live. And she's, I think she's 30 hours a week, but she can in her planning, her time management, allow enough time to do the Opera Anywhere stuff as well and you know, there's quite a few weeks in the summer when the art school doesn't operate. There's two weeks right now at the moment where it's not operating. So it's very much sort of term time type activity. So it fits in extremely well with what we're doing with Opera Anywhere.
Ben Thompson
So the arts school, I know that from our conversation before, during COVID, they really did pivot didnt they?
Mike Woodward
They really did, they did a lot of online courses actually, keeping it ticking over and managed to keep a lot of their students, so 400 students a week come to a course. They didn't all come on Zoom, but a lot of them did. And it kept the thing ticking over. The art school is 50 years old this year.
Ben Thompson
Wow, wow. It's amazing being an Abbingdon resident all my life, but before I met you, I didn't know it existed and it's fascinating how there's so, such interesting businesses across Oxfordshire that are driving visitors to our local area. So, no, no, incredible.
Mike Woodward
And the other lovely thing about the art school, and especially during the pandemic, was that the students are all, they're part-time, so they do it because they're a hobby, that it's sort of like a hobby and doing something creative when the whole world is going a bit bonkers, actually really helps the mental health and it just, in fact, since the pandemic, it's even grown further because people have reassessed what they want out of life and doing some creative things like pottery or art or drawing or opera, you know, it's opened up people's minds to what else they could be doing and filling their days with.
Ben Thompson
No, absolutely. Absolutely. No, really, really, really fascinating and no, thank you for that. We are coming towards the end of the podcast, but one of the things that I always like to ask us is really about advice and you've been really successful in running such a well-regarded opera business within the arts and I think it's so rightly widely reported how difficult it is to run an arts business. What has been your secret and what has been the reason that Opera Anywhere has built such a good reputation over the years?
Mike Woodward
Well, I think we really rely on some really good young performers and our relationships with our performers have been really thought through and we really try and care for them. We don't, we're not going to be the highest players in amongst opera companies, but they love working with us because we look after them. Our relationships with all of them are really, really good and we try and really, really look after them. Like this week, in fact, we're rehearsing a new production as we speak and we're taking them back to our house. We find accommodation locally and we take them back to our house every evening and look after them, feed them and tonight we're going to the Flowing Well in Sunningwell, treating them to the last night of the rehearsal so we're treating them.
Ben Thompson
Well that is unfortunately the end of the podcast which is a real shame Mike because I could have spoken to you for hours and I'm sure there'd have been lots more to cover but thank you Mike for joining us and for your time. Thank you also to Story Ninety Four for hosting us at their wonderful podcast studio here in Oxford and if you've not been before please do get in touch with them. You have been listening to the Oxford Business Podcast of the Oxford Business Community Network. I really hope you've enjoyed this conversation with Mike, I certainly have and please do listen to the next episode next month.