Staff members working at the Light House cinema in Wolverhampton, England, today announced on social media that the arthouse and media center is set to cease trading and close its doors for the final time Thursday due to acute financial struggles.
On Thursday morning Darryl Griffiths, Marketing Manager of the cinema posted a lengthy message on social media announcing the closure.
“For a venue that has been remarkably resilient amidst many a challenge, never did we think it would finally come to this,” he wrote.
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The popular arthouse cinema is part of the wider Light House charity, which has operated out of the Chubb Building in the city center of Wolverhampton in the West Midlands region of England since 1991.
The building has also doubled as an arts center, where the charity has housed its biannual Deaffest — a Deaf-led film and television festival — as well as local exhibitions and workshops. The Light House cinema had long been one of the few independent film venues in Central England.
Discussing the factors behind the closure, Griffiths told Deadline that the cinema had been the victim of a collection of pressing financial issues, including reduced funding from Wolverhampton local council and falling admission numbers, which have been exacerbated by the current cost of living crisis.
Like many cinemas and arts venues, the Light House also took a big hit during the pandemic, closing for 16 months before opening to steady numbers in June 2021.
“As a charity, funding has been hard to come by,” Griffiths said. “Just before COVID, we were working with a small deficit, but obviously, because of numbers not quite coming back and the funding not coming through at the level we need it to, just exacerbated the situation.”
The financial issues that have struck the Light House are almost identical to those cited by the Centre for the Moving Image (CMI), the charity that runs the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Filmhouse Cinema in Edinburgh, and Belmont Filmhouse in Aberdeen, which filed for administration last month.
A statement from the CMI said a “perfect storm” of rising costs and falling admissions numbers, due to the pandemic, had been exacerbated by the current cost of living crisis. All three institutions ceased trading following the announcement.
After the Light House closes its doors on Thursday evening, the cinema building will be handed back to the local Wolverhampton council, which owns the lease. In a statement issued to Deadline, a spokesperson for the council said the closure was a sad loss for the city’s “cultural offering” but insisted the council had long provided financial support to the cinema.
“The Council has always been committed to supporting the Light House and over the last decade has probably been its biggest, single financial backer, providing some £333,000 of funding support to help the owners sustain their business,” the spokesperson said.
“Council officers met with the venue’s management team a fortnight ago to offer additional help. This included a business review, marketing support, and providing connections to grant funding opportunities. Unfortunately, though, it seems that the venue’s debt levels were unsustainable, resulting in the very sad situation we find ourselves in today.”
The spokesperson added that the council is “urgently reaching out to the Lighthouse’s commercial landlords – the company that owns the Light House café space — to discuss the current situation and their potential future plans.”
All Light House staff are expected to be made redundant, but Griffiths told Deadline that they will continue to campaign to retain an alternative hub for film culture in Wolverhampton as the cinema closes its doors.
“The people in power who can lobby for artistic venues like this just don’t get it,” Griffiths said. “It’s a financial issue, and we need proper backing like many other venues, and I just feel like we’re not being taken seriously.”
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