After ten years as General Manager few, if any, know more about what makes Lighthouse tick than Martyn Balson. It takes a lot to ruffle his reassuring air of calm and while he will just about concede that everything is under control, he’s acutely aware things can change in a heartbeat.
Here, Martyn talks about what is arguably the most wide-ranging job at Lighthouse, what it means to him and how he came to be doing it, as well as offering advice to those who might want to follow in his footsteps...
I’m really proud to work here. So much of this job is about looking after people and making sure they have the best experience possible. I want everything to be perfect for them, whether they are an audience member coming to Lighthouse and maybe having some food and drink before a show or visiting companies coming into Lighthouse to put on the best show they can for our customers and theirs. Can we do more to make that happen?
This is where our core values come in – we Aspire to be Welcoming and Excellent in everything we do and, for the most part, we succeed but there might be times when we drop the ball, and we have to pick things up and put them back together again.
This building has always loomed large in my life, from coming to see shows as a boy to being sent here for work experience at the age of 15. I did sound and light at school so was sent to what was then Poole Arts Centre to do some more. It was completely different of course, but I worked on panto – The Wizard of Oz. We got to dress rehearsal and realised the yellow brick road had not been painted so I was sent out on to the balcony outside what is now Function Room 2 with a roller and some yellow paint. It was done in time but all through the dress I could hear the actors’ feet sticking to tacky paint!
I didn’t really know what I wanted to do when I left school. My family were all engineers, but I decided that wasn’t for me. Since the age of 13 or 14, when I got paid in ice cream, I’d always done bar work and part-time work in hospitality, but my first ‘proper’ jobs were in banking and then insurance, which I found incredibly dull. I had a friend who managed a venue in Hove called the Old Market, so after being asked to help out a couple of times, in my early 20s I moved to Brighton and basically worked my way up learning all the different jobs at the Old Market.
It was this lovely 500-600 people venue that did everything from weddings to comedy, theatre, live music nights and classical concerts. We had connections to a local book shop so sometimes authors would book it for events – people like Sandi Toksvig and Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent. Maroon 5 played an invite-only fans’ event there and I remember being roundly abused on stage by Julian Clary. In fairness he told me he was going to do it as part of the show – he called me a lesbian and told everyone I had cystitis!
I really enjoyed the variety and learned such a lot. One of the things was about attention to detail, especially with weddings. If you get the cake right and make sure the mothers-in-law are well catered for, they tend to go pretty well, but it’s the little extras that can make the biggest difference. At one wedding when it was raining, I was waiting by the bridal car with an umbrella and as the bride got out, she just said: ‘Oh, nice touch, Martyn.’ That made the day, because up until that point she’d been a real Bridezilla!
I followed that with three years as Assistant Operations Manager at Bournemouth Pavilion. I had such a happy time at the Pav. Suddenly I was dealing with getting major touring shows in and out of the building, and much bigger audiences. The first night I was in sole charge was Joseph… and this was just after Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Any Dream Will Do show on the BBC, so it was big news. I was nervous, but I had the experience, and everything was fine. Of course, you never know what’s going to walk in through the door, the public are completely unpredictable, but the more you do, the more confident you become.
I met childhood TV heroes The Krankies, and the night Peter Andre played – it was on his second career revival – it was absolute mayhem!
I left as BH Live took over managing the Pav from Bournemouth Council and went to Salisbury City Hall. It had a good live music programme, but it was such an ugly building and really badly set up – for instance, there was no rear access to the stage for some reason.
I remember when Greg Davies played there on his first stand up tour. I was coming to the end of my shift when he arrived, obviously tired and in a bad mood. I met him in the foyer and went to take him to the dressing room. To get there you had to go up on stage and then turn left. About halfway down the stalls he stopped us and said: ‘You don’t have to do this; you can just direct us.’ It was the end of a shift and I’d been disappointed by someone who was a bit of a hero to me, so I told him to turn right and go up the stairs. He would have ended up in the tech’s office.
It was very naughty of me, and I didn’t stick around to find out the tech’s reaction or Greg’s, but I like to think he’d have got some material out of it.
Still, Salisbury is a beautiful city, and I liked working there.
I moved to take on a capital project for Stratford-upon-Avon Town Trust, which is an incredible charity that traces its roots back to the 13th century and exists to fund projects for the betterment of the town. It funded the £1.8 million refurbishment of the Civic Hall to reopen as Stratford Artshouse with a more commercially led programme. I was there about 18 months in which I oversaw the capital works, bringing the project in on time and in budget while building relationships with promoters and scheduling the reopening programme, but it didn’t end very well for me. I left soon after a new Chair was appointed to the trust that had been constituted to run the venue.
At that point, my confidence had taken a hard hit, so I moved back to Poole in the spring of 2014 and spent that summer doing agency work on Poole Quay and in pubs in the Purbecks, going to the beach and sitting in the garden drinking wine. That was when I saw Lighthouse was advertising for a General Manager. I applied and my experience of the capital project in Stratford must have stood me in good stead as I was offered the job.
It was a full circle moment. I came here as a kid to watch gigs; the first was W.A.S.P. and it was pure chaos. We worry about the capacity at concerts today, but it was nothing compared to how it was then – there were far more people than should have been in there and my ears rang for days afterwards, it was so loud.
I think I saw one of the Disney films in the old Cinema and I saw some great shows in the Theatre – Ben Elton in the early 90s and the first Bottom tour with Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson. At the end I picked up a cup that had bounced off the stage and hid it under my jacket – I thought I was going to get in trouble for stealing a prop, but I didn’t. I’ve still got it at home.
I started at Lighthouse on 4 August 2014. Everything felt very familiar; like I was home. At some point in that first week, I went and stood on the stage and thought: ‘The last time I was here I was 15.’
I went straight into the 2015-16 capital refurbishment, which was a major piece of work for Lighthouse. Having an eye for detail was essential, and it certainly helped to be able to call on my previous experience so that I knew what the builders were talking about and had an appreciation of how long things take.
The changes are for the good, but the job is very different now to what it was when I started. For instance, there’s much more work done on Human Resources, training and wellbeing. Thinking strategically about the business took some adjustment and there’s a greater focus on retail now as we look to increase secondary income.
I’ve learned how to manage at a different level now in that colleagues at all levels are trusted to do their jobs. Making sure we are properly staffed is a big thing. We can have stretches of ten, eleven, twelve days that the building is running at absolute capacity with shows coming in and going out, audiences and other building users, and we ask a lot of our staff and volunteers, from Stage Door and Duty Managers, to Stewards and Ticket Office, and the Cleaners, to make sure we deliver what we need to.
Coming here every day it’s easy to forget what’s it’s like to get excited about coming to Lighthouse once or twice a year to see a show. That’s what is so special about panto. It’s the most insane, quirky, very British form of entertainment. I love that time of year because it’s such a family time and the building is alive with people of all ages getting excited about the show. Audiences are noisy and messy and make a lot of work, but that’s what makes it magical.
I feel so lucky to work in a building with its own orchestra and the BSO are amazing. I still can’t get over just how powerful they are when they’re at full pelt. I get a goosebump moment every March when they do their movie theme concert – walking through the top floor foyer and hearing them belting out the main theme from Indiana Jones and Star Wars.
In lockdown I got into watching classical concerts on live stream, but I had to pinch myself when I slipped into a rehearsal to hear Alexander Malofeev, who’s this year’s Artist-in-Residence, play Rachmaninov’s second and third piano concertos. It was just stunning; I felt incredibly lucky. In fact, I was in tears.
I still watch live streamed concerts and regularly see the BSO – I like to spot who’s on the ice creams in the interval!
I didn’t really have a career plan, but if someone wanted to do this, I would go the event management or creative event management degree route, with a business and people management module added on. Or, you can still go the experience route, working your way up from small events and venues, doing similar jobs but on a bigger scale.
Really, ever since leaving the Old Market every move I have made has been to add to my experience or plug a gap. In some ways, being General Manager at Lighthouse, brings me all the way back to the cake and the mothers-in-law at the Old Market weddings – get those right and all will be well. The key is you have to remain calm and use your experience to anticipate or even get ahead of problems so that stressful situations cannot come at you all at once.
Simple, really!
(NC)