An update on our plans for Portsmouth Guildhall
While the doors to the city’s iconic concert and conferencing venue, Portsmouth Guildhall, are currently closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, The Guildhall Trust is keen to reassure people that we are very much open for business as usual online and that key contacts within each department are still available to answer your calls and emails, so please do get in touch!
As a venue, we sit within step 3 of the Government’s Recovery Strategy, meaning we will not be able to reopen before 4th July and are awaiting further guidance on when and what this might look like for us. Behind the scenes our team are actively involved in discussion and planning across the entertainment and conferencing industries, communicating with our cultural, leisure and business partners in the city and participating in research that will aid our thinking.
We are working on plans for the measures that we understand we will likely need to implement and have ordered PPE, signage and sanitisation products that we know we will need. Our team are also working on systems that we will use to communicate with our customers to ensure we can share information with you in ways that are easy and convenient to you.
Since March we have rescheduled or cancelled over 40 concerts and shows, plus numerous meetings, conferences and weddings and we will continue to work with our hirers and promoters to move events to a time when they can go ahead. The wellbeing of all remains, and always will be, our priority.
With the number of reschedules and new shows being announced all the time, it now means we have a very busy calendar toward the back end of the year and beyond! By holding on to your tickets if your show has had to be rescheduled or booking ahead for a show in the future, your support has been vital in helping the Trust through this temporary closure and we can’t thank you enough.
Recent shows to go on sale include Belinda Carlisle, UB40, The Hollies, The Simon & Garfunkel Story, Magic of Motown and an evening with Sir Ranulph Fiennes with many more in the pipeline! Tickets for all shows are still on sale from our website or by calling the booking line on 0844 847 2362 (calls cost 7p per minute + network access charge), with Guildhall Memberships still available to purchase which give you priority booking on future announcements.
Our ‘Gift a Ticket’ scheme where donations are helping us to gift tickets to our amazing NHS staff and key workers to give them something to look forward to beyond this time has been a great success and we are now extending the scheme to run until we can reopen to give more people the chance to get involved.
Throughout lockdown we have remained active on all our social media channels, growing our following and doing our best to keep you informed and entertained through these challenging times. We have had weekly live sing-a-long sessions with the Urban Vocal Group, live streamed gigs with emerging artists in association with LMSUK Media and even held an online ‘mini-rave’ for children and their parents!
We were so disappointed after the amazing heats of our new dance competition for schools, Dance Live! that we were unable to go ahead with the finals in April, but not to be beaten our team found a way for them to happen ‘virtually’, giving every school and pupil the opportunity to get involved. And following an overwhelming response, we are pleased to announce that we will be opening registration for 2021 to schools and colleges in June.
Dance Live! is just one initiative that The Guildhall Trust will be developing over the coming months along with its consultancy, venue, event management and equipment hire services and creative learning and community programmes with exciting news on this to follow soon.
For now, we remain positive that the day that we can welcome you back into Portsmouth Guildhall is inching ever closer and we are doing everything in our power to ensure that we are prepared and ready for that day and what will be a new way of operating.
We are also working hard to ensure that we will be bringing to the city of Portsmouth the best in live performance including music, comedy, dance, drama and family entertainment as one thing is for sure – we all need it and are looking forward to it like never before!
Thank you for your continued support, stay alert and stay safe 😊