ALT A production photo of a performer with their hand raised towards the camera, wearing a white top & purple feather boa, speaking into a mic. Overlaid text in neon pink reads: We’re F*cked: A Statement from Pink Sky. A pink & purple gradient background with a white text box overlaid. A title reads: ‘Rapture is not going to Edinburgh’. A body of black text below reads: We recently received the difficult news that our funding application to the Arts Council was unsuccessful; this comes as a devastating blow to us as an emerging company without core funding or financial reserves. As such, we have chosen to cancel our upcoming run of Rapture at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Rapture is a show with the world of goodwill behind it; a skilled Cast, a committed Creative Team, a ton of brilliant word of mouth and a slew of enthusiastic 4 & 5 star Reviews. That said, with all the love in the world, it’s simply not possible to deliver a project of this scale without the requisite funding in place.

ALT And we’ve tried! Letter writing, approaching venues, building relationships, seeking private sponsorship. Earlier this year we spent weeks raising £1,200 via Crowdfunder to stage the show at VAULT Festival. This is also a story of an economic model that doesn’t stack up; at VAULT we sold out with queues at the door. Our take home split of Box Office barely scraped the sides of our artists’ fees - let alone set, hires, marketing, rehearsal space. Rapture is an unapologetic, explorative vision of life for contemporary queer young people. We would have loved to platform these stories on the international stage of Edinburgh. We had outreach and community activities lined up, which we will now not be able to deliver. Making theatre in the current climate in the UK is a game of risk and reward - we chose to invest in the potential of this project, and in this instance it didn’t pay off. Now, we need to raise the fees associated with cancellation, north of £3,500, if we are to keep our heads

ALT above water. If you’re able to offer support while we figure out what the future looks like, you can buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/pinkskytc. We’d really appreciate it. Our peers are persevering, trying to make art in an environment of acute uncertainty; the language and onus of the Arts Council has changed, the application process has expanded exponentially, requiring potentially days & days of free labour for those that attempt it. With £24 million recently divested from London, the outlook feels increasingly bleak. For a show exploring the emotional tolls of precarity & instability, the irony is not lost on us. As Tommy says, we’re ‘burnt-out, broke and barely coping’, & as Kit says, we ‘need newness’. Thank you to the actors who brought Kit, Tommy & Rosy to life - Pete, Bryan, Lynne. Thank you to the Creative Team for your generosity of spirit – Ellie, Ros, Becky, Verity, Josie, Sam. To the Producer of dreams, Ellen, for buoying Pink Sky with your clear-sightedness. cont'd