Bosses at the city’s Mac theatre says it is planning to operate without £500,000 of local authority funding.

In an interview with the Post, chief executive Dorothy Wilson revealed she believes it is ‘inevitable’ that arts centres will have to work out ways to survive without any public financing.

The Edgbaston venue, which reopened to the public in 2010 following a two-year refurbishment, believes it can survive on its own two feet without funding from Birmingham City Council.

Ms Wilson, the Mac’s artistic director and chief executive, said the arts centre in Canon Hill Park had enjoyed a renaissance since it re-opened in 2010.

Since then it has adopted a new business plan which sees it generate more income through commercial activities as well as increasing the grants it receives from national trusts and foundations rather than just local ones.

Ms Wilson said the change in fortunes was evidenced by the fact its turnover had increased to around £5 million, compared to £3.2 million in 2008 when it closed for refurbishment.

She said: “I think it is an absolute fact that all local authority funding will disappear and the arts will take a hit. We will have to see how we deal with it but it is a case of so far so good.”

Ms Wilson said the Mac had already lost around 17 per cent of its local authority funding, around a third of a million pounds, each year since its reopening, but despite that it was exceeding turnover and footfall targets.

But the prospect of losing all local authority funding remains a real one and something the Mac is already preparing for, according to Ms Wilson.

“We confidently anticipate local authority funding will go down again, though we have got an agreement until March 2016,” she said.

“It wouldn’t be truthful if I said I didn’t have concerns for our future.

“We are still fairly dependant on public investment but because it has gone down and because we have been able to test our strategies for dealing with that and found them robust, I am much more confident we are prepared for the future.”

“At the moment we are actually looking at how we would manage a total withdrawal of local authority funding.

“There are local authorities across the country that have totally withdrawn public arts funding”, she said.

”We have diversified our sources of income so are much less reliant on public investment than we were four years ago.

“As a proportion of our income it is now less than half of what is was four years ago.

“In 2016 local authority funding will taker a nosedive again but are in a position to weather that because we have anticipated it and prepared for it.”

Ms Wilson was speaking as the Mac announced healthy figures for 2014 to date, with ticket sales across all events up by 23 per cent and website sales up by 10 per cent.

Visitor footfall has risen by seven per cent to 921,000, meaning the Mac has had four million visitors since it reopened in 2010.

Its revised business focus and upping of its commercial activities means 57 per cent of its total income is now earned.

Ms Wilson said enlarged spaces at the Mac had given it the ability to generate more income and its commercial activities had been stepped-up.

“Our trading arms tuns over very nearly three times what it did when we closed and contributes almost three times as much back in,” she said.

Other changes behind its success Ms Wilson highlighted include a new computerised ticketing system which enables more effective marketing, increased social networking and combining the Mac’s charitable and corporate arms into one entity.

In addition the Mac has grown the commercial side of its theatres, with more comedy and a focus on commercial music, an approach Ms Wilson described as “mixing and matching” and “a win win”.

Ms Wilson said the Mac would stick with its mission of “arts for everyone” and would continue to balance making money on some activities to subsidising others, particularly its work with young people and communities who have little current engagement with the arts.

As part of its changing focus it has been seeking grants from trusts and foundations that are national, rather than just regional, which tended to be the case before it closed.

One of the biggest breakthroughs has been to secure funding from the People’s Postcode Lottery.

Initially the Mac received a £100,000 grant but this was increased incrementally to £175,000 and looks set to continue.

Among the things it supported was a recent Taster Weekend event, which saw more than 10,000 visitors come through the Mac’s doors, with over 800 children, young people and families participating in 40 free creative activities, alongside live music performances and gallery tours.

Ms Wilson said: “The profile of the work we do matches so well with their profile and they have invited us to apply for £175,000 next year and the year after.”

Another project currently being worked on, in partnership with local universities, is one that will work along bus routes to and from the Mac.

She explained a key focus will be on engaging young people with the arts, given Birmingham’s demographic as one of the youngest cities in Europe.

Ms Wilson pointed to initiatives that had already seen young people locally working as producers, programmers and promoters at the Mac, with some now earning a living through these activities.

She said it was a case of “changing a life at a time because this is such a young city” and added that Birmingham was “marvellously rich” in its diversity.

Summing up the Mac’s offer, she said its greatest strength was the fact it is an arts centre offering a broad range of events and activities.

“Because it is an arts centre not a theatre, not a gallery – we are all of those – the dynamic in that is really vigorous and really exciting,” she said.

“That is why people come back, there is always something different happening in the building and there is always a sense they will be surprised by what happens.

“I think we have really tried and succeeded to a very significant degree to break down barriers between the kind of things we offer here.

“Our ambition is to not only get people to come to the cinema here or a pottery class but to come and explore the breadth we have here.”