BOSSES at Bury's Met arts centre are toasting their best year for ages.

While they're not out of the financial woods yet, attendances and profits are going up.

Some 35,000 people saw the centre's programme of events in 1996/97 including the Streets Ahead festival, more than double the figure for three years ago.

Met director Alan Oatey described it as the best twelve months yet of his reign.

"Year after year we are expected to do more with less, and we do it. We have become adept at making silk purses from sows' ears," he told the Met's annual meeting.

Praising his staff, he added: "We are working to keep the programme stimulating and popular, to make the the whole organisation as efficient and friendly as we can, and to be outward looking and relevant to the borough and the region.

"We don't always get it right but the figures show we are doing very well."

Mr Oatey said the Met was applying for Lottery cash for the latest refurbishment.

Geoffrey Horley, of the Met's auditors Chittenden Horley, said: "Every year for the last three years we have wondered whether the Met will manage to avoid the black hole, and every year they do.

"The Met balances artistic quality and commercial appeal with good business practice, earning money where it can and keeping control on costs. Not many arts organisations can do this."

Met treasurer Duncan Finch said both the cafe bar and the arts centre had kept costs the same but increased income, allowing the overall deficit to be reduced.

The theatre's profits rose by a third to £10,550 while the cafe bar turned a £7,000 loss into the same amount of profit.

But he sounded a cautious note: "The current year sees yet another standstill grant from the North West Arts Board and an £8,000 cut from the local authority, and tight control will need to be maintained."

Also offering his congratulations was the Mayor of Bury, Coun Roy Walker, who is president of Bury Metro Arts Association.

He hoped the popular Streets Ahead festival would be an annual event. He also welcomed the fact that the cafe bar was generating income for the arts centre as it was intended to do.

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