Learning from the ladies’ lavs

How much can a trip to the loo reveal about arts organisations?

You can learn a lot about an arts organisation from its ladies’ toilets. I developed this theory during my visit to the Ravinia Festival last weekend to report for BBC Music Magazine on the opening of the newly renovated Hunter Pavilion there.

Good toilets are evidence of organisational thinking and problem solving. How big is the queue at interval? How efficient is the flow of people in and out? What are the ergonomics of finding soap, and washing and drying one’s hands? These are just a few of the details that shape the visitor experience.

The main toilets on the grounds at Ravinia win on all these points. Two long aisles of cubicles ensure there is no wait. A wall of basins, each equipped with automatic soap and a paper towel dispenser which automatically prepares a piece for the next user, means there’s no hunting for soap or joining a separate queue to dry one’s hands. On the opposite wall from the sinks, a mirror makes it easy to check lipstick and hair quickly on exit.

This is about attention to detail: thinking through every practicality in the design process, testing its effectiveness and fitting it properly. But there’s something more fundamental: prioritising the needs of the audience – and understanding and fulfilling these needs rather than being led by aesthetics or the personal style of a designer. You’d think this principle was obvious, and yet it’s rare to find well-organised ladies’ toilets in concert venues.

Take, for example, the Southbank Centre. There are different toilets around the building, but the main ones on the ground floor contain a space-age contraption which you have to lift with a handle placed at the epicentre of the seat, in the name of ecology. From experience of peak times, there are never enough basins, you have to play hunt-the-soap-dispenser, there are usually puddles around the basins that make one’s clothes wet, and the mirrors are set far back so it’s awkward to check one’s lipstick. On the way out, there are only a couple of hand-driers – the type that blow the water back at you and leave you wiping your hands on your clothes anyway. To be fair, there is an original 1950s bathroom at the back of the floor, which I tend to use as it’s usually empty, and has normal toilets and a beautiful wooden-panelled ‘powder room’, complete with mirrors and ash trays – they knew how to do it in those days.

On my tour of Ravinia, everything I saw and heard about the grounds, backstage area, acoustics and concert space demonstrated this impeccable attention to detail and consideration for the people using the spaces (including the performers and production staff). I’ll save that for my BBC Music Magazine report, but suffice it to say, I was impressed.

Also, on the way out after the two concerts I attended, nearly every single member of staff I passed offered a cheery ‘thank you for coming’. Us Brits may not be very good at such unselfconscious graciousness (although Wigmore Hall now does the same thing) and in the scheme of things maybe it doesn’t matter. However, it’s another small (free) detail that gives one a lot of information about an organisation and its values, and how thoroughly they filter through the entire company.

The culture clearly starts at the top, as I discovered when I spoke to Jeffrey Haydon, President and CEO of Ravinia, who has led the organisation since 2020 and through the last three years of redevelopment. I asked him what advice he would give a concert venue about to go through this process, and his answer was telling. He explained: ‘In music, we rightfully put so much focus on music, but the experience is just as important. When you see a great work of art, it’s in a beautiful place, in a museum. And when you go to hear music, you are processing what’s around you as part of that musical experience. What is the feeling of the crowd? What’s the space? We’ve all been to halls that smell, are drab, or need a new coat of paint. They’re not designed to embrace the audience. I wanted to make sure that even though we’re a summer music festival, it can still be a first-class experience that both audiences and artists will want to have.’

Money helps, of course, and Ravinia has that in spades through generous philanthropy – the refurbishment of the Hunter Pavilion cost $70m. However, money may buy better quality sinks and taps, and even make staff happier, but it really cannot buy you love. A venue could have all the money in the world, but without the fundamental shared goal of creating that first-class experience – ‘embracing’ the audience and artists – the details will never make sense.

So perhaps the best place to judge an arts organisation isn’t its programming or box office statistics or marketing, but its ladies’ toilets. Next time you go to a concert, let me know about your experience, and we’ll test the hypothesis.