Not only does youth theatre and dance centre Pegasus have a spanking new building, it also has a shiny new business director. Enter stage right former management consultant John Wilkes, who hails from the distinctly non-luvvie background of finance, IT and marketing, including a stint at Unipart.

“The people here are fabulous because they are so passionate and committed. In the rather jaded business world, you just don’t see that level of enthusiasm,”

he said.

Officially, his mandate is to oversee future direction and business opportunities for Magdalen Road, Oxford-based Pegasus, which reopens after a £7.4m revamp this month, but how does he view his role?

“I see my job as either to make things happen, or rather, to stop things getting in the way. It is the artistic people who work with young people, develop programmes and make contacts, and I can help them do that by making sure the finances are not a problem and we have the right people in place.”

With cutbacks waiting in the wings, is he prepared for the bumpy ride that all arts bodies are facing?

“We get a significant amount of our money from the city and county councils and the Arts Council and they are under severe pressure,” he said.

“We have to raise our fund-raising activities both in terms of philanthropy and corporate giving. Our targets are quite large and if we don’t make them, we will have to start trimming our activities. It is as basic as that,” he added.

He is upfront about the fact that he is looking to cut costs.

“It is about trying to make things more efficient. In any organisation there is bound to be waste and scope to say ‘we can do this better’ and probably to trim the excesses of the wildest bits of imagination.”

One of the most urgent issues he is contemplating is how to build earned income.

“Our income splits into three areas — grant, fund raising from philanthropic giving and earned income from things like ticket sales and the café.

“A healthy balance is to have those as thirds but we are a long way from that,” he said.

In fact, more than half of income comes from grants but he is aware that increasing revenue from ticket sales will prove difficult, given that one of Pegasus’ main aims is to be accessible by keeping charges for tickets and workshops low.

“We don’t want to make money a barrier to people joining in, so our scope for changing that is not that great.

“Pegasus is about opportunity for all young people to experience the arts and grow and develop as individuals.

“That is the uniqueness of the place — it brings in professional actors, dancers and musicians to give people a flavour of what it is really like.

“We also have a reputation for cutting-edge, professional productions that are different to anything you see elsewhere. That is important, but we have to question them.”

He needs no convincing of the benefits of music and drama and has first-hand experience.

“Music and theatre are so good in terms of developing people and teaching them to work as a team.”

He has been involved in amateur dramatics, singing and musicals “forever”. At junior school in the Rhondda Valley, his head teacher was a conductor of the Treorchy Male Voice Choir.

“The school had a very musical ethos and he was quite inspirational. We sang in concerts and that stayed with me,” he said.

Similarly, while at the University of East Anglia as a maths and computing undergraduate, he found time to perform.

“It has always been a great passion. I acted, sang in a group and just about managed to fit in my studies.”

He even had a bash at song-writing and submitted one tune to the BBC as a potential UK Eurovision song contest entry. It reached the top 50 but was not, alas, chosen: “It was probably too good,” he joked.

He hopes that the amazing generosity that helped fund the new building, which included a £100,000 gift from local author Philip Pullman, and hundreds of individual donations, will continue to offset running costs.

“Now the challenge is to keep that going. Even though we keep our ticket prices low, the emphasis will be: ‘If you can afford to give more, please do’.”

Meanwhile, he is examining other potential sources of revenue such as room rental, consultancy fees and merchandise.

“I would also like to see our programmes being worked out two or three years ahead. It is easier to get sponsorship and helps with planning and cutting waste because you don’t get so many last-minute panics.”

With a script that is full of lines such as “cutting waste” and “trimming excesses”, isn’t he worried he will be cast as the villain of the piece?

“There are going to be hard choices, undoubtedly. I sound like a politician, don’t I? It is a new era with this new building and, while we don’t want to change all the values, there may be other ways they can be satisfied.”

Where will he will focus his efforts?

“Bums on seats. If what we do is artistically wonderful but we are not getting enough people in, then there is a question mark there.

“I am all for experimental art and trying things out, but if it is not cutting the mustard then either we are not getting our marketing right, or we have the wrong programme.”

Despite the short-term concerns about funding, he has ambitious plans for the future. “Pegasus is a great institute but there is only the one. It is quite well-known nationally, so how can we build on that in terms of replicating it?

“We can take our model and see if it can be used in other places. That may be a few years in the future, but it is quite exciting.”