Freelancers in the Dark The Economic, Cultural, and Social Impact of Covid-19 on UK Theatre Workers (original) (raw)
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2021
Since the beginning of 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic has severely impacted many aspects of almost every industry worldwide. This paper will cover the financial effect that the Covid-19 pandemic has had on production crew members working within the theater industry. Research will be conducted through literature review, evaluating similar historical events and current discussions throughout the industry, and one-on-one structured interviews with production crew members who were financially impacted by the pandemic. The main goal of this thesis is to examine the different financial situations of production crew members and determine if management and production companies within the industry were successful in financially supporting their employees throughout this difficult time. The Covid-19 pandemic began at the beginning of 2020 and is still ongoing as this research is being completed, due to the emergence of the Delta variant. Due to new discoveries and changes that will occur as the ...
Frontiers in Psychology
Before the drastic disruption caused by the sudden emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, 85% of the United Kingdom’s 14,000 orchestral musicians were self-employed freelance workers, engaged in busy and varied portfolio careers comprising a combination of orchestral, West End theatre, chamber music, and commercial recording work. Between May and June 2020 we carried out a first study examining the impact of the pandemic on the lives of 24 self-employed orchestral musicians, all established freelancers. Twelve were mid-career and 12 were late-career (described in that study as “seasoned”). They all reported having lost their much-loved performing careers, missing music making and colleagues, and being anxious about the future of the music profession. However, there were some differences between the two groups: the late-career participants demonstrated greater financial and emotional resilience, while the mid-career musicians reported distress, confusion, and anxiety about their identit...
Frontiers in Psychology, 2021
This article reports data collected from 385 performing arts professionals using the HEartS Professional Survey during the COVID-19 Lockdown 1.0 in the United Kingdom. Study 1 examined characteristics of performing arts professionals’ work and health, and investigated how these relate to standardized measures of wellbeing. Study 2 examined the effects of the lockdown on work and wellbeing in the respondents’ own words. Findings from Study 1 indicate a substantial reduction in work and income. 53% reported financial hardship, 85% reported increased anxiety, and 63% reported being lonelier than before the crisis. 61% sought support on finances while only 45% did so on health and wellbeing. Multiple regression analyses, using the Mental Health Continuum-Short Form, Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, Social Connectedness Scale, and Three-Item Loneliness Scale as outcome variables, indicate that perceived financial hardship was associated with lower wellbeing and higher d...
Dance Research, 2023
This article investigates how Covid-19 and Brexit have impacted the practices, finances and wellbeing of UK dance professionals, drawing on first-hand data collected in early 2021 from interviews, questionnaires and a panel discussion. The testimonies of freelance practitioners from different backgrounds, as well as key stakeholders from national institutions and organisations employing or otherwise interacting with freelancers, present bottom-up insights from the scene. Our research project more specifically explored the ramifications of the pandemic and Brexit, and the impact of these crises on the diversity of the UK dance scene (broadly construed). The voices and findings presented are framed by a discussion of the economic and political infrastructure of the so-called 'creative industries' in the country, with particular attention to the freelance creative labour model, risk and precarity. The article concludes by proposing a politics of small resistive steps which might help to mitigate these challenges, working from within the dance ecosystem.
The reaction of entertainment workers to the Covid-19: a cooperative case study
Paper prepared for presentation at the “7th Conference of the Regulating for Decent Work Network”, Virtual Conference, International Labour Office Geneva, Switzerland 6-9 July 2021, 2021
In Italy, the entertainment sector lost about 80% of its turnover in 2020, corresponding to about €8 billion, with a strong negative impact on its approximately 327,000 workers. Due to the workers' previous precarious working conditions, and the fragmentation of the sector, the Italian government was not immediately able to provide effective solutions and support for them. For this reason, many workers in the performing arts have chosen to organise themselves into formal and informal associations or to eventually join a trade union and try to fill this gap. Of particular interest is the role that cooperatives of entertainment workers have played in this situation. For example, Doc Servizi, the largest Italian workers' cooperative in the sector with 6,400 members in 2019, acted as a safety net for performing arts workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, becoming a bridge between workers and 2 institutions and one of the natural spokespersons for entertainment workers. In addition, the cooperative provided round-the-clock assistance to members to access health care, sick leave, unemployment benefits, COVID-19 support measures, and organised with the support of trade unions training courses to empower members to gain new skills.
International Journal of Integrative Humanism, 2021
It is true that entertainment enriches not just the body, but the soul and the spirit just as food nourishes the body. Theatre/film, music and sports entertainments have served over the centuries as vehicles that have built not only the society but humanity. With these variables, it is a pity to come to terms with the realities of the Covid19 pandemic which includes; serial lockdown, social distancing, wearing of the discomforting facemask and eventual death. This paper therefore examines the effects of Covid19 on the entertainment industry. It applies Cintya Lanchinba, Andrea Bonilla'-Bolanos and Juan Pablo Diaz-Sanchez the Microeconomic perspectives model which states that; the very nature of any containment strategy reduces economic activity so that aggregate supply (AS) and aggregate demand (AD) fall. Pay-cuts, review and termination of artiste contracts, reduction of supply and demand for the entertainment industry, hunger and eventual death are some of the findings of this paper. The paper therefore recommends that there should be adequate funding by the government, the multinationals, highly spirited individuals, and various entertainment guilds to researches especially, science related not just for curative but for futuristic preventions of pandemics.
Journal of Risk and Financial Management
The COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns across the world have greatly affected an already vulnerable cultural economy and the structural precarity of many cultural workers. After documenting the impacts of the pandemic in the cultural sector and the effectiveness of governmental responses in the UK and in Europe, the article focuses on the visual arts and explores calls for reforms of the cultural economy. While the UK government’s recovery plan went against the country’s cultural policy tradition due to the plan’s interventionist and financially generous nature, it disproportionally benefitted organisations rather than individuals working in the sector, especially in England. The study, conducted on visual arts workers in the UK, shows that many were unable to access these financial recovery schemes and fell through the cracks of the complex criteria set for these funds. This article informs the current debate on measures that are potentially more economically sustainable and w...