Open space for Equity?

I’ve been aware for a long time that many members raise concerns at Equity branches because it’s important to them that they are heard. Sometimes, that leads to a wider discussion, which can be useful in helping clarify the issue. Sometimes, action needs to be taken: it may be something we can do locally, or it may be something we can put to Equity Council to for broader action. That is how the democratic process works: it can be quite slow and formal, and often gets more so the nearer it gets to practical action, but it can get done.

However, very few performers bother to turn up. I could easily argue that democracy belongs to those who come forward to be counted, they’ve had their chance, and leave it at that. But I believe that would be wrong.

I’m aware of a large, possibly growing, number of actors who feel that their professional world is miles away from the one represented by what Equity does. They’re angry and frustrated, and it’s not because of what they’re getting paid in the West End, subsidised repertory theatres or the BBC. That’s not why they’re angry, but it is why they think Equity is irrelevant to them. Superficially, they might be angry because they’re being asked to work for nothing, getting no work, or being given a tiny dressing room shared with a keg of Heineken. But I sense that there’s a deeper story.

Dickens’ Bleak House is about lots of things, but the two main themes are the stench of the effluent Thames and the slow, plodding nature of the legal process. They create an engaging urban mix, but there’s more to it. Check the publication dates of the novel’s instalments, and check the dates of reports on the hideous state of London’s sanitation at the time, and you’ll discover that this was known well before Bleak House was published. It wasn’t a response to poor sanitation, but to the fact that this issue had already been identified, acknowledged as a problem, and still nothing was being done. What I hear around me is a very similar sense of frustration. It’s not about the surface issue, but a deeper concern that voices are complaining and don’t feel they’re being heard.

So, perhaps it’s not enough to say “you’ve had your chance to show up and share these views”. Perhaps we need to do more than impose on members a particular way of working and think about a process that’s more responsive to their needs. More than that: one that is experienced by them as more responsive to their needs. Not just heard, but also fed back as having been heard.

Before my time, Equity had Annual General Meetings. I’ve heard all sorts of stories, and they sound like utter chaos, with the loudest, most aggressive voices being heard and very little actually getting decided or done. But I’ve also heard ordinary members calling to have them back, and have wondered why this is. Although there may have been the excitement and frisson about watching our leading players battle it out over policy, I increasingly suspect the main reason is that every ordinary member had a chance to turn up (still necessary) and feel their voice could get heard.

At the weekend, I attended an Annual Representative Conference where the debate was more clear, intelligent and respectful than any other I’d been to, and really would not wish for a macho free-for-all where the debate belongs to those who make most noise.

What I also experienced was Equity’s tentative steps into open space discussion sessions. I’ve encountered this format before, at Improbable’s Devoted & Disgruntled events, both annually and monthly. It’s a very good approach for exploring those elusive issues that rattle around in one’s mind without achieving any clarity or focus. By throwing these out into a supportive, open forum, a few minds in conversation can often help shape the issue into something clearer and better articulated. This is the key thing: it’s about a lot of small-scale conversations, rather than a whole room in debate. The bigger a discussion gets, the more simplistic you have to be to get your point across, and the more likely the subtleties are to get lost in the cracks. It’s also got an open agenda: there is no agenda, and what gets discussed is what the people turning up (yes, you still have to turn up) want to discuss, along with anyone else who wants to discuss it. Sometimes that’s no-one, sometimes it’s half the room.

But, as well as offering a useful tool for national-level discussion, this might also offer Equity a way of giving members more broadly a chance of feeling they’re being heard. There might be twenty or thirty people at a branch meeting, but I’ve seen over a hundred at London-wide annual meetings, with much more vociferous debate. Perhaps a series of annual, regional, open space meetings would offer members a chance of talking about (rather than debating) their concerns, have these heard, and give Equity a chance to tap into what people want to talk about.

There may be another dimension to this as well. Gender stereotypes might have it that men are better at ‘doing’ and women are better at ‘communicating’. I know plenty of men who listen very well, and women who get stuff done, but – if we accept that this generalisation has some broad truth – perhaps this offers a more feminised model of discussion. Despite having a fairly even balance of sexes in the profession, this isn’t reflected in Equity’s decision-making Council, and I wonder whether one reason is that there’s something rather masculine about battling for a particular point of view in a public arena, rather than sitting down and having a quiet word, or about focusing on “what do we do” rather than “can we talk about this”. Contentious ground, I’m sure, and a suggestion that potentially challenges a whole established democratic process. So, I’m especially interested to hear views on this.

It seems clear that we need to shift the ground toward listening more to people, and showing that. But whichever way it happens, they still need to turn up.

Posted via email from Illusions and Reflections

Change gonna come...

Just over ten years ago I was running a digital media centre: the first in South London to my knowledge. Tucked away in the basement of The Studio, a great little arts centre on the fringes of Bromley (politically and culturally, as well as geographically) in Beckenham.

We provided facilities and training to the local community: the curious general public, artists wanting to explore this new medium, professional print designers eager to satisfy their clients’ demand for ‘something interactive’, and filmmakers with loads of great footage (mostly Hi8) but no money and a lot of patience. We had a great programme of classes and open studio access, and facilities worth about £50,000, all geared up to bring together the skills required to create interactive CD-ROMs.

Six months later the Web took off.

This meant that a lot of our courses and equipment for creating CD-ROMs became redundant. But we could adapt. Web design needed less gear than interactive CD-ROMs, all of which we had. And we found new tutors, so it wasn’t a huge shift to start running courses that met the sudden surge of interest in the internet, email and the web.

Ancient history. So what?

·         In 2003, MySpace was launched, giving artists an easy way of building a fan base without relying on big companies as gatekeepers to their public.

·         YouTube was launched in 2005. Distribution – often cited as the reason so few British films get seen – was suddenly available to anyone, filming on anything from a mobile phone upward.

·         The Red One camera was released in 2007, giving digital a quality suitable for high-end filming and cutting production costs, or increasing the quality of low-budget films.

·         The iPhone was released in 2007, bringing video to the palm of your hand.

·         And the BBC iPlayer was also released in 2007, giving wider access to their programming.

There’s a very handy timeline that illustrates very clearly the increasing rate of change in the media: http://www.cemp.ismysite.co.uk/timelines/media/

It’s not just about technology changing how the work is done. It’s also changing the way the industry works, how it’s structured and where the power lies. A band can record an album, get the music heard, build up a following and sell tracks online for less than an A&R man’s drinks budget.

Not only that, but the internet is changing how money is made. The music industry of the late twentieth century was built on sales of recordings; they’ve struggled to get to grips with online sales, and have finally wrapped their heads around that. But the effect of bands using MySpace is not about making money from selling recordings: it’s about gaining visibility. The most radical consequence of the internet is – ironically – that more money is being spent on live music.

This demonstrates the broader change that the web has brought about: a lot is given away ‘for free’. It was not always thus: in the early days of the web, many publishers stuck to their existing business model of selling information, with a paid subscription to their sites. But the web had grown through collaborative information sharing and no-one wanted to pay when the same information was free elsewhere. The slow giants got caught on the hop.

What happened was that ‘business’ changed. Today’s ‘free’ is tomorrow’s ‘market share’. Or a means of selling something else through advertising, which is now reflected back in free newspapers driven by advertising and spurious sponsored surveys. It’s no longer as simple as making something and having someone pay for it: rightly or wrongly the speed of the internet has – ironically again – made money-making a much longer game.

This is what we need to stay on top of. Not simply working out how iPlayer distribution affects performers’ rights, but recognising that this change is constant, and getting faster. And it’s rarely driven by the big industry players we’re used to dealing with. It’s increasingly driven from the ground up, and that groundswell is increasingly coming from performers themselves.

Posted via email from Illusions and Reflections

Which restaurant?

Most discussion of performers’ work focuses on what happens in the rehearsal room, on stage or on set. Given that very few performers get to do this work solidly, it begs the question of what happens in between.

Firstly, there’s the work that happens in other sectors, such as temping, bar or restaurant work, to provide food and shelter. In 2005, nearly half of performers earned under £6,000 from performance work (Skillset Workforce Survey 2005), while working full-time on minimum wage would bring in about £10,000. The same survey reports the average number of weeks worked in performance as 18, while weeks worked in other industries was 28. That is, the research seems to support many performers’ personal experience that pursuing a career in this industry requires some sort of sideline income.

Secondly, there’s what many businesses would describe as ‘non-core’ activities, such as administration, finance, marketing or training. All those things that have to be done because the work is a business, not a hobby. Withnail is a thing of the past, a romantic notion of eloquent squalor, full of glorious sound and fury, but actors are increasingly taking responsibility for their own careers. As well as rehearsal or shooting, on top of the bar job, there’s also that ongoing undercurrent of classes, letter-writing, getting out to shows or simply maintaining visibility and networking. To say ‘I am an actor’ means less complaining about the dearth of work or ineptitude of the agent, and more working out what it’s within one’s power to do, and doing it. In professional terms, the state of being a performer is as much about this ongoing activity as the doing of the work itself.

This raises some questions for Equity. Historically, trade unions have served an industrial relations model of employers, who have money but need labour, and employees, who offer skills in exchange for money. But that model (Unison, GMB, and most other unions) is usually built on a regular employment pattern. In this industry, the ‘employment’ portion of work is only part of the picture. Ongoing development, promotion and so forth fall to the individual performer to deal with in their own time. This is not leisure time: it’s an essential part of being a professional, but it’s the professionalism of the self-employed.

Equity has long campaigned for actors to have the status of employees. And rightly so. By the measure of “are you selling your time, or a product/service?”, it’s very much the former. No professional can turn up to rehearsal when they want and give their Hamlet as they fancy. A company of people working together towards a common goal, under someone else’s direction, argues clearly that this meets the criteria against which ‘employment’ is judged. But this applies to only a fraction of performers’ working lives.

If Equity is to appear relevant to its members, it’s important to recognise those things that performers do when they’re not actually performing, rather than simply treating them as ‘out of work’. Some may say “we’re a trade union: we don’t do that”, but it’s not purely about what we do, it’s about acknowledging the complex picture of members’ working lives. I’ve learnt over many years working for my local branch that it’s not just about action: a lot of people simply need to have their circumstances heard and understood. Whether this demands specific action is another question, but for a profession that’s about communication, we need to realise that acting isn’t just about talking, it’s about listening.

Posted via email from Illusions and Reflections

BAPAM. Who?

At my last branch meeting, it was clear that there are a lot of performers who still don’t know about BAPAM, even though Equity gives money to support them and they do a great job.

BAPAM stands for British Association for Performing Arts Medicine. They were previously called the British Performing Arts Medicine Trust, but BPAMT isn’t quite such a punchy acronym. There’s no sense me repeating what they do: go to their website and have a read.

What I can say is that I’ve experienced what they do, and it’s refreshing to be able to talk with someone who understands performers’ concerns and priorities. In my case, an iffy shoulder from a badly-judged fall works perfectly well, but makes itself felt slightly more than the rest of my body, so I don’t feel totally anatomically ‘balanced’. Try telling that to many a GP.

Nor are they confined to physical health: they also provide psychological services. Stress and depression are increasingly being recognised and discussed in the mainstream, but BAPAM recognise how this can be a particularly stressful industry in which to work. They also recognise that the work often draws on a range of mental and emotional resources, as well as the physical, so can help ensure a fully-rounded sense of being ‘fit for work’.

So, that’s BAPAM. If you don’t need them now, you might in future: www.bapam.org.uk

Posted via email from Illusions and Reflections

The fringe and beyond

There’s a lot of discussion going on right about the low/no pay issue and ‘the fringe’ in theatre.

So, to wade in with my two-pennyworth...

There's a great danger in this debate of treating 'the fringe' as a tight, homogeneous group, when in practice it ranges from actors putting on their own plays, and projects that are innovative but unfunded, to companies that have been 'fringe' for many years, whether by design or circumstance.

To give this some history and context, the 'fringe' of the 60s and 70s seems to have been where a lot of innovative work got done. There was also a lot more public money around. So it was 'fringe' in an artistic sense, rather than financially. And many of those involved had a more cohesive agenda, like many radical artistic movements. People could afford to work on the fringe, had something to say, and that’s what they did.

From what I hear within Equity, a lot of discussion still treats 'the fringe' as having that ideological position. From what I hear down the pub, talking with colleagues, ‘fringe' is what you do if you don’t have a proper job in prospect. It's basically the theatre that doesn't fit into any of the existing Equity agreement 'slots'. Those agreements are normally the result of negotiating with a particular group of employers (i.e. theatre companies). So ‘the fringe’ is essentially defined by what it’s not.

Nor is it static. I know few people involved in 'the fringe' today who regard it as an end in itself (but that depends whether your idea of ‘fringe’ includes children’s theatre, community projects and TIE). The actors and directors I know are after exposure leading to a paid job, the writers are hoping for a decent commission, the producers hope it'll get them some funding or backing. Which many of them get. And so it goes.

People who were on the fringe ten years ago are now working in the mainstream industry: Tom Morris (BAC to Bristol Old Vic), Erica Whyman (Southwark Playhouse to Northern Stage), Dominic Dromgoole (Bush to Globe). I realise there are no actors or ‘jobbing’ directors in this list: in the arts, administrators tend to have permanent jobs with clearer career paths, while ‘creatives’ work on a project-to-project basis, so many performers’ career paths comprise a mix of fringe and mainstream work. The balance may change, and for many the aim is that it tends towards the mainstream. But some fringe projects may still be worthy of involvement: my most notable example of this was seeing Equity stalwart Miriam Karlin in Many Roads to Paradise at the Finborough a couple of years ago.

The point is, it's a dynamic, subtle and rapidly-changing picture. That’s what creativity, innovation and small-scale activity does for an industry. We don’t need to ‘deal with the fringe’: there’s scarce clear agreement even on what it is. It’s not enough that Equity gets a closer grasp of the breadth and nuances involved in the sort of work its members do, why they do it and why the projects happen in the first place. We also need to keep close to the pulse. No sense picking up Time Out and doing deals with all the companies listed there: most of them will be gone in five years. We need to get sensitive and responsive to the ephemeral texture of today’s industry.

Posted via email from Illusions and Reflections

Arts Jobs listing amateur projects

My attention was drawn to a listing on the Arts Jobs site (run by the Arts Council) for unpaid roles in the Henry IVs at http://www.artsjobs.org.uk/arts-job/post/actors-unpaid-henry-iv-parts-1-and-2/

I’ve looked into this, and it seems quite clear that the company is an amateur/community company, whose constitution requires that auditions are open to the general public. From the point of view of their community, it could be a concern that they’re not being open in their selection policy, as their constitution requires. They may have advertised more widely; their local community may indeed be fully aware of opportunities for the general public to get more familiar with Shakespeare. This is a good thing, but it’s not really relevant to the profession (save that we might be hired to act in an educational or advisory capacity).

I don’t believe this is some fly-by-night dodgy employer, but an over-eager group that isn’t especially well-informed. Partly this is based on the evidence; partly my own belief that bad stuff usually comes down to incompetence rather than malice. Call me cynical, but I’ll usually err on the side of ‘cock-up’ rather than ‘conspiracy’: it’s much less fun, but usually more effective at dealing with problems.

So who should help inform the uninformed? The Arts Council? Equity? Both are authoritative institutions in the professional arts world. But the Arts Council also has a specific brief that covers community engagement with the arts. So I got in touch with them:

“A number of colleagues have expressed concern that this posting appears to be in breach of your terms and conditions for posting, that jobs meet the relevant employment law.

Although unpaid, there is no explanation of how this satisfies conditions for exemption from the National Minimum Wage.

Additionally, the company’s own terms establish it as a community organisation, open to all, so posting selectively in a professional forum such as Arts Jobs appears to be disenfranchising the community the project aims to serve.

I am aware of growing concerns amongst actors of unpaid work being advertised. As Arts Jobs has a clearly constituted policy on legal employment, I would be very grateful to hear how you interpret this policy in respect of work that is unpaid.

Kind regards,
Alyn Gwyndaf”

I await their response. Watch this space...

Posted via email from Illusions and Reflections

I've started a blog...

I realise that blogging convention has it that one’s first post really ought to be a self-referential reflection to the effect of ‘I’ve started a blog’, and why.

OK, then. I’ve started a blog.

Why? Mostly because I’m not too good at ‘doing myself’ in short sound-bites but, since I’m standing for Equity Council, feel I ought to give an idea of where I‘m coming from. But why should I want to give an idea of my self, rather than espousing a particular set of policies?

Well, this isn’t a parliamentary election, so it’s not a case of a party offering to get specific things done, and it would be futile and false for me to make such promises. What I can do is give an idea of where I’m coming from, what concerns me and what I care about. These aren’t always simple positions so much as complex discussions. But that is, I suppose, what I want to get on the agenda.

Much of Equity’s decision-making structure is based in an essentially adversarial system, like parliament. A specific proposition is advanced, and people line up and speak for or against it. Where there is a clear and tangible issue, it’s an effective way of getting to a clear decision that represents the majority view. But it doesn’t lend itself well to exploring areas that are more complex and need to be thought through thoroughly before a specific course of action can even be proposed.

Many age-old issues, such as pay and working conditions, have been debated widely, and the options are often clear. However, we are in a time of rapid change, where the very shape of the industry is shifting. Often this stems from new technologies, but the debate is not about the technology itself: it’s about how, for example, digital cameras and non-linear computer editing mean that smaller players can enter the film market, so the balance of power shifts away from the traditional industrial monoliths to smaller and more agile players.

Hence the blog. It’s a way of exploring topics that I believe are relevant, and need to be opened up for discussion, but are too complex or subtle to leap straight into a particular proposition. An example is that of low/no pay work, which seems quite clear-cut if we’re looking at employers who have substantial production budgets, but starts to get rather more murky once we start talking about performers getting together to create their own work, with an aim of profile-raising rather than immediate financial gain.

These are topics to which there are no simple answers. At this stage. But they do need to be put on the agenda and, above all, acknowledged if Equity is to appear relevant to those members who have first-hand experience of the industry as it’s currently shaping up.

Posted via email from Illusions and Reflections

Standing for Equity Council

So, I’ve got myself nominated and am now on the campaign trail to garner support, and indeed to just encourage people to vote.

Why stand? Broadly speaking, because I think it’s a way in which I can usefully help my community. I’ve been involved in running my local branch for a few years, and chairing it for the last two. Although it’s a very active branch, I’m also aware that I know a lot of people who don’t come along to meetings, so their views don’t get a look in. More broadly, they often don’t seem to get a look in on Equity’s overall agenda. So I thought it might be useful if I could speak for them.

Who are these people? Not those who have a high profile, a steady stream of work on Equity-approved contracts, or work with big, well-known companies. They have some work in fringe theatre or low-budget films, often having to work at the same time in another job. Developing a career and earning an income end up being quite separate, and demand twice as much time. Or they have a job that’s properly-paid, but lasts two or three months and they then have to revert to bar or temping work to keep them going until the next acting job. Some have taken control of their careers and put on their own shows, essentially becoming producers, but at the same time still regarding themselves primarily as performers.

That is, for many performers, ‘work’ is now a very mixed bag of rapidly-switching activities. Some fall within Equity’s scope, some don’t. Equity’s definition of ‘professional’ is essentially one of being paid for performing work. That puts a lot of fringe and low-budget work outside Equity’s purview, even though this is the reality of many people’s working lives.

This is not ‘case closed’: there is a choice. Equity does sterling work on agreements for major stage, film and TV employers, but how many members are directly served by these? This is not a rhetorical question: I would genuinely like to see figures on how many members are employed, for what period of time in a year, on agreed Equity contracts. For those who don’t benefit from these contracts (or those who might for two weeks, and don’t for fifty), I believe it’s important that Equity tunes in to the needs of those members in order that its services can serve the broadest membership.

This is happening, slowly. The low/no pay issue is coming onto the Equity agenda. Precisely where this leads is as yet unknown, but it is at least being picked up and discussed. We can’t afford to alienate members by ignoring areas where they might spend the bulk of their professional time. What follows from those discussions is anyone’s guess, but the most important thing is first to get them on the table, so members don’t feel their concerns are taboo, and will at least get a fair hearing.

Posted via email from Illusions and Reflections