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.
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