It's not too late - VOTE NOW

My friend David recently (indirectly) set me right on an assumption that I’d been making.

I’ve been campaigning on the basis that everyone will do something with their ballot paper for Equity Council as soon as they receive it. I’ve been doing plenty of pre-election awareness-raising through conversations, local meetings, Facebook and Twitter activity. All intended to make sure people pay attention when their ballot paper drops through the post. I’d been working on the basis that members fall into two camps – those who’ll see the importance and act immediately, and those who just can’t be bothered and bin it.

I’d overlooked a third camp, and possibly a very key one: people who think it’s important, are planning to do something, but it just doesn’t get high enough up the priority list for anything to happen. Those members who do see the significance of Equity, but are also busy people and find it hard to give time to this. So, even though I’ve been thinking that the campaign is effectively now over, it’s still worth recognising that there are people out there with their ballot papers in their bags, pinned to the fridge or in that pile of post that isn’t demanding immediate attention.

If you’re one of those people, consider this. Right now it’s a booklet demanding a bit of your time to trawl through terse and cryptic statements, and a form that looks rather overwhelming. But over the next two years, this translates into how your views on the industry are represented, which of your concerns get most priority, resourcing and action. Even though it doesn’t seem urgent, it is important.

So find some time. Just an hour. Make a cuppa, turn off the TV and radio, sit down and focus. You’ll find it takes less time than you fear, and if you really do feel swamped, remember that (even though it’s preferable) you don’t have to use all your votes. Vote for the people who strike you as responsible guardians of your profession, share the same values, or have a track record of commitment and effective action. Set your own agenda, see whose pitch best supports what you want, and give them a good ticking.

Posted via email from Illusions and Reflections

90% and the big 'must-have'

During the course of campaigning for Equity Council, I’ve had several conversations, all of which seem to come down to a number: 9%.

That’s the percentage of members who turned out to vote in the last Council Elections. Last year’s elections for specialist and regional committees saw only a 6% turnout. And my local branch typically sees about 5% of the membership actually showing up regularly. All of them in the same ballpark, nothing reaching double figures, and all suggesting that over 90% of Equity members don’t feel a sense of engagement.

What can we do about this? Easy, we can spend time writing to them, phoning them up, throw a party or maybe pop round for a cup of tea and a chat. My branch often has a high-profile speaker that invariably brings a massively increased turnout. So it’s quite easy to get people interested or excited for a brief time. Then they mostly fade. It’s not really about giving people a great one-off initiative that’ll give them a quick buzz, it’s about offering them something in a way that makes for sustainable engagement.

You might wonder why I find this troublesome. Because if those 90% aren’t engaged, the union can’t properly operate on the basis of its members’ strength, those elected have a very weak mandate, and ultimately, there’s a stronger risk that the 90% might leave. More subjectively, but on first-hand judgement, rather than statistics, I find it worrying when many people I work with come over all pale and distant at any mention of ‘Equity’. These are professional performers, and if the union that’s meant to represent them gets that response, this tells me something just isn’t sitting right.

I believe that to address that, we have to start asking not “What?” but “Why?” Why do 90% of members regularly not feel engaged?

Is it because they feel Equity doesn’t have anything to offer them? Maybe  not, or more would have left. There are a number of member benefits, which may be useful or not, depending on your area of work, or indeed whether you’re working or not. Equity’s current thrust is away from being a provider of such services, but I don’t believe that in itself is of huge significance. Those services are useful, but they don’t offer the sort of weight to be a vital ‘must-have’ reason for being part of Equity. If you’re working in the West End, regional theatre or TV, Equity’s relevance is manifest in the working terms and conditions you benefit from. But how many people is that? Increasingly I find myself speculating that this too might be around that figure of 9%.

I’ve spoken with a number of colleagues, many of whom either pay their subs but aren’t terribly bothered (or indeed feel alienated) because they’re not working on Equity contract jobs, or others who have simply stopped paying their subs because they’re not getting Equity-contract work and therefore don’t feel part of the Equity ‘fold’. I could argue that there are all sorts of other services they’d get if they kept their membership, or give them a guilt-trip about their duty of solidarity and support for other actors. But the truth is, these services don’t feel like a persuasive argument in isolation, and we seem to have an individualistic culture where everyone feels so disempowered they’re hard pressed to look after their themselves, never mind supporting each other.

What I want to be able to say to people is something that really resonates with them, strikes at the heart of their sense of professional existence, and makes them feel that Equity is a deeply integral (and integrated) part of their working life, however much work they get, or whatever sort of work they do. I want to be able to articulate a ‘must-have’ quality that Equity represents for them.

I’ve been asking that question for a few years. It stemmed from hearing older members yearn for the days of the closed shop (which some still do), when Equity could afford to have restricted entry. I rarely heard those people say “and that gave us a great sense of collective power”: the message I heard was usually that the closed shop let Equity cater to a self-interest of protecting work for its members, but that was a tremendous ‘must-have’ reason for being a member.

We have moved on, but can we create a similar sense of Equity’s worth, while being a mass-membership union? I’d like to think so. I don’t necessarily know how, but suspect it does lie in the territory of creating value. Brand value if you will. If Apple can have half the population sticking iPods to their ears and still feeling special about that, surely we can achieve something similar. It’s about Equity tapping into a sense of aspiration and emotional engagement and having members feel that Equity membership is part of delivering on those aspirations. It’s not necessarily about giving them something individually (like services), but if Equity can achieve a position of respect, status and authority in the industry, this will be reflected on its members, and their sense of the value of membership.

Another possibility is that those 90% just need to see some evidence that Equity speaks in terms that make sense to them. Certainly we should celebrating the successful negotiation of an improved agreement, but let’s not get carried away in thinking everyone will celebrate. Those who see such jobs as a distant hope might – understandably – feel underwhelmed, and possibly even more resentful. It may be a question of working out what a union can meaningfully deliver to the 90%, but the first stage is surely to start listening to – and hearing – them.

A further route might be to piggy-back the Big Society. I find myself cringing at this, and have been very sceptical of the pre-election proposal to put vital national services into the hands of well-meaning amateurs. But – and this depends massively on how Big Society plays out – if it does manage to create a greater sense of social responsibility and civic engagement, that could itself do a lot of the work for us. If the coalition government can actually create a society (assuming they acknowledge the existence of such a thing), where social contribution is prized more highly than individual achievement, not only would that help give status to Equity, but especially credit those who give their time in active service of their community.

So, the Gwyndaf challenge to you is this: what’s the big ‘must-have?’ It’s a precious and elusive thing, and I need your help in finding it.

Posted via email from Illusions and Reflections

Unpacking the election statement

You may be reading this because you read my election statement and want to know what this really means. Council candidates get only 150 words in which to make a statement, and that doesn’t seem enough to explain my position on many issues, identify the issues that aren’t on the agenda, or document the work I’ve done for performers – individually and collectively – over the years.

So we have this blog. This article specifically addresses and explains what those tightly-compressed 150 words represent. But read the other blog items, and you’ll see many of these areas explored in greater detail.

So, here we go...

1. The Opening Salvo and Philosophical Position

“Performers are increasingly empowered to create and promote their own work”

Just a single area of work, among many, but a growing one, and one that provides a useful focus. It raises a lot of issues, such as employment/self-employment, the employer/employee relationship (and whether this is always clear-cut) , the role of performers as creative artists, and the apparently increasing sense of empowerment amongst many performers. That is, rather than passively waiting for ‘the employers’ to phone them up, they’re getting active and getting their acts together to make themselves more visible. Which in turn raises the issue of performers’ marketing themselves (or their work) and thinking in terms of the longer-term ‘career’ game, rather than simply the ‘job. I’m quite clear that I would like to see performers feel much more able to develop a grown-up business relationship with those who want their work, and can have an intelligent conversation about terms of working, money etc. There’s a philosophical question of whether this sort of individual empowerment might conflict with the traditional union aims of collective empowerment, but I believe both approaches are necessary. There are small-scale, and rapidly-changing areas where Equity would be hard-pressed (whether by resourcing or sheer size and slowness) to engage with the whole territory, and this is where it’s useful that performers feel able to stand up for themselves.

“as traditional productions diminish and new spaces and media offer greater access. “

This isn’t the death of theatre and film production as we know it. But innovation in these sectors is increasingly coming from small players. Digital media mean that it’s far easier and cheaper than before to make a film and get it distributed. This rarely fits with traditional business models, and money made on the Web often involves a complex process, but which is very often about marketing and increasing visibility, than direct charging. And this also has an impact on theatre: a bunch of performers can form a company, find a space and shamelessly plug the venture through Facebook or Myspace and have access to the same sort of promotional muscle that was previously available only to big producers.

“This is not new: variety artists have long created their own work, and we need to nurture and harness this experience.”

The more I talked about this idea with people, the more I realised that the idea of performers creating and promoting their work seemed similar to the business model of variety artists than traditionally employed actors. I have a huge respect for variety artists and, though I don’t have an intricate knowledge of that area of work, it does strike me that there are similar patterns. And with the emergence of comedy, magic and burlesque, we seem to be seeing a resurgence of variety work, even if it’s not taking place in the traditional venues. So, we’ve got the knowledge and experience, but maybe need to be more joined-up in our thinking to exploit the expertise that’s there but risks being lost between traditional categories of work.

“Big organisations and slow processes are losing out to agile newcomers”

Equity has traditionally worked on the basis that big organisations talk to big organisations. So, we’ll talk with the TMA and ITC, PACT and the BBC, but ‘house’ agreements are the exception, and often a transitional step to bring those employers into the mainstream agreements. But theatres are closing and the British film industry is...where? I don’t believe that audiences have totally lost interest, but are often finding their entertainment in new and non-institutionalised forms. This needs acknowledging and discussing. I don’t believe it’s feasible to try chasing after all these, which could be fleeting ventures, but we can help our members feel empowered and equipped to navigate this territory.

“– performers included –”

As already mentioned, a performer who wants to advance their career can create their own vehicle, to get their work out there and seen. The rewards may be financial, or they may be more subtle, such as visibility or creative reputation.

“and Equity must consider how to recognise and respond to this changing climate and members’ working reality if it is to remain relevant in the industry and serve members’ needs in ways that allow them to flourish.”

Really a couple of points packed in here. One is to recognise the industry as it is now; the other is to speak in terms that resonate with members. But they come together in that individual members are in closer touch with what’s happening ‘out there’, so if you serve one you serve the other. And I use the term ‘working reality’ because it’s not just about jobs in the industry: it’s about the fact that many members are not passive ‘between jobs’, but working hard either to earn an income or develop their careers (or indeed having to find time for both). To talk exclusively as ‘work’ as involving properly Equity-contracted jobs runs the risk of alienating many members.

This isn’t a ‘what do we do?’ question. It’s not necessarily about ‘hard’ action, but the more subtle area of information, interaction and communication: what does Equity think its members are up to, how they feel about it, and how do they respond to that? This is to say that a lot of performers get frustrated with an industry where there’s precious little work. Our focus has traditionally being on what action is needed on an issue, when that’s not always what’s needed. Sometimes it’s simply enough that we show ourselves to have heard and acknowledged performers’ issues.

2. The Credentials

“Independent”

Standing without the backing, or agenda, of any existing campaigning group. What concerns me are various issues that have barely got on the discussion table, so it’s far too early to be able to even have a ‘party position’ on these.

“Articulate and tenacious”

Quite subjective, of course, as is anyone who says they represent you, or represents members. I do believe that clarity of expression reflects clarity of thought, and that single-line slogans can be a dangerous over-simplification, so this blog aims to explore many of these issues in more detail. And, as an actor, if I don’t have an understanding and command of language, I’m in big trouble. Tenacious: subjective again. There are people in Equity who’ve been campaigning on the same topic for very many years. But more to the point, it means I’ve had enough experience with the practicalities of Equity’s democratic processes to know that the quick flash of a great idea needs long, slow, hard work to make it a reality.

“Working as an actor”

Yes, I work. A respectable amount, but not quite as much as I’d like. But I think this puts me in touch with the situation of very many members. In chairing my branch I’ve been adamant that members’ work has to come first, even if it means missing meetings or not being able to help out. It’s vital for credibility that those involved in Equity are seen to be actively involved in the industry as it is today.

“and creator of diverse mixed-media projects.”

Also making my own work, whether in film, sound or live art, alongside a wide range of practitioners. This means I have to hop between different disciplines of performing, design (visual, tactile or sonic), technical and promotional. But this also means I can (indeed have to) talk with other specialists in an intelligent peer-to-peer fashion.

“Ten years in Equity after ten years in corporate management and digital media.”

A drop in the ocean by the experience of many performers, but certainly enough to have a mature understanding of Equity and the industry more generally. And yes, I’ve worked in corporate environments where I have to take responsibility for other people, what gets done, how to do it, and how to solve problems and overcome obstacles that get in the way. And I first used the Web in the early 1990s, was involved in early web design, and helping others get used to new media.

“Currently Chair (and formerly Treasurer), W&SW London Branch.”

Matters of record. Members of my branch can comment better on this. All I can say is that I’m acutely aware of the responsibilities that come with being chair, to be impartial and ensure everyone in the branch gets an equal hearing. More generally, that this is a job or role, which has to be taken seriously while I’m doing it. It’s a different responsibility from that I have working as an actor, or in my personal life. And it’s different again to that which I’d expect to take on while sitting on Equity Council.

“Proposed using email for Equity branch communication in 2003: achieved in 2009...”

This was put in front of Equity Council in 2003, asking that branches be able to email all their members, cutting thousands off the cost of a newsletter mailout. While it’s always been feasible to collect email addresses ad hoc from people who turn up at meetings, that’s only 5% of the membership, and I’ve always felt it’s important to engage those who can’t come to meetings. Credit is also due to the East Midlands Variety Branch for getting this passed at the 2009 ARC, which has now led to measures being put in place to ensure that practical skills and data protection compliance are in place to make this happen.

“Make your vote count.”

Seriously, 9% of members voted in the last Council Election. Just vote: I’d prefer it’s for me, but if you don’t vote, we’ll be in a position where Equity is governed by people – whoever they are – who don’t have the backing of most members. Who do you want to speak for you?

“equity.gwyndaf.com”

This should be self-explanatory if you’ve found this blog.

I’m personally very aware of the merits of the internet for effective and efficient communication and engagement. Simply by using it in an up-to-date and sophisticated (rather than complicated) fashion demonstrates that Equity is in touch with how people are increasingly working. However, with my ‘branch chair’ hat on, I have had to recognise that we can’t disenfranchise members by relying totally on the medium. This industry has been slower than most in seeing the potential, but we’re getting there slowly. There’s huge potential, but we need to maintain inclusivity.

Posted via email from Illusions and Reflections