Tsioulakis, I., & FitzGibbon, A. (2020). Performing artists in the age of COVID-19: A moment of urgent action and potential change [Online]. QPOL, Queen’s Policy & Engagement.
In this special long read, Drs Ioannis Tsioulakis and Ali FitzGibbon take an indepth look at the devastating impact the COVID pandemic is having on the performing arts sector. Working populations across the world are seeing their livelihoods and careers collapse or transform overnight as a result of the global pandemic COVID-19 and the responses of individual governments. Cultural work and the focus of our contribution here – performing arts (music and theatre) – is affected more than many other occupations. This is because performing artists work in extremely precarious conditions, their careers and mental health have been made additionally vulnerable by prolonged austerity, and proposed solutions thus far are inadequate and based on misunderstandings. Both immediate action and a long-term approach are needed to ensure a critical workforce is not abandoned.
Our respective research over many years has studied music and theatre artists in the UK Ireland and Greece. In close collaboration with these performing practitioners, our work has shown that making a living from the creative industries is precarious and fragile, and those conditions were exacerbated in the last two decades by a series of global and domestic economic crises.
What we know is that the sudden and radical effect of COVID-19 on the lives of freelance performing artists is compounding dangerous levels of precarity in these occupations and, as a result, there are swifter, deeper and more serious consequences to policy inaction in the coming months and years. The existing crisis in performing arts is one of long-term precarity and insecurity, which has already generated widespread problems of inequality, lack of diversity, and poor mental health. What our contact with musicians and theatre makers in recent weeks has shown us is not only the fragility of the lives and livelihoods of these occupations but also the failure of governments and public agencies to understand the nature of this work or the gaps in existing support systems. Further, drawing on our ongoing research and conversations with performing artists in Ireland, UK and Greece, we believe policy responses announced to date betray problematic assumptions about how performing artists can or should be ‘productive’ in the midst of a global pandemic.