Dear Oliver
I watched your press conference today with real interest and genuine concern. I do not envy the position you find yourself in and I thank you for all the work you are doing on our sectors behalf.
These are unprecedented times. In my industry (theatre) we are losing skilled freelancers by the day, and established organisations by the week. Seemingly every new week brings the news that what was our worst-case scenario has become our best. No wonder then The Guardian has printed an editorial today that.theatre is on the brink whilst James Dacre (AD at Northampton Theatres) writes in The Times ‘My theatre is in financial intensive care’.
So hurrah for a task force that will consider how the industry will and can survive. How it will find creative, crowd-free ways to navigate coronavirus.
Your task group is hugely talented.
It’s also old (average age 55 ish I guess), predominantly London and feels very big institution focused.
Every week I have the privilege of spending a day working with the producers of the future at East 15 (the Southend Campus of the University of Essex). Each week we are joined by an industry leader who the student’s question. Each week one of the team asks ‘is theatre dead’.
The real answer to that question…post Covid19…sits not with those industry leaders, nor I’m afraid with your task force (as brilliant as they are). It sits with them.
Our future rests with the artists, the producers and the innovators of tomorrow. It reflects the diversity of the world we live in. It’s both dangerous and really exciting. It will thrive on the challenge of a post Covid world. It will build on the successes of previous years but bring utterly fresh thinking. It will creatively lead us through our recovery.
The new normal will come from the innovators of tomorrow and not of today.
I agree we need a task group to imagine our way through this pandemic. You will gain much from your current task group I’m sure…but if there’s are the voices that shape our post Covid creative world we will have failed not only today’s audiences but tomorrows too,
You need another task group to imagine the future.
Yours sincerely
Matthew Linley
Freelance Producer
PS – if nothing else why dont the task group join my students on a Tuesday to explore the future together? Our zoom invite is open!