Getting recreation and leisure up and running again.

We don't know for a fact that there will be a money package involved. Its fine to keep up the pressure in the media to make sure there is.

If the ‘grants and loans’ cover ‘millions’, I’m not sure we can dismiss it as pathetic?

And do my eyes deceive me, or does the line at the bottom of that article suggest Quentin Letts is doing something positive for theatre? *faints* ;-)

This could be a game changer for when theatres do reopen though!

I agree. It is infuriating that they are essentially considering free money to everybody EXCEPT those who actually work in the arts and need it now. It's like they're taunting them at this stage. And where will we spend all this money if there are no venues left in which to use them? No staff?

There have been plenty of online concerts and a few theatre productions if you have looked for them.

But all of that takes resources and equipment which many performers won't have lying around at home and are not going to be able to afford given they don't know when they are going to have steady work again. Don't be so quick to judge.

That rather depends on whether what is offered is sufficient to prevent companies from going to the wall.

And it has to be viewed, as well, in the context of an ongoing government spending programme which is pouring billions of pounds in to an exercise - Brexit - which will make us all poorer, which strips established rights from every single UK citizen, and which will make it more difficult for us to trade goods and services with our closest neighbours. I suspect that for THIS government, flushing billions down the toilet on an ideologially-driven suicide mission is going to be a higher priority than bailing out a sector which pumps billions into the economy, supports thousands and thousands of jobs, and attracts visitors from all over the world.

Industry leaders and tens of thousands of ordinary people working in theatre have been speaking out, and putting forward very coherent, coordinated "challenges" (consistent talking points, detailed financial explanations, coordinated press and PR campaigns) since day one.

Few people outside of the industry are listening. The arts are not considered high priority, and there are also serious issues with who gets to have their voice heard. With a few exceptions like those named above, most people in theatre who are active in these campaigns do not have the 'pull' to draw mainstream media attention. Two of my close friends and colleagues are both industry leaders. Both have worked non-stop for months on the campaign to save theatre, have undergone training in policy-making and economics to be better educated when in discussion with the cabinet and the Treasury, are regularly attending meetings with the DCMS, and trying to coordinate things with the various major taskforces. One is a white man and the other is a black woman. Guess which one has been invited to go on all the major political and news TV shows and to write thinkpieces for broadsheets, and which one got a single article in an arts publication which they had to share with five other BIPOC artists? And that's the top end. People no one on this board have ever heard of have emerged as leaders of the arts community, but there's only so much you can do if no one is listening.

I wonder if other shows or theatres will be willing to be part of pilot productions to work out how to make theatre safe aside from The Mousetrap and Sleepless? I wouldn't be surprised if the Palladium is used for a trial run should the tests be successful, if they don't want to trial a paid performance, a TV show recording like Michael McIntyre's Big Show might be an option.

Doesn't make it any more justifiable. The fact that a majority of people voted for it doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. It simply means a majority of people are gullible enough that they can be persuaded to vote against their best interests.




Why not? After a vote which asked a binary question with several ways forward possible after a vote to leave the EU, the Tories have consistently hewn to the stupidest, most damaging, most expensively wasteful way forward, and have also chosen, in the middle of a global pandemic, not to extend the transition period, so that this country's businesses will have to deal with a double economic hit.

Of course the Tories can be blamed for it. Without Tory back-benchers making a fuss about something that, at the time, almost nobody else cared about, Cameron would not have promised a referendum. A Tory PM chose to pull us out of the single market and the customs union. Another Tory PM signed a deal which puts a border in the Irish Sea and then chose not to extend the transition period even though we don't have infrastructure in place to handle the checks that deal makes necessary. Who else should I blame? This mess originated with the Tories, and they've spent the last four years doing everything they can to make a bad situation worse.

And in THIS context, when we're looking at how much money may be needed to stop our entire cultural sector sliding into insolvency before it becomes safe for them to reopen, I'm afraid it's sickening - at least, to anyone with a conscience - to see the government dragging their heels over pumping money into saving jobs and companies when they've been spending hand over fist on an exercise which will put people out of work. It's disgusting, and the fact that a majority of constituencies (though NOT a majority in percentage terms) voted for it doesn't make it any less so.

Oh, I totally believe good work is going on behind the scenes - that’s why we’re hearing talk of an announcement next week. I was referring to the tedious repetitive tweets that seem to be posted merely to rile people up or encourage them to slide deeper into despondency. It honestly is pushing me closer towards quitting Twitter. And that’s a sad thing to have to say about the arts community.

People are doing all of those things. Just because you don’t know about them doesn’t mean they don’t exist. A better question is to ask why you haven’t seen media coverage of them, or why the coverage is slanted to portray the arts community as whinging about the Tories.



Take your example of the latest viral hashtag (not sure why you describe people who have lost their jobs/careers and are scared for the future of their industry using Twitter to gain attention as a “wheeze”). Plenty of people have done exactly what you are asking for, but those kinds of posts/tweets/articles do not go viral in the way a photo challenge does. The intention of that particular photo challenge was to show how many thousands of ordinary people work in theatre, to try to combat the false belief that theatre is only for and by a tiny handful of the elite.