FREELANCERS MAKE THEATRE WORK MEETING: FRIDAY 27th AUGUST
Chair: Peter McKintosh
Minutes: Josie Underwood
Present: Peter McKintosh, Josie Underwood, Jake Orr, Mimi Doulton, Emma Jayne Park, Paule Constable, Alistair Cope, Vicki Mortimer, Sunita Hinduja, Leo Wan
Apologies: Paul Carey Jones, Ben Arkell, Susan Kempster, Bill Bankes-Jones
Updates and reports
- Updates & reports: (9.35-9.45)
How we begin to implement an Oops and Ouch method that was suggested by Sunita at the away day as a way to talk about moments of harm. The mechanisms on Zoom are slightly different to a real life meeting.
SH – There is a difference between Opps and Ouch. Document to be put on slack that explains a little more, then we can talk about it again with more clarity at next week’s meeting.
ACTION POINT: SH to put oops and ouch doc on slack
BAC update / call out
EJ – BAC Project is flowing in a way that works for us and them. For context, the timeline has been very fast paced. Freddie is going to step back from the next chunk of the project, so we are looking for someone with some capacity between 7-9th september, paid opportunity. Fee = £2400 to cover 9 days of time, between all the people involved in the project. Each member of the group has been logging hours, but there is still a decision to be made of how the fee will be split between the participants. Could be that we reach out beyond FMTW.
PC – Does it need to be someone who is familiar with FMTW working?
EJ – No, it is more important that someone who is familiar with assessing panels is involved.
SH – Is it online?
EJ – Yes
PC – Shall we put it to the group?
EJ – Direct approach might be better due to timescale and requirements of the job.
MD – Is there a written job description?
EJ – No as we are low on capacity, but the role would be to facilitate the assessment of funding applications and observe that process to ensure it is consistent with a team of other facilitators.
VM – Rachel Bagshaw suggested
PC – Dan Ailing suggested
EJ – RB is the lead producer’s best friend – is this an ethical problem?
VM – Ask Dan first?
SH – Sally Wippman suggested.
AC – Titas suggested
JU – We have been approached to share the call out, are we happy to do this?
Consensus – Yes.
AC – happy to reach out to Titas, wait to hear from PC about Dan first?
ACTION POINT:
- PC/VM/AC to contact Dan Ailing, then Rachel Bagshaw, Sally Wippman, Titas Halder
- Josie to share info about the BAC call out with Al to share on socials.
Taxing Freelancers
VM – Who else is working on this? Could we use this as an opportunity to network, could we tweet about this and see who else is doing work on this?
AC – Yes, let’s call out. It would be great to get more info on this from people who are actively doing work on it already.
PM – Get someone to come and talk to us about it?
PC – Approach the freelancer to see if they are interested in coming to talk to us about what their perspective is as a freelancer.
ACTION POINT: Josie to contact the people that reached out to us regarding the changes in taxing freelancers. Ask if the freelancer affected would like to come and chat to us. Ask who the people are that are already having the conversation about tax changes for freelancers.
Levels of engagement
After a conversation about volunteers varying capacity and ways of working last week, Josie wrote a document of suggestions for levels of engagement. Each FMTW volunteer will opt for one (or in some cases more) of these levels at any time, this can be changed when capacity changes.
PM – Request to directly approach all members of the group individually.
ACTION POINT: Josie to share Levels of Engagement document with each member of the group.
Decision making process
Proposed last week, conversation about this. Following the responses we had a meeting yesterday morning to fold in the feedback. EJ adapted this document to align with the conversation, with summary, and detailed outline of how this works with examples.
Enthusiastic agreement
Agreement
Agreement with specific conditions
Disagree, needs more conversation
Block
I trust the group to make the decision
PC – I love the trust the group option
EJ – Technical questions; how do we ensure diversity across the votes, and how many votes are needed to pass a vote?
VM – Trust the group to decide whether there are the right voices in the room to make the decision.
ACTION POINT: We will use the decision making process moving forward.
Introducing new volunteers to FMTW
AC – We should create a working group that can identify where we are lacking in diversity and capacity.
JU – The skills and diversity audit could be useful in onboarding, to identify the above mentioned diversity and capacity.
PC – We can focus on the immediate need, in that there were activities identified on the away day that seem like the good things to bring to the table and we should move forward with those things.
PM – Getting new volunteers with no where for them to focus their time and work is a very difficult way to work, and makes it hard to retain new volunteers at they have nowhere to place their energy. Setting up the working groups will allow new members to place their energy somewhere within FMTW.
ACTION POINT: Set up a working group to talk about onboarding.
Working groups
JU – Jess raised a point that there isn’t an anti-racism group included in the working groups discussed at and before the away day. It felt harmful that this point had to be raised by a person of colour, and Jess asked that Josie and EJ raise this point at this meeting on behalf of JM.
SH – This isn’t a new problem. The slack anti-racism channel was triggered by a harmful event. The retention of POCs in the group is indicative of the way that the group treats this issue.
Inc Arts Unlock is a good forward moving way of committing into something. As a collective we have never sat in a place of discomfort. We have acknowledged that we need more diversity and inclusion but we have never sat in a place of discomfort as a group together and attempted to address the discomfort. It is tiring for the people of colour in the room to have to raise this constantly, and to be responsible for this conversation happening.
We should ask ourselves why we haven’t already done this, because we could have. We could have sat in loads of discomfort around this, and we didn’t, so it’s really important that people who aren’t here as well as people who aren’t here have that opportunity to really think about why we haven’t done this work. This has resulted in us losing people, and we need to address this in order to welcome POC into the room.
PC – Should there be an ask that FMTW volunteers need to participate in the access and anti-racism group, collective learning.
VM – Suggestion for an open agenda for a friday meeting which is entirely about what to FMTW do about integrating anti racism into bits working practices
EJ – This needs to be a developed and integrated practice, and cannot be worked out at one solo meeting.
VM – The idea of friday meeting focused on this would be the start of future work, not a fix all meeting.
PC – Allowing space for silence and discomfort is very important. We must encourage that space.
SH – I feel like we have been here before. Last time this happened we got Charmaine in, and there have been more conversations previously. We need to address why this repetition keeps happening. How do we make it stick?
PC – so many buildings/companies etc are completely ignoring this subject, and even the ones who are engaging are struggling. It is imbedded in the industry.
PM – The success of the Access group has largely been down to Kelsie’s incredible willingness to drive it forward. Do we need someone to drive this?
EJ – Minimum expectation of FMTW volunteers should be that we all show up for this work as well as the exciting action points. There feels like a lack of willingness to commit to these spaces, and this lack of will is something that we need to think about in this work, and we should consider this lack of will in the wider context of volunteers in the group.
*At this point an OUCH was placed, and a moment to consider this was encouraged by PM *
We want to acknowledge that the lack of an anti-racism working group was missed by a largely white working group, that Jess having to raise this as a woman of colour is harmful and unfair. We acknowledge that FMTW has a lot of work to do, and this work needs to be considered and constant.
ACTION POINT: Start up the anti-racism group, discuss and plan a Friday session around the question of how we integrate anti-racism into our working practice.
Topics we didn’t reach in the meeting today:
- Activities from the Away Day
- Freelancer social gatherings (possibly food related events etc.)
- Freelancers’ Charter
- FMTW conference/festival
- Mapping Freelance networks
AOB
AC – We Make Events have now moved their meetings to tuesdays, and they are really interesting meetings and encourage people to attend.
ACTION POINTS RECAP
- SH to put oops and ouch doc on slack
- PC/VM/AC to contact Dan Ailing, then Rachel Bagshaw, Sally Wippman, Titas Halder
- Josie to share info about the BAC call out with Al to share on socials.
- Josie to share Levels of Engagement document with each member of the group.
- We will use the decision making process moving forward.
- Set up a working group to talk about onboarding.
- Start up the anti-racism group, discuss and plan a friday session around the question of how we integrate anti-racism into our working practice.