Over the past few months, we’ve been developing two new resource sections for the ‘Support’ pages of our website. These are now live and focus on Global Conflict and The Climate Crisis, highlighting both the support available for freelancers and how freelancers can contribute to change and solidarity.
The pages include useful websites, campaigns, reading lists, podcasts and more and we shall continue to add to these in the coming days, weeks and months.
Global Conflict
In times of war and conflict, the arts play a profound, often overlooked role. While the immediate needs in war zones - shelter, food, and safety - are paramount, there is also an essential need for emotional survival and collective healing. Theatre, as a space for storytelling and shared experience, offers a vital outlet for communities facing the unimaginable.
In regions where conflict deeply impacts daily life, the arts provide not just an escape, but a means of resilience, resistance, and expression. Yet, as freelancers far removed from these zones, we may wonder: What role can we play?
How can we support the arts in conflict zones? How can we be effective allies to freelancers and arts workers directly affected by war? These are challenging but essential questions. Our new Global Conflict resources aim to guide you towards actionable solidarity and meaningful support.
The Climate Crisis
If theatre is to be part of the most vital conversation humanity faces, then it has to change its practice.
Theatre brings people together to create a physical living thing on stage, a thing that has a lifespan of weeks, possibly months and occasionally years. We require people to travel to see this thing, and we require buildings and spaces in which this engagement occurs.
All parts of this process cause environmental harm via emissions and resource use. As an industry we need to acknowledge this, and respond in ways which reduce the harm caused. We also need to acknowledge that even at a reduced rate, harm will still be caused, and we need to find ways to support activities and organisations that are replenishing nature and drawing down CO2 from the atmosphere.
The transformation required needs to be both top-down and bottom-up. It requires that those who lead organisations fully understand the crisis, and the urgent necessity and urgency to transform that which we think of as normal. And it requires space being made to actively engage the more transient freelance community in this conversation. Too often freelancers are left out of this work – left unaware of changes being made or disempowered and voiceless in the buildings and companies they work within. The climate Crisis is about all of us. It need not curtail imagination nor be punitive. We need to join hands and make work differently together and all share in the work and responsibility that takes. We have to do this work together.
