Studies – Covid & Theatre
British Theatre Before & After Covid (November 2025)
Following our groundbreaking reports into British theatre repertoire in 2013 and 2014, the British Theatre Consortium has produced a major new report on British theatre either side of the Covid pandemic, based on figures for 2019 and 2023. Based on aggregated box…
Forging Freelance Futures Report – Creative UK, March 2025
Forging Freelance Futures is Creative UK’s comprehensive report into the freelance economy of the cultural and creative industries. Based on a survey of 1272 freelancers and 221 organisations, as well as a series of regional focus groups, this report seeks to…
Performing Artists and Precarity – Work in the Contemporary Entertainment Industries
This open access book focuses on the distinctive experiences of freelance and self-employed live performers in the UK’s live entertainment industries It provides an in-depth account of their working lives during COVID-19, showing how their experiences of the pandemic…
New Beginnings – The Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Early Career Theatre Workers – May 2024
A report exploring how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected young people embarking on a career in the performing arts.Tonic has collaborated with Central School of Speech and Drama on a piece of research which seeks to understand the needs and concerns of young people…
REPORT: Creative recovery? The role of cultural policy in shaping post-COVID urban futures
Covid had devastating effects on cities around the world. Alongside the loss of life and health, the pandemic had a wide range of socio-economic consequences for urban communities, including damaging impacts on cultural life. While researchers have examined the…
CREATIVES IN CRISIS
Creatives in Crisis is a research project which aims to explore the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on creative freelancers, and to look at how freelancers are mobilising online communities in response. Creatives in Crisis is a research project which aims to explore…
REPORT: Challenges facing the live sector – March 2023
This survey was carried out to collect data on how companies and individuals across live events, entertainment and installations are recovering from the pandemic and what challenges remain. A sum total of 1,313 respondents from over 46 countries completed the survey…
REPORT: NTIA Night Time Economy Report – February 2023
This is the second Study of Night Time Economy. It has been commissioned by the NTIA to fully understand the economic contribution and significance of the night time cultural economy (NTCE) to the UK economy. It also situates the NTCE within the wider UK night-time…
REPORT: Theatres skills shortage survey 2022 – December 2022
A new survey from Bectu outlines low pay, long hours and poor work-life balance as key issues driving the continued skills shortage plaguing the UK’s theatre sector. The sector was one of the worst affected by the Covid-19 lockdowns and many, including Bectu, called…
REPORT: Reimagining where we live: cultural placemaking and the levelling up agenda – November 2022
Arts funding should be overhauled into a new model that categorises world-class national institutions separately from local organisations. “We propose a model whereby world-class national cultural institutions, who often receive the most significant levels of public…