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“the funding has done nothing for the workforce … you need extremely skilled and talented musicians to deliver that creativity, and those are the people who have been left out of the equation.”
I’d be amazed if a third doesn’t end up as an underestimate. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/sep/22/one-third-british-musicians-may-quit-industry-covid-pandemic-dcms-treasury
I’d be amazed if a third doesn’t end up as an underestimate. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/sep/22/one-third-british-musicians-may-quit-industry-covid-pandemic-dcms-treasury
Not to be pessimistic for the sake of it, but once musicians find other jobs, it becomes increasingly hard for them to make the switch back - the routine of practice and performance is a virtuous circle that needs constant maintenance.
Having made the switch the other way (I was a teacher for three years before I became a singer), I was aware from the start of how much energy and focus an alternative career takes. The extent to which that ultimately restricts you as a musician shouldn’t be underestimated.
So on top of the third who are thinking about it now, there’ll be a whole load more who are dragged away from the musical profession despite their plans. This is an existential crisis for British musicians, and the industry itself needs to address the situation urgently.
Seeing a few live performances get back up and running is hugely heartening and deserves immense credit. But without the full ecosystem, they don’t fix the fundamental flaw of relying almost entirely on performances as the mechanism for paying and sustaining freelance artists.
The catch is that there are no easy solutions to systemic problems - it requires multiple simultaneous approaches and no one has all the answers. But we need to keep asking the questions if we're ever to move forward. More thoughts in a few recent posts: https://paulcareyjones.wordpress.com/2020/06/04/coronavirus-freelancers-and-impotence/
On how lack of career stability for artists has a disproportionate impact on those from less-privileged backgrounds: https://paulcareyjones.wordpress.com/2020/06/24/coronaclassical-fiddling-while-rome-burns/
"An artistic ecosystem where the artists are constantly pushed further and further towards the bottom of the food chain cannot possibly hope to thrive in the long term." https://paulcareyjones.wordpress.com/2020/07/06/coronaclassical-13-the-death-of-british-opera/
