On Monday 10th May, March for the Arts (MFTA) will hold a live launch for their Working Guidance for Arts Freelancers and Organisations, the product of a 16 week Arts Council England funded project to make working life better for freelancers in the Liverpool City Region.
As a group of theatre freelancers, the team have been laying the foundations for the project since they found all their work suddenly cancelled at the start of 2020.
The experiences and thoughts of freelancers and organisations have been flooding in over the past eight weeks and, together with a committee of 15 freelancers and organisations from various sectors of the arts, MFTA have been coming up with guidance that will help the sector work better together as it reopens and moves forward.
A couple of striking comments that have come from the MFTA freelance community outreach discussions have been:
“There is a real fear about not getting re-employed if you ask questions or raise issues”, Anon. freelancer
“You can feel like you’re having things done to you, rather than with you”, Anon. organisation representative
“As freelancers, we have to negotiate in whispers”, Anon. arts community member
The MFTA committee has been bravely picking apart the difficult stories and experiences of colleagues to make sure the future is better.
Now they need to hear from the wider public about what they’ve produced. Will the Working Guidance work in practice? Have they missed anything? Does the document work for your industry?
The public can join the live launch Monday 10th May at 6pm at https://www.marchforthearts.
There’ll be a chance to ask questions and hear from some of the committee members who’ve been working on the project. The public can then have their say on the document via a suggestion box here.
If members of the public need a different way to access or comment on the document MFTA will be very happy to accommodate and they can be contacted at info@marchforthearts.com.