Section One: Key Structures

Overview

Part 2 forms the substantial component of this report on the UK Live Art sector, synthesising data from our surveys, case studies, focus groups, themed roundtables and dialogues, alongside desk research, to offer a snapshot of the sector. We begin in Section One with Key Structures, outlining the different types of infrastructure that support Live Art practices in the UK. Section Two on Creating and Making, examines how Live Art practitioners contextualise their work, and professional development journeys. In Section Three on Higher Education, we explore the close and mutually beneficial relationship between Live Art practices and higher education. Section Four on Audiences and Influence provides data, findings and case studies to demonstrate how the sector supports the distribution and visibility of Live Art practices. In Section Five on Demographics, we present snapshot data to illustrate who works in the UK Live Art sector. This is followed by Section Six on Diversity, where the focus is on Live Art’s work with disability, race and ethnicity, including discussion of the major Live Art UK project, Diverse Actions (2017–20). Section Seven on Sustaining and Organising presents survey data to indicate trends in livelihoods and organisational operations within the sector. In Section Eight on Post-March 2020 Conditions, we reflect on the ongoing and expected impacts of COVID-19 and Brexit, and how the Live Art sector is responding to renewed calls to address racial inequalities.

A. Live Art Development Agency

The Live Art Development Agency (LADA) is a centre for Live Art established in 1999, and a foundational resource for the advocacy, development and promotion of Live Art practices in the UK and internationally. Based at the Garrett Centre in Tower Hamlets, London since 2017, LADA champions experimental, interdisciplinary, challenging and unpredictable artistic processes. It works through curatorial projects, programmes, events, publications and a wide range of research resources and networks, including housing a comprehensive open-access archive of Live Art resources. 

LADA’s achievements include major collaborations in publishing such as working with Intellect Books on Intellect Live, a series of publications about artists who work with Live Art (2013–20); artistic programming, including a collaboration with Tate Modern on Live Culture, a groundbreaking programme of performances, events and discussions by international practitioners (2003); professional development, including research bursaries for artists and the flagship DIY programme of professional development by artists for artists (2002–ongoing); artform development, for example Restock, Rethink, Reflect, a series of initiatives mapping and marking representations of identity politics in Live Art (2006–ongoing); and interventions in higher education, notably working with Queen Mary, University of London, to deliver and develop one of the first ever Masters-level programmes in Live Art (2018–ongoing).

At time of writing, LADA is undertaking a transformational process of organisational change and leadership succession, with co-founder Lois Keidan accelerating her process of stepping aside as Director to make space for new leadership in response to broader calls for racial equity within the arts and cultural sector.

B. Live Art UK

Live Art UK is a membership network of promoters, facilitators and venues, concerned with the development and promotion of Live Art domestically and internationally. In 2019–20, Live Art UK had thirty members, reflecting representation across England’s regions and all nations except Northern Ireland. The network has grown substantially since its inception in 2003, more than tripling its membership. For a full list of membership please see Appendix II.

The Live Art UK network reflects the heterogeneous nature of infrastructure for Live Art in the UK. It comprises members of different scale, size and remit, including unincorporated artist-led initiatives, through to venues and funded organisations offering advocacy and artist development, internationally renowned festivals and key UK infrastructural organisations. Members of Live Art UK benefit from the ‘network effect’ of visibility, knowledge and resource sharing, and collaboratively developed initiatives. 

Live Art UK is currently convened and administered by LADA. Membership is by invitation and proposal by existing members, based on the centrality of Live Art to a (potential) member’s purpose and activity, and their capacity to contribute to advocacy of the Live Art sector. At time of writing, network structure and operations are being reviewed.   

The network cultivates opportunities for advocacy, including research into touring and writing about the artform, drawing out productive relationships between mainstream and experimental practices. It also functions as a conduit for lobbying and advocacy on sector-wide and policy level, undertaking advocacy on behalf of artists and organisations with an interest in Live Art. Our 2019 survey of individuals working with/in Live Art confirmed that Live Art UK is a productive resource for some individuals working in the sector, with 59% of respondents agreeing and strongly agreeing that it is important to have their work recognised by the network (Q15, SurvInd).

The Live Art UK network works together to identify key issues and opportunities within the sector and, where there is shared interest and motivation, the network develops collaborative projects to advance sectoral knowledge and experience. These have included gatherings with invited speakers, podcasts, symposia and publications on subjects including audiences and touring.²⁴

Live Art UK’s project Diverse Actions (2017–20), was an example of a significant Live Art UK sectoral development initiative. Diverse Actions championed ‘culturally diverse’²⁵ ambition, excellence and talent in Live Art, reflecting the sector’s concern about the historic lack of racial equity in relation to artist and leadership development. Funded by a £500,000 Arts Council England Ambition for Excellence Grant in 2017 with cash and in-kind contributions from Live Art UK members, this was the largest investment in the Live Art UK network since its beginnings. While the sector reported that there were many positive outcomes from this project, Diverse Actions has also raised a number of issues and challenges, which are discussed later in Part 2, Section Six, entitled Diversity. 

C. Artist-led initiatives

Our research has identified the importance of artist-led initiatives to the sector, and not only in terms of their contribution to sectoral activity. Artist-led initiatives contribute to the way those working with Live Art often imagine their practices and process as anti-institutional. Artist-led initiatives across the regions and nations of the UK have made and continue to make an important contribution to the creation, development and support of practices, artists and arts workers in the Live Art sector. According to our 2019 survey of individuals, 75% of 225 responses either agree or strongly agree with the statement ‘Artist-led initiatives are important to my Live Art practice’ (Q20, SurvInd). 

In this research, we refer to ‘artist-led initiatives’ as self-organised and collective activity, which may be led by artists, independent producers, curators or other categories of practitioner working with Live Art. Although artist-led initiatives are self-organised and collective activities, these initiatives do not necessarily adopt co-operative organising structures or co-operative economic models, as we will see in Part 2, Section Seven, on Sustaining and Organising.

Artist-led initiatives are essential to driving the development of Live Art practice because they are informed by on-the-ground knowledge and the needs of their communities of practice. Artist-led initiatives have grown ways for artists to work outside the parameters given by funders and institutions, allowing for experimentation and the development of communities that, in many cases, foreground resistance to formal structures, administration associated with public subsidy and/or views of arts management as supplementary to creative practice. For instance, the artist-activist home-based initiative, Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home in Everton, developed in response to artists being appropriated by the 2018 European Capital of Culture in Liverpool.²⁶ Another example of an artist-led initiative is the artist-led community Residence, who joined forces with other artist-initiatives to create an important social performance space at the Brunswick Club for artists working in Bristol. Fox Irving’s research into class and navigating the art world led to the conception of the peer mentoring group Women Working Class, and the development of a range of resources for artists and producers in the sector and beyond. 

At the same time, artist-run activities across the arts and cultural sector have often historically relied on wider economic and social contexts and policies for their appearance. For example, Thatcher’s Enterprise Allowance Scheme benefitted DIY cultural production ²⁷ in 1980s Britain²⁸.

In the UK Live Art sector, artist-run initiatives also frequently draw on knowledge, personnel or resources from more formal sectoral institutions and affiliations. For example, LADA manages and facilitates DIY, a programme of professional development projects by artists for artists – an important artist-centred initiative that has been running since 2002, working with (at time of writing) more than 20 partners across the UK. Similarly, BUZZCUT, an important artist-led initiative that began in Glasgow in 2012, has transitioned over recent years into a partnership with the major experimental festival Take Me Somewhere, including sharing staff and ‘backroom’ operational resources. Some artist-led initiatives, such as Chisenhale Dance Space have, over time, developed to become key organisations and initiatives for the sector.  

According to our research consultations, individuals and organisations working within the Live Art sector have been deeply impacted by the wider pressures of austerity and the rising costs of living in the UK, resulting in decreased capacities to sustain and undertake grassroots activity. As is evidenced throughout this report, artist-led initiatives often rely on unpaid or underpaid labour and informal sharing networks to create and deliver their activities.

Facing an accelerated professionalisation and simultaneous shrinking of resources for artist-led activities in the UK, we note the emergence of a number of support networks led by practitioners working collectively and collaboratively with Live Art developing over recent years.²⁹ For instance, Asia-Art-Activism is a network of artists, curators and practitioners focused on celebrating and sustaining marginalised artists’ practices. 

We note through our research consultations that artist-led initiatives, particularly in non-urban locations, are hyperlocal, in that they take place within specific localities. These are often undocumented outside those localities, yet play a role in the incubation and development of Live Art practices. Although it is beyond the scope of this project to document these, further research into non-urban artist-led initiatives could be of value to the sector.

D. Spaces and places

What are the models for consuming Live Art? The focus on festivals means it is not accessible all year round.

Focus group participant, 2019.

Festivals

Our research has identified festivals as a primary mechanism for the presentation of Live Art in the UK. Festivals can often provide flexible frames for the presentation of artworks that include non-traditional uses of space and time, like site-responsive, participatory and durational work. However, as noted above, the centrality of festivals to the UK Live Art sector is not without challenges for artist and audience development, particularly in areas of the UK where year-around infrastructural support for Live Art is limited.  

Nevertheless, Live Art festivals such as In Between Time (South West), Fierce (Midlands), Compass (Yorkshire), SPILL (East of England), Catalyst Arts’ FIX (Northern Ireland) and Forest Fringe’s Edinburgh programme (2007-2017), illustrate that festivals are a robust focal point for audiences, reaching wider publics and connecting artists and organisations within a community of practice. Also, festivals like London International Festival of Theatre, Manchester International Festival, Brighton Festival and the London International Mime Festival are mainstream settings that play an important role in the commissioning and presentation of large-scale and international work. 

Festivals are part of a nuanced ecology of local, regional and national Live Art organisations and initiatives across the UK, where partnerships in the form of co-commissioning, co-production, artist development and more informal support structures help sustain and feed into the presentation of work on a range of festival ‘stages’. 

Many venues that present Live Art have a wider arts programme and remit, therefore festivals enable focused activity on Live Art, providing vital opportunities for practitioners and audiences to gather and experience work. In addition, festivals offer artists vital opportunities to profile their work, to see work by others, engage in dialogue and conversation sessions, as well as more informal networking activities including meeting organisations and promoters. Festivals such as Experimentica at Chapter, Cardiff and NOW festival at The Yard, London take place within larger art centres and theatre programmes respectively. Transform in Leeds, Gateshead International Festival of Theatre (GIFT) and Knotty in Folkestone are examples of festivals that are commissioning artists working with Live Art to work site-responsively, offering opportunities for audiences to experience Live Art practices that reimagine place. Using varied audience engagement activities in diverse settings, Live Art festivals contribute to creativity within their local communities.

Clubs and corner shops

Through partnerships and collaborations, the Live Art sector enables advocacy, dialogue and resources for Live Art practitioners to work within various settings and with/in communities. From performances at queer clubs like VfD in East London to Bbeyond’s interventions in public spaces in Belfast, to projects in community centres and extra-care facilities, Live Art has built a reputation for inhabiting heterogenous, non-traditional spaces. 

Artists working with Live Art in non-traditional spaces have also pushed the boundaries of where participation in the arts might take place, making Live Art practices accessible across the UK. Joshua Sofaer’s Opera Helps sends professional opera singers to private homes in response to individual audience members asking for help with personal problems. In Woodland, French & Mottershead bring audiences to the woods to connect with deep time and chemical and biological processes. Cruising for Art, created by Brian Lobel, asks audiences to use gay cruising codes to engage in intimate interactions with performers.

Working outside traditional arts and cultural spaces is partly out of necessity. As we have noted in Part 1, Section Three: Addressing the term ‘Live Art’, Live Art practitioners often challenge social and cultural norms, which has not always been welcome or supported in mainstream arts and cultural spaces. Moreover, the varied forms and durations of Live Art practices often challenge curatorial approaches, working structures and technical resources, especially for spaces that are aligned to non-Live Art specific artistic disciplines and histories. This is further discussed in Part 2, Section Two: Creating and Making, and in relation to touring, Part 2, Section Four: Audiences and Influence.

Arts and cultural institutions/spaces

We recognise from research conversations that dedicated space for the making and presentation of Live Art is an important intention of the sector. Historically, access to free and low-cost spaces has been more readily available, and even a large space like Shunt Vaults in London was a hub for encountering artists working with Live Art. Today, we see the impact that the multiple challenges posed by austerity and increasing property costs have had on securing dedicated spaces for the presentation of Live Art in the UK. Of the few notable spaces dedicated to Live Art, the majority of these are artist-led, including ]performance s p a c e [ in Folkestone and its sister space VSSL in London, and Centre for Live Art Yorkshire (CLAY) in Leeds. 

Moreover, Live Art has occupied spaces outside dedicated Live Art contexts ranging from music festivals such as Latitude, to multi-artform festivals – like Glasgow International and Norfolk and Norwich Festival – main stages of theatres such as the Royal Court Theatre and public programmes at galleries and museums including Baltic, Victoria and Albert Museum and the De La Warr Pavilion. Our research consultations inform us that artists working with Live Art experience developmental benefits from working outside Live Art specific contexts, learn from adjacent artistic disciplines, value exposure to different audiences, and can benefit from an expanded profile.

Platforms

Our research conversations indicate that artists and practitioners value the function of platforms as an essential part of the Live Art sector’s infrastructure. The term ‘platform’ is used in different ways across the sector, but usually offers artists and audiences the opportunity to experience short works by multiple artists as part of one event. Platforms can function in different ways: some can help an artist build a continued relationship with an organisation, whilst others are showcasing opportunities in their own rights. Home for Waifs and Strays in the Midlands and SPILL YER TEA in Liverpool offered artists informal, peer-centred opportunities to regularly try out new work and work in progress. 

Other platforms are more formal and are structured as part of a facilitated developmental process, often feeding into an artists’ wider professional and creative development journey. An example of this is the Starting Blocks Showcase at Camden People’s Theatre in London, which is the culmination of a 10-week artist residency. Flying Solo at Contact in Manchester is unusual and therefore significant in providing a platform for solo practitioners to develop and present their work. Perhaps one of the most notable national platforms for Live Art is organised by SPILL and plays a key part in SPILL festival.

The digital

Digital offers much opportunity for the development, sharing and presentation of Live Art practice. Digital platforms such as LADA’s Live Online, are a vital part of the Live Art ecology in the UK, with their usage becoming inevitably more widespread, especially due to social distancing restrictions since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. From our research, artists and organisations in the UK who work with Live Art, such as the artist collectives Blast Theory and Lundahl and Seitl, have a long history of engaging with digital practice. Responses from our 2021 organisational questionnaire, inform us that digital is understood by the UK Live Art sector as an arena for disseminating and publishing Live Art. Digital plays an important role in distributing practices to audiences where the means to experience Live Art in person are limited by location, access or mobility.

While the presentation of Live Art via online spaces can have implications for the audience’s experience of ‘liveness’ and the physical encounter, digital also offers wide-ranging possibilities for artform development, such as seeding new forms of encounter with audience members that can inform other artforms and disciplines. Digital also affords practitioners working with Live Art opportunities for remote partnerships and collaborations. Indeed, through our research consultations, organisations such as the British Council have noted high levels of interest in digital collaborative projects and digital international residencies from artists working with Live Art, particularly since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.   

E. Resources

Artists and organisations working with Live Art in the UK are primarily supported through public funding, involving grants from local councils, Arts Councils from across the nations, the National Lottery Community Fund and international funders such as European Cultural Foundation and/or national cultural institutes such as the Goethe-Institut. As discussed throughout this report, trusts and foundations such as Jerwood Arts, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the Wellcome Collection also play a significant role in the funding of Live Art practices.

In addition, the UK Live Art sector is subsidised through the free labour of individuals participating in its activities, which is reflective of labour trends within the arts and cultural sector more broadly. Resilient yet underfunded, our research indicates that artists and organisations often over-promise on delivery to demonstrate value to funders and over-work to meet these demands. Self-subsidy through unpaid or underpaid labour negatively impacts the health and wellbeing of individuals involved in the Live Art sector and the sustainability of the sector’s initiatives and organisations. Sources of funding and income within the Live Art sector are further illustrated and discussed in Part 2, Section Seven, on Sustaining and Organising.

Key findings for Key Structures

• The Live Art Development Agency has been central to advocacy for and development of the Live Art sector in the UK. 
• Public funding is an essential component of funding for organisations and individuals working with Live Art. 
• Practitioners involved in the Live Art sector are often delivering beyond capacity to demonstrate making the most of available resources. 
• Live Art UK is a useful resource for some but the criteria for membership is not clear.
• Artist-led initiatives are fundamental to the flourishing of practices within the UK Live Art sector. 
• Live Art often takes place in non-traditional spaces and places and artists working with Live Art experiment with new aspects of participatory practice according to these contexts.
• The Live Art sector relies heavily on festival culture.
• Artists and organisations working with Live Art often feature and/or receive support from spaces and places dedicated to artistic disciplines outside Live Art.

Footnotes

24. For example, Mary Paterson and Theron Schmidt (eds), Getting It Out There – The future of touring and distribution for contemporary theatre and Live Art, Lancaster: Live at LICA and Live Art UK, 2012, exploring the future of touring for contemporary theatre and Live Art http://liveartuk.org/activities/getting-it-out-there; Yvonne Carmichael and Amelia Crouch (eds), Unruly Utterances: Participation, Criticality and Compass Festival 2014, Leeds: Compass Live Art and Live Art UK, 2014; and Live Art UK (eds), It’s Time.

25. ‘Culturally diverse’ is the historic term used by Arts Council England as part of the Ambition for Excellence funding programme, which funded the Diverse Actions project. The term was used when referring to individuals from Black, Asian Minority Ethnic, ethnically diverse, or Global Ethnic Majority backgrounds. As recommended by Inc Arts, the terms ‘Global Ethnic Majority backgrounds’ and ‘ethnically diverse backgrounds’ will be prioritised throughout this report to refer to people of African or Caribbean heritage, South, East, and South East Asian heritage, and Middle East and North African heritage. Where the terms ‘Black, Asian Minority Ethnic’ (BAME) or ‘Black, Minority Ethnic’ (BME) are used in the text, this reflects historical use of terminology. See Inc Arts, ‘#BAMEOver –A statement for the UK’, first published September 2020, https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQkg5IIoeAqMjMF6VW-eIEtEUEgK3GLudW1meE2DILbJPZYPiP0dO3Qwx6YVxBFxOhI1KEp5swpok80/pub

26. The European Capitals of Culture programme is a year-long celebration of art and culture with designation and support from the European Union (EU). https://ec.europa.eu/culture/policies/culture-cities-and-regions/european-capitals-culture 

27. DIY stands for Do It Yourself, historically this refers to traditions of self-organised, unfunded forms of cultural production that sit outside of institutionalised cultural practices. Punk music culture is a pertinent example of DIY culture, see Paula Guerra and Pedro Quintela (eds), Punk, Fanzines and DIY Cultures in a Global World, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. 

28. See Andy C. Pratt, ‘Urban Regeneration: from the Arts “Feel Good” Factor to the Cultural Economy. Case Study of Hoxton, London’, Urban Studies 46/5&6 (May 2009), pp.1041–61.

29. See Susan Jones, ‘Artists’ Livelihoods: the Artists in Arts Policy Conundrum’, Doctoral thesis (PhD), Manchester Metropolitan University, 2019, unpublished.

Section Two: Creating and Making

A. Processes and contexts

Live Art has allowed me other logics of worlding, more liveable ones

Respondent, 2019 survey of individuals

Live Art has been a safe space for allowing hybridity of form into my practice, venturing into areas that I might otherwise have felt too unskilled or daunted to go into. My practice has been programmed in many Live Art events, as well as other contexts that were less focused on Live Art. As a programmer I have worked to develop the exchange and conversation between dance and Live Art especially. In my teaching, I focus on Live Art and invite students to engage with Live Art as a practice.

Respondent, 2019 survey of individuals

Live Art invites artists, arts organisations and those they encounter and work with to embrace complexity and different perspectives. The expansive and wide-ranging set of practices that are collected under the umbrella of Live Art cut across a variety of artforms that celebrate diverse methods and processes of making, from the messy to the risky, the spectacular and the everyday. At the same time, Live Art involves consideration, development and advancement of methodologies and rigour, drawing richly from other artforms as well as disciplines beyond the realms of arts and culture. Despite its history as a contested term, findings from our 2019 survey of individuals show that the term ‘Live Art’ has traction, with 69% of the 258 respondents agreeing or strongly agreeing with the statement ‘Live Art as a term and/or practice informs me as a creative person’ (Q4, SurvInd).

Practitioners working with Live Art have strong associations with other artistic disciplines, identifying with a range of artforms and disciplines based on artform categories designated by Arts Council England. Early in our research, in consultation with our 2019 Artist Perspectives Roundtable, the category of ‘performance’ was added to the list of artforms/disciplines, informing design of our 2019 survey of individuals. Our research finds that ‘performance’ and ‘experimental performance’ are by and large the most resonant of terms to describe these practices. From our 2019 survey of individuals, we see that 94% of 258 respondents identify with the term performance (Q2, SurvInd). 

I’ve produced several events platforming Live Art, allowing us to activate a public space in a new way and by extension reach new audiences. These sites include a council-owned playground, a nightclub, and church building. I’d like to think my practice as a producer has also facilitated experimentation with emerging artists using live elements in their practice and embedded meaningful live engagement into impact strategies. 

Respondent, 2019 survey of individuals

Our research indicates that the Live Art sector in the UK nurtures a broad spectrum of ideas and practices. Through our desk research, survey and research conversations, and particularly by considering first-hand accounts, we note that practitioners who engage with Live Art are attracted to the openness to diverse creative approaches and cultural practices that Live Art as a cultural strategy offers.

We note that Live Art’s embrace of rigorous, process-led approaches into how artistic and cultural practices develop, rather than an emphasis on a finished product, was valued by participants in our research. This appears to engender a receptiveness to new ideas, a development of aesthetic and professional practice and encourages investigation into other social spheres. 73% of the 258 respondents to our 2019 survey of individuals agree or strongly agree with the statement ‘Live Art has enabled me to test my practice in a number of different areas’ (Q9, SurvInd). Thinking about that statement, respondents were then invited to tick as many options as they felt relevant (Q10, SurvInd). 258 respondents answered as follows:

Deploying a broad spectrum of skills, methods and knowledge, including improvisation, movement, choreography, participatory research, dialogue, sound, writing, photography, and moving image, artists working with Live Art draw on different types of physical resource and facility depending on the intentions and needs of their project or process. Whilst some may place value on making time alone in the rehearsal studio, others work collaboratively or collectively with members of the public, or in non-art environments. As is seen by the 75% of respondents who stated that Live Art enables them to test their practice in relation to aesthetic experimentation, being inspired by new ideas and experimenting with them is critical to those working with Live Art.  

Working outside Live Art specific contexts, such as galleries or multi-artform festivals, is not without challenge. Live Art can include working site-responsively, in collaboration with non-arts professionals or producing outcomes in a number of different media. Depending on artists’ distinct ways of working and the remit of the project, the development of Live Art often requires dialogue and collaboration between artist and curator, in order to realise the artists’ vision.

Live Art practice has allowed me to consider the ways and means by which we support the creation of new work differently, to properly consider the space and time that requires, the intelligence and depth of thought and listening that live artists require from curators and their curation as part of multi-artform programming and given a sense of permission to engage and play with audiences and their perception and the disruption of their everyday in new ways.

Respondent, 2019 survey of individuals

Through research conversations with programmers and curators whose primary work is outside Live Art, it has been noted that the process of gaining knowledge about how to work flexibly and responsively with Live Art practitioners takes time and resource. The success of a complex Live Art project requires internal advocacy from key staff within the presenting organisation and an understanding and involvement in the process of making, not only from the technical and producing staff but also the fundraising and front of house teams.

67% percent of the 225 respondents to the 2019 survey of individuals indicated that their work with Live Art has led them to work with organisations outside the arts sector (Q23, SurvInd). We note from our research that artists working with Live Art are active collaborators, working with practitioners from other sectors, as well as being multi-disciplinary when it comes to artform practice. 

Through a synthesis of our research materials, what appears specific about the character of collaboration is how artists working with Live Art foreground a critical and yet creatively open approach to the live encounter and to the relationship between bodies, histories and spaces. Work such as jamie lewis hadley’s collaboration with Vishy Mahadevan, Professor of Anatomy at the Royal College of Surgeons, on the history of medicinal bloodletting (funded by the Wellcome Trust), or Barby Asante convening forums for locally-recruited womxn of colour to share experiences in relation to colonialism in the project Declaration of Independence, are indicative of the hybridity of collaborative work supported by the Live Art sector. Practice which enables collaboration across artforms and across sectors is a key feature for those working with Live Art.

B. Creative and professional development

Creative and professional development is a principal activity of the Live Art sector in the UK. Professional development activity in Live Art aims to create opportunities for artists to experiment, spend time working on new ideas, learn new skills, share experiences, meet one another, feel more connected and build solidarity. As discussed in Part 2, Section One: Key Structures and outlined above in ‘Processes and contexts’, artists working with Live Art often lead the way in identifying the kinds of creative and professional development they need, reflecting that there is no fixed, singular way of developing a Live Art practice.  

According to our 2019 survey of individuals, 64% of respondents said they had participated in and/or organised professional development programmes for Live Art practitioners (Q17, SurvInd).³⁰ The rich seam of platforms, showcases and development opportunities within the Live Art sector informs, builds and contributes to a community of Live Art practitioners. The development of those that work in the sector and the development of the sector itself is linked.

Arguably, a significant operation of the sector, creative and professional development  – for example, through Live Art UK initiatives – equates to support for the development of artists and other practitioners. However, since opportunities are frequently highly competitive, with applications time-consuming and often restricted to artists of a certain age or those who have been practicing for a specific number of years, many artists are not able to benefit from meaningful sustained support. 

Many people are working right across the country but can’t afford to go to things, even if they are free, as they have no money to get to London… There are also additional barriers in terms of childcare.

Focus group participant, 2019

The above quote illustrates findings from our research on barriers to sector participation. Such perspectives are echoed by wider research on the arts and cultural sector. For instance, a report from TBR on artists’ livelihoods, distributed by partners including the Live Art Development Agency, notes that factors such as finances, geography and class pose barriers to artists engaging with creative and professional development opportunities.³¹ Furthermore, the TBR research affirms that whilst there are instances of successful artist developmental trajectories, career ‘progression’ is often non-linear. Non-linear career progression may be embraced by some practitioners, however, our research consultations evidence that lack of financial stability and linear career prospects particularly affect artists and practitioners working with Live Art as they age, often influencing their decision to leave the sector.

Programmes, including bursaries:

Many organisations working with Live Art offer opportunities for the development of artistic practice including opportunities to research, share approaches, exchange ideas and get feedback on work in development. Activities vary in budgetary support, duration, form and methodology. Some development opportunities come with financial and other in-kind support, for example both Artsadmin’s Artists’ Bursary Scheme (1998–ongoing) and the Katherine Araniello Bursary (2020–ongoing)³² offer open-ended opportunities for artists to define their needs and next steps. hÅb’s numerous artist development programmes and platforms include Divergency (in collaboration with Sustained Theatre Up North), which supports a weekly gathering of artists.  

Residencies: These can focus on supporting research in relation to an artist’s practice or centre on making a specific piece of work. As is the case in the arts sector as a whole, residencies may include studio access, a stipend and/or contribution to material costs, whilst others may be unpaid but offer free studio access or require the practitioner to pay a subsidised rate to access space. Through our research consultations, we found that residencies are especially valuable to artists where the cost of making or rehearsal space is often unaffordable, especially within urban centres. 

Several schemes have presentation opportunities built in, including Compass Live Art’s artist residencies, which span two weeks to one year; Nuffield Residency, Lancaster Arts; and Cambridge Junction. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, digital residencies have become increasingly important for practitioners, a notable instance of which is produced by performingborders. Residences also offer artists the opportunity to build relationships with organisations who may be able to support or present their work in the future. 

Mentoring: Our research has identified that mentoring is an important activity for artists and workers in the sector, with more than half of the respondents to our 2019 survey of individuals stating that they offer unpaid peer mentoring to other practitioners within the sector (Q36, SurvInd). For artists who do not have regular access to studio or devising space, and those who do not have a producer, mentoring can provide a system of structured exchange and an important opportunity of discourse and dialogue for artists to talk through how they are imagining a work. Artists very much value the knowledge and experience of other artists to give creative feedback and help them to solve problems, making mentoring a significant part of creative and professional development within the Live Art sector. 

Organisations within the sector are increasingly offering open access advice sessions to artists, and some artist development programmes also include mentoring provision. Other areas of advice and support include helping with grants and applications, and creative dialogue to support the development of a work at different stages.

Developing producers and curators: The sector has identified a need to support the development of producers and curators. This has mainly taken place as on-the-job training through opportunities with festivals, including the South West-based festival In Between Time. In 2020, the festival Block Universe worked with an emerging curator and ran a paid trainee scheme for two individuals in collaboration with the Art Fund to develop event production, curatorial and audience engagement skills. Another notable opportunity has been the Artsadmin 9-month trainee scheme which has been restructured as a 3-month Producer Fellowship (2021 onwards). Whilst traineeships and internships are a well-established mechanism for developing producers and curators, if not well-managed and resourced they can reproduce the unequal working conditions which have historically been found in the arts and cultural sector more broadly.³³

There is an increasing recognition of the need for continued professional development that is tailored to producers, working in organisations and independently, at different stages of their careers and for different experience levels. For instance, Producer Farm, co-produced by In Between Time, Dance Umbrella, Bristol Old Vic FERMENT, Fuel and Coombe Farm Studios; Producer Gathering, organised in collaboration with Marlborough Productions; and The Uncultured’s producer mentoring scheme all aim to address the clear need for development opportunities for producers. As well, the British Council’s Generate scheme, a partnership with Arts Council England, has enabled a new network of international collaborations between UK and US producers. 

Developing writers and critics: The sector has also identified the need for the development of practitioners who can write about Live Art practice. The prevalence of first-person narrative in writing about Live Art reflects the importance of embodied experience; it is practiced as a live form. Writing about Live Art is key to how Live Art is transmitted, how Live Art is able to feed into other practices and how Live Art is archived and historicised. Writing from and about Live Art is also central to audience development. We note from our consultations that there is a desire from artists, audiences and organisations working with Live Art to encounter more writing about Live Art that is not academic and more accessible to a wider readership.  

Live Art UK’s project Writing from Live Art (2006) made a significant contribution to the documentation, contextualisation and artistic impact of Live Art. Other initiatives for developing writers and critics taking place in the sector have often been associated with festivals or wider programmes, including Critical Interruptions’ Live Writing projects in collaboration with Steakhouse Live festival (2016) and the Diverse Actions writing workshop, in collaboration with Compass Live Art festival (2018). 

Access to opportunities: Currently, sector provision for information about opportunities centre around a small number of listing services, including Artsadmin’s e-digest email newsletter, circulating to more than 12,000 subscribers. Social media is also increasingly important to artists and practitioners working with/in Live Art to learn about resources, learning programmes and opportunities. 

Staying informed and sharing practice

Professional platforms are key to staying informed, sharing practice, developing learning, creating connections and strengthening networks. Participants in our 2019 survey of individuals and in our consultations note that attendance at nationally recognised festivals and showcase events are key networking opportunities and often contribute to further commissions or work. 

Throughout our research consultations, the sector has remarked on the thinning out of developmental platform events across the UK. Limited opportunities and barriers to networking and meeting other practitioners including promoters, programmers, curators and producers within the UK was also noted. The sector reported that these challenges impacted practitioners’ capacities to raise visibility of their practice and further their work beyond a local or regional level. Those living in non-urban settings or where there is little sectoral infrastructure for Live Art reported this was a particularly acute issue. 

Despite the importance of professional development opportunities to artists, practitioners and organisations within the sector, we note through our consultations and survey of individuals that there remain numerous barriers to accessing development programmes. These barriers include:

• A focus on development opportunities for ‘emerging’ or younger artists; while there are development opportunities for those who have been practicing for more than 10 years, these are limited.
• A lack of local opportunities and the cost of travel/accommodation to attend opportunities, this particularly affects those with caring responsibilities, D/deaf and disabled practitioners or those with other access needs. 
• A lack of paid-for opportunities, this particularly affects individuals from underrepresented groups within the arts and culture sector, such as those from low-income backgrounds, from ethnically diverse backgrounds and D/deaf and disabled practitioners.

We note that informal, self-organised and peer-to-peer professional development activities, such as mentoring, are central to the health of the sector although often under-acknowledged and under-resourced. This is further evidenced in Part 2, Section Seven, on Sustaining and Organising.

Key findings for Creating and Making

• Artists working with Live Art are interdisciplinary and value collaboration with individuals and organisations outside of the arts.
• Artists working with Live Art value research and process-based approaches, which allow artists to experiment with form and different ways of working. 
• There is rich and varied provision of professional development for artists within the UK Live Art sector, delivered through formal organised activity as well as peer support.
• There has been limited professional development provision for writers, curators and producers working with Live Art.

Footnotes

30. Of the 225 respondents to Q17 of the 2019 survey of individuals, 145 respondents had participated in and/or organised Live Art professional development programmes.

31. See TBR, ‘Livelihoods of Visual Artists: Summary Report’, London: Arts Council England, 2018, pp.13–16, https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/Livelihoods%20of%20Visual%20Artists%20Summary%20Report.pdf.

32. In 2020, LADA established the Katherine Araniello Bursary Awards, in memory of legendary artist and disability activist Katherine Araniello. The bursary is for two unapologetically radical and politicised ‘early career’ artists who work in Live Art and identify as disabled.

33. Kimberly Allen Jocey Quinn, Sumi Hollingworth, Athena Rose, ‘Doing Diversity and Evading Equality: The Case of Student Work Placements in the Creative Sector’, Yvette Taylor (ed.) Educational Diversity, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp.180-200.

Section Three: Higher Education

A. Intersections of Live Art and higher education

Our research emphasised that the intersection between Live Art and higher education departments in Theatre and Performance and Fine Art is extremely significant. Through our consultation process and in our 2019 survey of individuals, participants expressed the importance, value and high stakes of the relationship between the sector and higher education, from articulating Live Art as an artistic practice and art historical category to professional development and workforce cross-subsidy.

The development of the UK Live Art sector was linked through policy to higher education from its inception, with the Arts Council in London making engagement with higher education a condition of funding for a new development agency for Live Art in 1999.³⁴ At the time, other than a few institutions such as Dartington College of Arts, Nottingham Trent University, the University of Ulster and Cardiff School of Art and Design, there was little sustained provision for non-mainstream experimental performance-based practices. Specifically, there was a lack of provision for emerging artists and arts workers working with Live Art in London. Addressing the need in London became part of the initial scope for establishing the Live Art Development Agency (LADA).

There was deep recognition from participants in our research of the important role that LADA has played in increasing awareness and access to non-mainstream experimental performance practices for students, researchers and teachers in higher education. Since LADA’s beginnings, it has successfully advocated for and developed strong links with higher education, through various partnership projects as well as through its Study Room and publications. East End collaborations, a decade-long project with Queen Mary University of London (1999-2009), Performance Matters (2009–2012) a collaboration with Roehampton University and Goldsmiths, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the launch of MA Live Art at Queen Mary, University of London in 2018, have offered opportunities for students, artists and academics to engage in practice-based research, documentation, professional development and knowledge exchange. LADA’s impressive public archive, Study Room guides, bookshop and publishing partnership with Intellect has been key in supporting the recognition of Live Art as an art historical category within higher education and increased access to the documentation of performance and Live Art practices for students and researchers.

Examples of sectoral partnerships and collaborations in higher education include: Dr Paul Clarke, Prof Simon Jones and Prof Nick Kaye’s Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project ‘Performing Documents’, exploring knowledge transfer from the Live Art and Arnolfini Archives in Bristol, and Compass’ partnership with the BA (Hons) Performing Arts Course at Leeds Beckett University.

B. Teaching and research

The study of Live Art in higher education sits across a variety of disciplines. Through our ‘Higher Education’ roundtables and wider desk research, we noted a spread of institutions and departments across the UK working with Live Art. Artists, organisations, practices and methodologies associated with Live Art appear across curricula in theatre, fine art, visual and digital cultures, and dance, and across undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate programmes.³⁵

In our research consultations, it was noted that the term Live Art is not always used in the context of higher education and instead terms like experimental performance, performance art, visual culture and contemporary performance practice are employed. The provision of Live Art in an institution is dependent, to some degree, on the individual research and teaching interests of lecturers and how this intersects with departmental and wider institutional cultures. Live Art is contextualised in a range of ways, from gender and disability studies to socially-engaged and spatial practices. It is studied through practice-based and scholarly modules and taught as an art historical category.

Mainly work in higher education. Live Art over twenty-plus years has fundamentally expanded the possibilities / options for the work I do with my students, and the models available to them for thinking, doing and imagining in their own work.

Respondent, 2019 survey of individuals

Consultees noted that the methodological approaches they associate with Live Art, including an emphasis on openness, experimentation between critical thinking and creative practice to enact change, were incredibly productive for their pedagogical approaches with students. We also note that a number of higher education departments undertake important work in connecting students with arts organisations through internships, work placements, industry input to modules, and collaborative doctoral awards.³⁶

Live Art’s approach to embodied research also sits well with broader practice-based research approaches that gained legitimisation in higher education in the late 1990s and 2000s.³⁷ From our research roundtables on higher education, we have found that practices and artists associated with Live Art are important to teaching and research because they embolden students and academics to explore beyond their preconceived ideas about art and performance making, and foster experiences of creative and cultural practice as socially-engaged and alive. 

Consultees repeatedly noted that the provision for Live Art within higher education is under threat, not only from increasing pressure on studio provision and budgets, but also the increased emphasis on student experience, and particularly employability.  While employability has been on the UK government’s agenda since the late 1990s, over the last decade it has increasingly moved to the centre of policy decisions, with demands placed on higher education to prove that it offers students ‘value for money’ in relation to the labour market.³⁸ At the same time, the conditions of the cultural labour market have been the subject of critical inquiry by a range of scholars and activists who have argued that the challenge graduates face is not necessarily due to a lack of skills developed by individuals through higher education. Instead, it reflects the structural inequities of the cultural labour market itself, which is marked by lower economic prospects for graduates because of an oversupply of workers, precarious working conditions and an inequity of access to opportunities. ³⁹

These economic and policy shifts in higher education have been accompanied by a withdrawal of support for experimental and critical practices and an emphasis on more traditional arts training provisions. Our consultees reported the impact of shrinking departmental budgets on artists working with Live Art to access support, space and share their practice with students, reducing Live Art’s visibility in higher education and hence making it more challenging to argue for its value. This has put pressure on the provision of Live Art in some UK institutions. Of the disciplinary representation in our consultations, it appears this shift is being felt most acutely in theatre and performance departments, where practices and pedagogies drawn from Live Art have had a healthy presence over the last twenty years.

C. Workforce and professional development and cross-subsidy

Our 2019 survey of individuals illustrates a highly qualified sector. Of the 216 respondents to our question on educational qualifications, 93% of respondents held an undergraduate or postgraduate degree (Q43, SurvInd).

• 28% (61) completed an undergraduate degree
• 65% (140) completed a postgraduate degree

This reinforces existing data on the creative and cultural industries which shows that workers tend to be highly trained. For example, in 2015 almost 60% of those working in music, performing and visual arts held a degree or equivalent.⁴⁰

Respondents were also asked if they had undertaken a higher education qualification that directly informed their work with Live Art (Q12, SurvInd). Over half (55%) of the 258 respondents to this question responded yes. Higher education plays a central role in the development of emerging and or returning artists and arts workers in the Live Arts sector.

Cross-subsidy of the Live Art sector

We need to talk about the intersection between Live Art and academia: how many artists turn to academia for a regular income, how academia creates barriers to the free exchange of information and knowledge, how academia exploits its workers, and how it perpetuates a culture of ‘public engagement activities’ (including showing, documenting or talking about art) being done for free, for audiences of other people in academic institutions. 

Respondent, 2019 survey of individuals

We also note that higher education plays a central role in the employment of artists. From our 2019 survey of individuals, of the 225 respondents to our question about working with organisations outside the arts sector, 70% had worked with universities (Q23, SurvInd). Through our consultations, we found that higher education plays a central role in cross-subsidising artists through hourly, fractional and fixed term contracts.

As the function of the university becomes increasingly wedded to employability agendas, there appears to be continuing government pressure on degrees that deliver low economic value in terms of graduate earnings. A decade of shifts in funding structures to higher education, particularly the defunding of arts provision, look set to continue, raising serious concerns for the Live Art sector in relation to artists and arts workers entering the sector, cross-subsidy for those working in the Live Art sector, audience development, and resourcing.

An emphasis by higher education management on employability may offer potential terrain for the Live Art sector and those working with Live Art in higher education to partner and foreground the alternative value and contribution of arts and cultural work, particularly in relation to active citizenship and public engagement, while also critically interrogating the ways both entrench or reproduce problematic aspects of sectoral working practices and values.

Key findings for Higher Education

• Live Art in the UK has both benefited from and contributed to the teaching, research and development of experimental, performance practices within higher education. 
• People who work in the Live Art sector are highly qualified.
• Higher education has played an important role in supporting and cross-subsidising organisations and individuals working in the Live Art sector.
• Resources for arts provision within higher education, including departments that work with Live Art, are under particular stress at this time.

Footnotes

34. Elyssa Livergant and Cecilia Wee in conversation with Lois Keidan, London, 16 February 2021.

35. While it is beyond the scope of this research to map all instances of the appearance of Live Art in UK higher education curricular, there have been several publications pointing to its pervasiveness, including the special edition of Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, 11/2 (2020) entitled ‘Training for Performance Art and Live Art’, guest edited by Heike Roms and Bryan Brown. 

36. See materials from Liz Tomlin’s Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded Incubate: Propagate Network, https://incubate-propagate.com, and her unpublished research paper ‘Incubate: Propagate: Networked Ecologies of New Performance Making’, 2017, http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/151581/1/151581.pdf 

37. See Robin Nelson (ed.), Practice as Research: Practice, Protocols, Pedagogies and Resistances, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp 3–22. Nelson traces the rise of creative practice as a key methodology of research in higher education in the UK. 

38. See Ronald W. McQuaid and Colin Lindsay, ‘The Concept of Employability’, Urban Studies, 42/2 (February 2005), pp.197–219 and Vicki Belt, Paul Drake and Katherine Chapman, ‘Employability Skills: A Research and Policy Briefing’, London: UK Commission for Employment and Skills, 2010, https://www.educationandemployers.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/employability-skills-policy-briefing-ukces.pdf

39. See Daniel Aston and Catherine Noonan (eds), Cultural Work and Higher Education, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp. 1–21.

40. Department of Culture, Media and Sport, ‘Creative Industries: Focus on Employment’, London: Office for National Statistics, June 2016, p.14–15, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/534305/Focus_on_Employment_revised_040716.pdf

Section Four: Audiences and Influences

A. Geography and reach

The Live Art sector produces fearless artists and producers who can go on to make work for a variety of audiences and contexts. 

Focus group participant, 2020

The Live Art sector in the UK has strong regional, national and global reach.

Respondents to our 2019 survey of individuals indicate clusters of activity within London, Scotland and the North West. Of the 258 respondents, 34% are based in London, 12% in the North West and 11% in Scotland (Q6, SurvInd). We also note 8% of respondents are based in the South East and South West respectively. 5% of respondents were based in the Midlands and in Yorkshire, with 4% in the East of England and the North East respectively.  

We note that a small number of respondents (22) are not based in the UK. 5% of respondents are based in the EU, 3% of respondents are based in Australia, Brazil and North America.  

There were very few responses from individuals working in Wales and Northern Ireland, which is also reflected in data from our 2021 organisational questionnaire. Following further consultations with artists, researchers and organisations in these nations, which indicate a healthy presence of Live Art activity, the lack of response to our 2019 survey of individuals could reflect some of the limits of the reach of the survey and the usage of the term Live Art. 

Of the twenty-two respondents to our 2021 organisational questionnaire, six organisations are based in London, two in the East of England, five in the South East, two in the Midlands, three in the North, one in Yorkshire and one in the South West (Q5, OrgQues).

One organisation is based across London, the South East and Europe; and one in Scotland. There were no respondents from Wales and Northern Ireland.

Some organisational respondents qualified where their work takes place. For example, a London-based group includes people located across the UK; another in the South East has a permanent London platform partner.

By way of context, of the seventy-nine organisations who identified with the disciplinary sub-classifier ‘Visual Arts – Live & Performance Art’ and applied for National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) funding from Arts Council England for the period of 2018–2022, twenty-six (37%) were based in London, eleven (14%) in the North East and North West respectively, seven (9%) in Yorkshire and the Humber, six (8%) in the South West, five (6%) in West Midlands, and four (5%) in the South East and East England respectively. However, as Live Art is not a disciplinary funding category in and of itself, it is not possible to determine through Arts Council England’s data on NPOs the degree to which Live Art and performance are core to these organisations’ offer or commitment. The wording of the sub-classifier ‘Live & Performance Art’ is also not necessarily consistent with the use of the term Live Art.  

Further contextual data from Arts Council England shows us the following: 329 of the applications to the National Lottery Project Grants programme in 2019–20 (successful and unsuccessful) included at least one of the following markers related to Live Art: The key word ‘Live Art’ or ‘Performance Art’ in the application project title, applicant name or project description, and/or the sub-classifier ‘Disciplinary type – Visual Art-Live & Performance Art’ or ‘sub art form – Visual Art-Live Art’. Of these 329 applicants, 136 (41%) were based in the ACE-defined area of London, 105 (32%) in the North, 70 in the South East (21%), 38 (12%) in the Midlands and 22 (7%) in the South West.  

Regional and national trends

The relatively small scale of the UK Live Art sector in relation to the geographic spread of activity and resource means that singular shifts in areas, such as the departure of an individual or the closure of a space or organisation, has a significant impact on the provision and circulation of Live Art regionally and nationally.

The lack of dedicated Live Art venues and the rapid turnover of staff in non-Live Art specific venues creates challenges for artists, producers and receiving venues in working with Live Art practices. Issues include a lack of specialist marketing and production support for those working with Live Art which has a knock-on effect on audience development and public engagement. 

There is a desire from the sector for stronger intra- and inter-regional collaboration and sustained partnership working.

It is beyond the scope of this report to offer a detailed breakdown of regional and national activities.

Below we offer a brief snapshot drawing on regional and national focus groups, the qualitative and quantitative data gathered from the 2019 survey of individuals and the 2021 organisational questionnaire, our desk research, and wider consultations.  

Scotland

• There is a concentration of sectoral infrastructure in Glasgow and productive collaborations across organisations and initiatives of different scales.

For a sector that does so brilliantly to reflect the diversity of its artists, I feel that it does not go far enough to support and encourage a diversity of geography. I live in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and I feel like this. If I were a Live Artist who lived in rural Scotland, I would imagine I would feel even more of a disconnect. 

Respondent based in Scotland, 2019 survey of individuals

Northern Ireland

• Live Art activity centres in Belfast and Derry, however, flows between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are central to the health of activity.
• Bbeyond has been, and continues to be, a central organisation for the development of Live Art in Northern Ireland.

North East

• There is a sense that resources are heavily weighted towards Baltic and there could be more of a spread of support for small to mid-sized organisations.

‘Live Art’ is a term that is not really used by artists working with Live Art. How do the practices that could benefit from support from the sector engage if they don’t identify with it?

Respondent based in the North East, 2019 survey of individuals

North West and Yorkshire

• Interregional networks for touring and networking are present but would benefit from further resourcing and modelling.

At this stage most of my work has been self-initiated. It would be nice to see more opportunities for artists like myself in the North West. I recently performed at Emergency in Manchester and have been involved with SPILL YER TEA in Liverpool. We need more platforms such as these.

Respondent based in the North West/Yorkshire, 2019 survey of individuals

Wales

• The impact of the closure of the Time-Based Studies Department at Cardiff School of Art and Design (CSAD) and the restructuring of Aberystwyth’s Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies has yet to be fully felt in the sector.
• There is a concentration of activity in Cardiff.

Midlands

• The sector has articulated a lack of regular provision, platforms and support in the Midlands which impacts a sense of community and opportunities for creative and professional development.

• Birmingham is home to the Fierce Festival. The festival identifies the need for meaningful regional artist development, further resources are needed to invest in and support this activity.

My practice has fed into Live Art in Birmingham in particular as I saw gaps and holes for artists here and understanding what I would want as an artist, set about creating events and opportunities for other artists to experiment, get mentoring, connect with other artists and organisations, support artists, source good documentation and funds for paying artists etc.…Due to our own life restraints we have had to fold but we continue to support other artists where we can. It’s a very precarious type of work so at the bare minimum, peer support gives at least some foundation of strength to each other to keep pushing. 

Respondent based in the Midlands, 2019 survey of individuals

London

• London is the primary base for most artists who work in the sector and for the provision for Live Art. The physical presence of the Live Art Development Agency and Artsadmin and the high concentration of higher education providers adds to the profile of this activity. Access to cross-art sector opportunities is also greatest in London.
• The impact of factors associated with gentrification and financialisation, such as less availability of space and higher rents, are particularly acute.

We’ve lost loads of people, their knowledge, experience because people realise it’s no longer affordable to be here anymore. I get that we need to fund other parts of the country, but we can’t just defund London. We need better structures in London.

London focus group participant, 2020

South East (including East of England)

• There are markers and outposts of a lively sector in the South East that were not there 8 years ago, but more support is needed to strengthen and share resources.

Live Art and performance has created a vital sense of queer community in the place where we live.

Respondent based in the South East, 2019 survey of individuals

South West

• The Arnolfini’s shift away from its live programme in 2009 contributed to disinvestment in Live Art within the region. This continues to have long term effects on the energy and development of the sector in the South West.
• Bristol is home to In Between Time. The festival identifies the need for meaningful regional artist development, further resources are needed to invest in and support this activity.

Working in the South West outside Bristol sometimes feels like being in rural isolation in the socio-economic sense. Is Live Art an urban pastime? There is such a thing as being rural and experimental.

Respondent based in the South West, 2019 survey of individuals

Reach and Collaboration

Organisations working with Live Art reach publics locally, nationally, internationally and increasingly online.

For most of the twenty-two organisations participating in our 2021 organisational questionnaire, working locally is important to their practice, with seventeen working locally often and most of the time (Q6, OrgQues). A number of organisations stated they often work regionally (thirteen) and nationally (fourteen). International work is important but slightly less prevalent, with eleven organisations indicating that they often work internationally. Online presentation of work was important to respondents; all organisations present their work online and for sixteen respondents doing so happens often and most of the time.

It is, however, important to read the above figures in the context of the timing of the 2021 organisational questionnaire (Spring 2021) and its relationship to the COVID-19 pandemic. In further comments on this question some respondents indicated that, because of COVID-19, their regional, national and international work had stopped and they would have answered differently at another time. Similarly, respondents indicated that because of COVID-19 they were primarily working online.

Through consultations and desk research, we note a robust commitment from those working in the sector to engage locally. Equally, there is ample evidence that UK-based practitioners and organisations working with Live Art have a national and international outlook which is matched by national and international interest in Live Art from the UK. 

48% of the 225 respondents to our 2019 survey of individuals indicated that they receive ‘commissions and/or invitations from national and international promoters’  sometimes, often or very often, 22% rarely received such invitations and 30% never received invitations (Q26, SurvInd). 

Touring

Touring can offer audiences and venues valuable exposure to Live Art practices, however the sector has identified touring as an activity that presents some challenges. Live Art is often context-specific and therefore touring can demand a more involved and collaborative quality of hosting than conventional get-ins, as is discussed in the Getting It Out There symposium and publication on the future of touring and distribution for contemporary theatre and Live Art.⁴¹

Following our consultations, we note that the high turnover of marketing and producing staff in receiving venues impacts on building audiences for Live Art practices.  Producing and technical capacity within receiving venues to support the hybridity of Live Art practices in relation to form, duration and technical scope also creates additional pressures and challenges. Touring is often cross-subsidised by the artist and/or producer as the work of organising tours is labour intensive. As a result, touring is by and large only financially viable when artists have reached a level of visibility and acclaim in their careers to achieve tour fees (or additional funding) commensurate with the labour involved in tour organisation.

There is currently an absence of infrastructure in the UK Live Art sector to support rural practices and touring but a desire from the sector to develop this area. Home Live Art’s partnership with rural specialist arts organisation Applause Rural Touring (2019) involved the co-commissioning of an outdoor work to be toured to locations across the South East, an example of how Live Art practices can be shared outside urban locations. Similarly, there is scope to evaluate the effectiveness of Battersea Arts Centre’s Collaborative Touring Network (2013–17); the sector would benefit from further research in this area. 

International collaboration

Artists and practitioners working in the UK have significantly shaped international discourse and practice in Live Art. Work by artists and organisations working with Live Art in the UK has informed the development of initiatives such as the international Live Art Prize, convened by the ANTI Festival in Finland. Similarly, UK Live Art practitioners and organisations have contributed to presentations and curatorial frameworks of the independent, ‘no-budget project’ Venice Performance Art Week, directed by Vest & Page. 

The UK Live Art sector also demonstrates strong international collaboration, with data from our 2019 survey of individuals indicating that of 225 respondents, 71% collaborate with artists who work with Live Art from across the world sometimes, often or very often (Q21, SurvInd). Similarly, 45% of 225 respondents indicated that they had both attended and presented or supported work presented at a number of international festivals,including ANTI Festival (Finland), Live Collision (Ireland), Venice International Performance Week (Italy) and Push festival (Canada) (Q19, SurvInd). 

Despite positive engagement by UK artists and practitioners working with Live Art with international scenes, a respondent to our 2019 survey of individuals said:

My experience of the British funding context in comparison to the Canadian one is that there is very little support for artists to perform outside of the UK. I see this happening almost never for artists who are not extremely established. This means that there’s an insular quality to the sector and that artists making amazing work here are not known outside of the UK. This seems to be a real fault of the funding structures available.

Respondent, 2019 survey of individuals

This comment about the financial barriers to international mobility for UK Live Art practitioners is reflected in our data analysis. Correlation analysis for our 2019 survey of individuals shows that there is a weak relationship between the number of years respondents have worked in the sector (Q5, SurvInd) and whether respondents received commissions and/or invitations from national and international promoters (Q26, SurvInd). This means that the longer artists work within the Live Art sector, they are slightly more likely to receive international and/or national attention. 

Whilst a number of Live Art UK members have participated in international collaborative programmes, including In Between Time’s European collaborative project Up to Nature and Artsadmin’s partnership Art Climate Transition, a European co-operation project on ecology, climate change and social transition, the comparatively low number of responses to questions about travelling to international festivals and platforms underscores the need to ensure that international opportunities are accessible for artists and practitioners in the UK Live Art sector. The expected effects of Brexit on artists and practitioners working with/in the UK Live Art sector will be further discussed in Part 2, Section Eight, Post-March 2020 conditions. 

B. Publics and influence

Artists and organisations working with Live Art present their work through a range of contexts including live presentations and processes, encounters, documentation, publications and digital media. Artists and organisations working with Live Art are uniquely invested in creating a range of opportunities for the public to engage with their work and generate new understandings and experiences. The nature of the encounter between artist and audience or artwork and participant is of paramount concern for artists and organisations working with Live Art. Similarly, digital experimentation continues to inform understanding of relationships with audiences in arts and culture more broadly.  

Artists and practitioners who work with Live Art move from private to public processes of practice, through different artform contexts, bringing Live Art to a broad range of spaces over varying timescales. Jo Fong’s Ways of Being Together is an example of how Live Art offers audiences a range of ways to be inspired, challenged and connected through its experimentation with form and engagement with diverse artists. The project draws on choreography to bring expert and non-expert performers together to explore belonging and community through a series of intimate discussions, workshop exercises and performances.

From 2015 to 2020, Live Art UK undertook research about audiences as part of the Audience Agency’s Audience Finder toolkit. The Audience Agency’s 2018–19 evaluation of their work with Live Art UK drew on a survey of 241 respondents from the audiences of five organisations/projects: Artsadmin, Cambridge Junction, Fierce Festival, hÅb/Word of Warning and Live Art Development Agency, noting that the demographic profile of respondents was relatively young and ethnically diverse with 61% aged between 25 and 44, and 25% not identifying as ‘White British’. Audience Agency’s research articulate ‘an appreciation for the special way that artist and audience interact in Live Art and for the way that the sector proactively aims to present arts that is different from the mainstream’.⁴²

The motivations and impacts of Live Art on audiences, as reported in the Audience Agency research, corroborate findings from our research conversations and 2019 survey of individuals that Live Art is valued by audiences as having a unique creative offer. Moreover, our research finds that artists and practitioners working with Live Art are also invested in experiencing Live Art. According to our 2019 survey of individuals, of the 258 respondents to the question ‘I attend Live Art events as an audience member’, 76% of respondents said they attended every 2 months or more regularly (Q13, SurvInd). Of the 258 responses to a question about motivations for attending Live Art events in our 2019 survey of individuals, 78% agreed with the statement ‘to be intellectually stimulated’, 76% cited ‘to experience and think about different perspectives’, 74% said ‘to be provoked and challenged’ (Q14, SurvInd). A slightly lower percentage of respondents said they attend Live Art events ‘for professional reasons’ (70%).

Collaborative and participatory practice

Individuals and organisations working with Live Art value a variety of settings and contexts. Live Art often inhabits hyperlocal as well as international contexts, from neighbourhood placemaking and socially-engaged projects to clubnights, and from highly visible festivals to public programmes in major cultural institutions. Often inviting non-professionals and members of the public to participate in the creation of narratives about where they call ‘home’, Live Art can offer audiences new frames to experience their local community, contributing to creativity in the everyday.  

In 2016, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation launched a multi-year inquiry into the ‘civic role’ of arts organisations, emphasising the role of co-production, everyday creativity and hyperlocality as key to organisations re-imagining their civic value to communities.⁴³ Collaboration and participation are about co-creation, expanding the limits of creative processes and making space for more voices to be heard. At the same time, there is a risk that collaborative and participatory practices can inadvertently reinforce or create new power differentials or mask existing hierarchies. We note through our desk research and consultations that the way artists working with Live Art navigate these tricky spaces has arisen as an important concern for the sector.

With its emphasis on the live encounter, and on breaking down boundaries (between art and life or audience and performer), Live Art has been at the forefront of developing new performative forms and possibilities for collaboration and participation. This operates at an institutional level and at the level of individual projects. The value of socially-engaged practice has been increasingly championed by a variety of voices, as a way of increasing access to the arts, addressing important social issues in communities, supporting civic engagement and also as a mode for aesthetic experimentation and inventive creativity. Academic interest in social engagement and participation has often been informed by Live Art practices in the UK; this has been further detailed in Jen Harvie’s, Fair Play – Art, Performance and Neoliberalism, which examines the politics of participation in contemporary performance practices.⁴⁴

The centrality of bodies and encounters with the everyday in Live Art practices brings with it questions of relationality, identity and ethics. Oreet Ashery’s The World Is Flooding, commissioned by Tate, was developed in collaboration with the organisations Freedom from Torture, UK Lesbian and Gay Immigrant Group (UKLGIG), and Portugal Prints (a therapeutic arts programme in Brent). Artists working with Live Art often push at the boundaries of participation and stage critical questions about power dynamics. The Canadian performance company Mammalian Diving Reflex, for example, in their participatory performance Haircuts by Children, which has been presented at Fierce festival, Wunderbar festival and the London International Festival of Theatre, engages intergenerational audiences and challenges conceptions of training and professionalism. Through his workshops, performances and discussions, artist Daniel Oliver delves into the ‘awkwardness’ of participation and connects this with a celebration of neurodiversity. 

One of the impulses behind a number of participatory projects is to explore and expand civic engagement and municipalism, as well as the complex (often fraught) currents of regeneration and placemaking.

For example, Scottee & Friends’ Would Like to Meet creates opportunities for local people on a particular UK street to get to know their neighbours. Likewise, the commissioning of Dutch artist Jeanne van Heeswijk by the Liverpool Biennial provided opportunities for people in Anfield to rethink the future of their neighbourhood following a failed large-scale regeneration project.⁴⁵ In 2018, the Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) was awarded funding by Arts Council England’s Ambition for Excellence scheme to build a network of organisations and projects exploring the idea of co-creation in connection with cultural participation. Although beyond the scope of this report, there are important questions to be asked about the practice of culture-led regeneration and cultural democracy, particularly in relation to who is emboldened to participate and to what degree, given the impact of gentrification and broader inequities within UK society.⁴⁶ These concerns are further amplified in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and looking ahead to its potential social and economic impacts.  

The imperative for quantitative measurement of social impact as a part of funding monitoring and reporting processes can be difficult for artists and organisations working with collaborative and participatory practices. The timescales of projects working with Live Art might be longer than is practicable to measure, and what’s produced may be intangible, such as the development of a network of relationships within a community or a shift in public or private discussion. Furthermore, whilst the aim of a participatory work may be to produce a sense of civicness, participatory approaches to Live Art also entail work that is more spiky or confrontational. The collective Liberate Tate, for example, started as a participatory workshop at Tate Modern on art and activism that transformed into a programme of ‘creative disobedience’ aimed at agitating for Tate to stop accepting donations from oil companies.

Throughout our research we have noted that without material resources, collaborative or participatory work may be confined to temporary, fleeting encounters. But with the proper support, it can be transformative for artists, organisations and wider publics in supporting structural change. 

Audience development: case studies

Approaches to audience development in the UK Live Art sector are diverse, responsive and framed as part of creative and critical discourse. Live Art’s focus on cross-artform exchange and experimentation is echoed in the fluid ways in which the sector encourages engagement and participation with publics and wider cultural and social contexts.

Artists and organisations work together to understand and devise strategies for audience recruitment and development that are relevant to the specific shape of artist projects, context of the location, organisational partnerships and capacities of producing organisations. Through our focus groups and research conversations, we find that nuance and sensitivity to the needs of a project are fundamental to developing audiences for Live Art, and that as the audience encounter is such a vital constituent part of Live Art, a project’s public outcomes may appear differently in different locations, requiring a change in audience development tactics.

In order to further illustrate the diversity of approaches to developing audiences for Live Art, we present three project case studies.

Case study: The Posh Club by Duckie, London and the South East, 2013–present  

The Posh Club is a glamorous performance and social club for older people held in five locations across London and the South East, conceived and produced by LGBTQ performance company Duckie. Posh Clubs take place at each location in three blocks of ten weeks. The events are held in church halls and community centres and styled as a tongue-in-cheek ‘posh’ 1940s afternoon tea with live performances by local artists from the queer community, volunteer waiters in black tie, vintage crockery, in-house pianists and lots of dancing. All Posh Clubs are ticketed at £5, including performances, drinks and snacks.

Target audience and numbers: The target audience for The Posh Club is older people, especially those from working class backgrounds, who worked in manual and/or caring professions. One of the intentions of The Posh Club is to ‘care for the carers, because often these people would be the ones in their careers who would be serving other people’.⁴⁷ In 2018–2019, The Posh Club’s live audiences totalled 8,712 over 80 events, and in 2019–2020, this number was 13,180 attendances at over 115 events. 

Audience recruitment process: The Posh Club considers the choice of location to be fundamental to the project, actively seeking venues and spaces such as community centres and church halls, rather than arts venues, for their flexibility, affordability, and their lack of associated ‘cultural baggage’. They especially work in collaboration with spaces that have close, existing relationships with working class and ethnically diverse communities.

Outreach involves activities ranging from standing outside Marks and Spencer in a fancy suit with a box of chocolates and personally inviting people to a party; through to distributing flyers. As potential Posh Club audiences may have limited desire to communicate through email or social media, initial invitations are followed up with individual phone calls to highlight the personal nature of the invitation. The Posh Club also works with care homes, day centres, churches and choirs, giving talks to introduce the events to their target audience of older people. 

Further activities to maintain engagement: In collaboration with local community groups, The Posh Club’s large network of volunteers befriend attendees for the event, ensuring that they are safely collected from their home to the venue, spending the afternoon with them and accompanying them back home.   

Case study: Four Legs Good, Jack Tan, Compass Festival, Leeds 2018

Four Legs Good was a contemporary revival of the medieval animal trials which took place in Britain and throughout Europe, where animals who had been accused of committing crimes were brought to court, provided defence counsel and prosecuted before a judge. For Compass 2018, artist Jack Tan reimagined Leeds Town Hall as the site of a fictional Department of Animal Justice and staged a series of live ‘moot’ animal trials. Leeds Town Hall users encountered what appeared to be a working Animal Court evidenced by signage, court leaflets, legal heritage displays and a court website. This culminated in a day of live hearings where practising barristers/advocates argued claims brought by or against their animal clients. As with all Compass events, Four Legs Good was free to attend.

Target audience and numbers: As well as targeting members of the general public, Compass and the artist mapped communities of interest as part of the audience development process, identifying animal owners, lawyers, legal academics, students, animal welfare and environmental organisations as key constituents. The exhibition received an extremely positive response from the public and the courtroom was packed for the day of live trials and hearings, with over 1,000 people attending. For context, in 2018–19, live audiences for Compass’ work including the 2018 festival were 13,297, with online audiences of 97,540. 

Audience recruitment process: During his artist residency, the artist worked with Compass to determine which animals and issues would make a compelling mixture of cases. The search for animal owners gave Compass a context to connect with networks of special interest groups including the National Sheep Association, the Canal and River Trust, and a parliamentary working group with an interest in dangerous dogs. 

In addition, Compass worked with barristers and judges in Leeds and London to disseminate information about the project through their professional networks, and legal media outlets. The artist hosted meetings and forums with law academics and students at Leeds University and Leeds Beckett University. The project was also profiled through festival channels including social media and the festival website.

Further activities to maintain engagement: The project allowed law students contact with professional solicitors and barristers, and some of the students secured professional development opportunities and internships through participating in the project. Student placements were used to further engage the legal communities at both universities.

The nature of the exhibition ‘taking over’ public spaces in Leeds Town Hall worked to generate conversation amongst staff, visitors and service users at Leeds Town Hall.

Case study: a resistant body by Bhebhe&Davies for Artsadmin’s Summer Intensive, London 2018

Artists Bhebhe&Davies (Nandi Bhebhe and Phoebe Davies) led Artsadmin’s Summer Intensive working with a group of emerging artists over the course of a week. The project brought participants together to explore how bodies can occupy space in real life and online, examining a plurality of voices and experiences, acknowledging difference and power dynamics, collectivity and solidarity.

The group worked together with Bhebhe&Davies and Black Shuck (a moving image co-operative) to explore movement, sound and camera direction to develop a series of short online videos, concluding with a shared outcome for an invited audience.

Artsadmin’s Summer Intensives provide a way for young people and artists to take part in a free, immersive learning experience in contemporary performance practice. 

Target audience and numbers: The target audience for the Summer Intensive was a group of nine 16-25 year-olds primarily based in London. Artsadmin identified and brought together a range of participants who might not usually get involved in contemporary performance practices. 

Audience recruitment process: Participants were recruited through face-to-face introductory workshops with the artists and producer at local and London-wide sixth form colleges. Further recruitment was undertaken via an online open call for participants. Young people were then invited to attend a taster session at Artsadmin’s building, Toynbee Studios, undertaken over three hours with the artists and producer, so that they could find out more about the artists’ approach. A core group of young people then went on to participate in the Summer Intensive.

Further activities to maintain engagement: Participants were encouraged to reflect on and share their experiences, with opportunities to contribute to blog posts, social media takeovers and Artsadmin’s wider programme. 

The three project case studies presented here illustrate a range of methods and strategies for audience development for projects working with Live Art. Both The Posh Club and the Artsadmin’s Summer Intensive led by Bhebhe&Davies have clearly defined target demographics. Meanwhile, Jack Tan’s Four Legs Good connected with specialist networks to reach communities interested in the project’s themes, as well as successfully reaching general arts audiences. The Posh Club and Four Legs Good integrate audience development into the artistic conception and delivery of the project. In all three cases, audience development work has involved detailed partnership working and extensive attention to marketing and communications through a range of channels to reach the target audiences. 

Whilst many Live Art practices are presented on more conventional stages, these project case studies demonstrate working with non-traditional art spaces and institutions within local communities. By developing partnerships with community halls, a town hall and schools, these project case studies show how Live Art can connect with audiences and participants where they may already have existing relationships. Moreover, these case studies highlight that high levels of dialogue and collaboration between artists and organisations within and beyond the Live Art sector are often required in order to successfully bring Live Art practices to audiences. 

C. Young People

In her Study Room Guide for LADA on Live Art and Kids, Sibylle Peter writes, ‘[d]ue to the regime of health & safety and a general tendency towards over-protection in the middle classes, children today have less and less experience of running free. With this background Live Art practices may appear particularly daring and therefore attractive. They can provide a much-needed free space for kids and adults to learn how to take risks together’.⁴⁸ Although it is often assumed that Live Art is not suitable for young people, Peters outlines in her Study Room Guide how children may be avid audiences and makers of Live Art. There is a developing canon of Live Art centring young people that offers opportunity for intergenerational experience of Live Art. 

Live Art with young people can entail rich partnerships between young people, artists and institutions – allowing institutions to develop relationships with young people in their communities, in turn making a key contribution to youth audience development. For instance, Tim Etchells’s That Night Follows Day and Gob Squad’s Before Your Very Eyes were part of a series of projects with children for adult audiences commissioned by CAMPO, a Ghent-based arts centre in Belgium.

Festivals are also key sites for Live Art with young people to take place – Playing Up, a Live Art game for kids and adults by Sibylle Peters (developed in collaboration between LADA, Theatre of Research, and Tate Early Years and Families programme) has been played at numerous events and festivals across the world. Haphazard by hÅb is unique in being a UK festival of Live Art for ‘all ages’. Established in 2013, Haphazard is presented in partnership with Z-arts in Manchester, one of the UK’s few arts centres dedicated to children and young people. 

Young people also participate in Live Art projects and organisations as advisors – these structures may be part of a programme of creative work created and led by young people, as with the Artsadmin Youth Board, or may be complementary to an organisation’s governance structure, as with the young board members at Contact in Manchester. Contact continues to orient its programming and ways of working in conversation with young people. Contact’s openness to diversity of artform, its rethinking of traditional power and governance structures, coupled with its commitment to working with arts workers from ethnically diverse backgrounds, has encouraged and grown participation from young people from ethnically diverse backgrounds, as audiences and artists of the future. 

Through its engagement with young people as audience, co-creators, makers and advisors, the Live Art sector supports young people’s creative voices and the development of their creative potential, creating pathways for young people to develop careers in the cultural sector. 

D. Sectoral visibility: influence, archive and documentation

The documentation and historicisation of Live Art has been an important part of sectoral activity that supports contextualisation of Live Art practices within creative education and beyond. 63% of the 225 respondents to our 2019 survey of individuals indicated that they had received significant reviews of their work in academic and non-academic publications (Q27, SurvInd). These processes of reviewing, documenting and archiving have been especially relevant to Live Art as a set of practices that are centred around the body, often ephemeral in nature, taking place outside conventional cultural spaces and sitting between artistic disciplines. 

The Live Art Archives at Bristol University (including the National Review of Live Art, Franko B, Greenroom, and Performance Magazine archives) and the British Library Live Art Collection (including the Performance Matters ⁴⁹Archive 2009-2014 and archives of artists such as Neil Bartlett and Rose English) are resources of national and international importance that archive the legacy of Live Art practices for practitioners, students and researchers. Similarly, LADA’s Study Room (London) and Wales’s Culture Colony (online) also hold important resources for the sector. Moreover, archives serve as a valuable means to learn about and experience the multitude of practices that exist under the banner of Live Art. Publicly accessible collections and archives of Live Art raise the visibility of experimental, performance-centred practices for students and researchers, as well as the broader arts and culture sector.

There are a range of contexts outside of archives and sector-focused activity where artists and organisations working with Live Art are referenced and documented. The increasing length of The Live Art Almanac(s), collections of found writings about and around Live Art that were originally published elsewhere, is a reflection of the various and extensive ways that Live Art is now being written about.⁵⁰ Of the 225 respondents to our 2019 survey of individuals, 63% have had their work referenced and quoted in mainstream media (Q29, SurvInd) and 70% have had their work referenced and quoted by creative and cultural institutions (Q28, SurvInd). The visibility of artists and organisations working with Live Art points to a growing interest in Live Art practices for audiences now and in the future. 

Key findings for Audiences and Influence

• Live Art in the UK has local, national and international reach, with clusters around London, the North West and Scotland, and in urban centres.  
• Artists working with Live Art in the UK undertake hyperlocal activity.
• Collaboration and participation are key audience development strategies for artists and organisations working with Live Art.
• Artists and organisations working with Live Art experiment with how young people can be equal collaborators in creative practices and processes.
• Practitioners working with Live Art value inter- and intra-regional networking and collaboration.
• The UK Live Art sector has supported the documentation and archiving of practices that have wider significance for contemporary art.

Footnotes

41. Mary Paterson and Theron Schmidt (eds.), Getting It Out There.

42. Jonathan Goodacre and Holly Jevons, ‘Live Art UK – Audience research report 2018/19’ London: Audience Agency, 2019. Source: Live Art UK archive, held by Live Art Development Agency, p. 6

43. Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (UK Branch), Rethinking Relationships: Phase One of the Inquiry into the Civic Role of Arts Organisations, 2017, https://civicroleartsinquiry.gulbenkian.org.uk/resources/rethinking-relationships-phase-one-of-the-inquiry-into-the-civic-role-of-arts-organisations

44. Jen Harvie, Fair Play – Art, Performance and Neoliberalism, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

45. Liverpool was at the heart of the controversial Housing Market Renewal (HMR) Pathfinders programme (2002-11) that aimed to demolish and ‘renew failing housing markets’ in the Midlands and the North of England. See Ian Cole and John Flint, ‘Addressing housing affordability, clearance and relocation issues in the Housing Market Renewal Pathfinders’, London: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2007 https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/addressing-housing-affordability-clearance-and-relocation-issues-housing-market-renewal 

46. As Nick Wilson, Jonathan Gross and Anna Bull explain, cultural democracy challenges hierarchies of cultural value and is when ‘people have the substantive social freedom to make versions of culture.’ See ‘Towards Cultural Democracy: promoting cultural capabilities for everyone’, London: Cultural Institute at Kings, 2017, p. 3 and p. 18, https://www.kcl.ac.uk/cultural/resources/reports/towards-cultural-democracy-2017-kcl.pd

47. Simon Casson in discussion with Elyssa Livergant, London, 5 May 2021.

48. Sibylle Peters, Live Art and Kids, Study Room Guide, London: Live Art Development Agency, 2017, p.15.

49. Performance Matters was a five-year creative research project on the cultural value of performance undertaken by LADA, University of Roehampton, and Goldsmiths  University of London. Performance Matters was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

50. The Live Art Almanac is published by the Live Art Development Agency, initiated in 2008 and now in its 6th iteration (an online edition).  https://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/resources/the-live-art-almanac-volume-6/  

Section Five: Demographics

Live Art has been the only cultural space that has supported me explicitly as a neurodiverse migrant cultural worker.

Respondent, 2019 survey of individuals

Here we present a snapshot of demographic data of about 258 individuals working in the UK Live Art sector. Through our 2019 survey of individuals, we collected data on respondents’ age, ethnicity, disability, and gender identity.⁵¹ The survey data collected does not easily facilitate an intersectional approach⁵² to data analysis. In other words, we are not able to identify how the protected characteristics of disability and gender are related and interdependent for a disabled woman.⁵³

Our 2019 survey of individuals included a question on legal status (Q42, SurvInd). Guided by the valuable work that is currently being undertaken by activist groups including Unis Resist Borders, Migrants Organise and Migrants in Culture, our survey collected data on legal status in order to draw attention to the significant contribution of migrant labour within the UK’s Live Art sector and the broader cultural sector, to recognise the legal complexities faced by migrants, and to help advocate for migrants’ rights.⁵⁴

Similarly, we collected data on respondents’ socio-economic backgrounds. The relationship between socio-economic background and access/participation in the arts has been a concern for artists and organisations working with Live Art, and in the arts and cultural sector more broadly.⁵⁵ Our 2019 survey of individuals asked respondents to identify the occupation of the main household earners (or primary caregivers) when they were aged 14 (Q44, SurvInd). This question helps us understand the socio-economic backgrounds of who works with/in Live Art, as is recommended by Jerwood Arts and the Bridge Group’s ‘Socio-Economic Diversity and Inclusion in the Arts: A Toolkit for Employers’.⁵⁶ From responses to this question, we found that occupations were varied and crossed all class indicators with regards to type of work, ranging from higher managerial, administrative and professional occupations; to intermediate occupations; small employers and self-employed; lower supervisory and technical occupations; semi-routine and routine occupations; the long-term unemployed and retired.⁵⁷

In order to contextualise the demographics of individuals working with/in the UK’s Live Art sector evidenced by our survey, we draw on a number of existing studies of workforce data, namely Creative Industries Federation ‘Creative Diversity’ report on the state of diversity in the UK’s creative industries (2017), Creative and Cultural Skills’ workforce analysis of England’s creative sector (2018), and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport ‘Sectors Economic Estimates’ (2019). 

Age: The majority of respondents were more than 30 years old 

Ethnicity: Responses indicate that the UK Live Art sector is more ethnically diverse than the broader UK creative workforce.

According to the ‘Creative and Cultural Skills Workforce Analysis 2018’, 12% of the UK workforce are from a ‘BAME’ (Black Asian Minority Ethnic) background and 9% of the UK’s creative workforce are from a ‘BAME’ background.⁵⁸

Disability: Responses indicate there are higher numbers of disabled people in the UK Live Art sector than other areas of the UK’s creative workforce. 

22% of respondents to our 2019 survey of individuals identify as disabled, whereas 12% of the UK’s creative workforce identify as disabled.⁵⁹

Gender: 54% of respondents are female.

Legal Status: 30% of respondents identify as EU nationals.

Respondents were able to tick up to two options for legal status, allowing opportunity for individuals to declare more than one nationality (Q42, SurvInd). We can understand this data as evidencing higher levels of non-UK nationals working with/in the Live Art sector (30%) than DCMS data on non-UK nationals working in the broader arts sector (11%). ⁶⁰

We note that this data was collected after the UK referendum to leave the European Union, but before the official exit date took place. Given the timing of our 2019 survey of individuals, responses to the question on legal status could also be interpreted as an expression of views about Brexit and national identity. 

Footnotes

51. We note the limits of this data – due to a flaw in survey design, survey results do not include data on sexual orientation.

52. The term ‘intersectional’ was conceived by Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw to describe how race, gender, age, class, disability and aspects of identity overlap and ‘intersect’ to produce advantage and disadvantage. 

53. Researchers working with student and staff equality data in higher education are providing useful guidelines for designing, collecting and analysing equality data from an intersectional perspective. See Ashlee Christoffersen, ‘Intersectional approaches to equality research and data’, London: Equality Challenge Unit, 2017, https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets.creode.advancehe-document-manager/documents/ecu/Research_and_data_briefing_2_Intersectional_approaches_to_equality_research_and_data_1579105654.pdf  

54. See Migrants in Culture, ‘What is the Impact of the Hostile Environment on the Cultural Sector?’, Research Report, 2019, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1C9l_OpGYzln1X9-1aMZ76jFDlsj8TQLl/view  

55. See Orian Brook, David O’Brien, and Mark Taylor, ‘Panic! Social Class, Taste and Inequalities in the Creative Industries’, London: Create London and Arts Emergency, 2018, https://createlondon.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Panic-Social-Class-Taste-and-Inequalities-in-the-Creative-Industries1.pdf    

56. Jerwood Arts and the Bridge Group, ‘Socio-Economic Diversity and Inclusion in the Arts: A Toolkit for Employers’, London, 2019, https://jerwoodarts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Socio-economic-Diversity-and-Inclusion-in-the-Arts-A-Toolkit-for-Employers.pdf 

57. ibid, p.40.

58. Creative and Cultural Skills ‘Workforce Analysis’, 2018, https://www.ccskills.org.uk/knowledge-centre/workforce-analysis 

59. ibid.

60. Department of Culture, Media and Sport, ‘Sectors Economic Estimates 2019: Employment’, Office for National Statistics, London, April 2020,https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/dcms-sectors-economic-estimates-2019-employment/dcms-sectors-economic-estimates-2019-employment

Section Six: Diversity

A. Contextualising diversity in Live Art

Live Art creates a space for the celebration, promotion, representation and development of diverse voices and bodies that is often at the forefront of innovative practices in queer culture, disability arts and issues of class and socio-economic background. Live Art profiles practices of artists from D/deaf and disabled, working class, LGBTQIA+ and Black, Asian and other Global Ethnic Majority communities – from the performance activism of Bobby Baker that addresses mental health, age and gender, to Travis Alabanza’s 2019 performance Burgerz, which explores how trans bodies navigate often hostile public spaces in contemporary UK. 

Live Art has provided a space for artists to express, think through and challenge normative understandings of sexuality and gender identity, with the development of a rich ecology of Live Art organisations, festivals and initiatives – such as Duckie, Queer Up North, Homotopia, Cuntemporary and Thorny – supporting artists and practitioners working with Live Art. Moreover, artists and practitioners working with Live Art have made considerable contributions to the representation of trans artists within the UK arts and cultural sector: for instance, Emma Frankland’s We Dig performance project, which featured a changing company of trans femmes that formed part of the demolition process of the Ovalhouse building, and Marikiscrycrycry’s choreographic work, which has received international acclaim.

Live Art has also contributed to conversations about ageing and intergenerational politics, raising questions about how older people are valued within UK society, and examining what it means to be an older artist. The artist Lois Weaver’s project What Tammy Needs to Know about Getting Old and Having Sex, for example, is part-performance and part-participatory project working with people over sixty. The intersectional approach at the heart of this project investigates the continuities between ageing, disability and care in relation to queerness for people who exist outside dominant family structures. 

The understanding of diversity that is deployed in this research draws on the UK Equality Act 2010 framework of nine protected characteristics.⁶¹ Perhaps the most important current framework for understanding diversity within the UK arts and cultural sector is Arts Council England’s ‘Creative Case for Diversity’. Launched in 2011 and refreshed in 2015, the ‘Creative Case for Diversity’ aims to go beyond compliance with equalities legislation, requiring that arts and culture activities and projects in England reflect the diversity of society and local communities. As part of this approach, Arts Council England increased financial support for diverse cultural production through programmes including Elevate, Changemakers and Transforming Leadership, which aimed to increase levels of artistic activity by diverse artists and makers. 

Following the murder of George Floyd and the consequent rise of the Black Lives Matter movement across the globe in Summer 2020, Arts Council England made a statement⁶² acknowledging the limited impact of the ‘Creative Case for Diversity’ in developing an inclusive arts workforce in England, specifically, in relation to ethnically diverse communities.⁶³

The lack of a diverse workforce in the arts and cultural sector is a result of historic framing within UK arts policy where diverse-led organisations and ‘culturally specific’ arts initiatives were evaluated according to white, cis-gendered, middle-class, non-disabled mainstream narratives. This contributed to funding cuts and deteriorating support for diverse-led organisations, and as such there has been a historic lack of investment and capacity building of a diverse workforce. The history of diversity in Live Art organisations is, in part, reflective of this complex and often politicised history of funding. 

This section of our report outlines how the UK Live Art sector has approached issues of equality and diversity, especially in relation to disability, race and ethnicity, areas which Arts Council England recognises require further attention and future development. 

B. Live Art and disability

Our approach to disability in this research is shaped and informed by the social model of disability, developed by disabled activists, particularly the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation in the UK in the 1970s. In contrast to the medical model of disability, which prioritises cure or treatment by medical professionals, the social model of disability focuses on individuals self-identifying as disabled⁶⁴, emphasising the collective, societal responsibility to remove the barriers and exclusion that disabled people face. In other words, a person might be visually impaired, and therefore disabled by a society that puts sight at the heart of understanding and being in the world. 

Our 2019 survey of individuals in the Live Art sector found that of the 216 responses to the question ‘I identify as a person with a disability’ (Q39, SurvInd), 22.2% of respondents identified as disabled, which is higher than both the percentage of the UK workforce who identify as disabled (13%) and considerably higher than the percentage of the UK’s creative workforce who identify as disabled (12%) according to the Creative and Cultural Skills ‘Workforce Analysis’.⁶⁵ This data demonstrates that disabled practitioners are well represented in the UK’s Live Art sector. However, it is important to note that disabled people in the UK are almost twice as likely to be unemployed as non-disabled people. ⁶⁶

A brief examination of UK disability arts history illustrates that D/deaf and disabled artists and arts practitioners have historically been underserved, underrepresented and have faced discrimination.⁶⁷ As recently as 1989, the Arts Council of Great Britain⁶⁸ applied for exemption from employment quotas for disabled people within its own workforce. Whilst key organisations such as Shape Arts and Graeae Theatre have continually pushed the boundaries of art by D/deaf and disabled communities and challenged the status quo since the 1980s, most of the artistic activity by D/deaf and disabled communities has stood outside of mainstream funded arts practice.

Further, art by disabled practitioners has historically been assessed by people without lived experience, according to frameworks that centre non-disabled people. 

As an artform and discipline that critically examines identity and representation, initiatives and organisations in the UK Live Art sector have profiled D/deaf and disabled artists working with Live Art and devised initiatives that explore disability at a number of junctures. Notable amongst these are the second edition of Live Art Development Agency’s (LADA) project Restock, Rethink, Reflect on Live Art and Disability (2009–12), which featured a DIY professional development project, a Study Room Guide on disability and artistic models, and a two-day public programme in March 2011, Access All Areas (including performances, installations and screenings by disabled artists such as Noemi Lakmaier and Martin O’Brien), a landmark symposium, and an accompanying publication. Commenting on the Access All Areas programme and publication, Dr Paul Darke of Outside Centre described Live Art as, ‘truly the avant-garde forum for Disability Art and at the forefront of Disability Art practice, thinking and theory.’⁶⁹

Cultural funding associated with the London 2012 Olympics has provided support for D/deaf and disabled practitioners making Live Art – including The Disabled Avant Garde’s infamous Bad Mascots at the M21 Live Art Festival at Disability Arts in Shropshire (DASH), which was part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. Moreover, artists working with Live Art such as Rhiannon Armstrong and Nwando Ebizie have been supported by the world’s foremost disability arts commissioning programme, Unlimited.⁷⁰

Live Art’s nuanced concern with bodies has offered D/deaf and disabled artists a valuable frame for their work and informed the landscape of disability arts today. Initiatives and practitioners who have received support from Unlimited include Jo Bannon’s visceral ode to contemporary feminism We are Fucked and Tarik Elmoutawakil’s curatorial project Brownton Abbey, an Afro-Futuristic Space-Church performance party that centres queer people of colour, especially D/deaf and disabled people. The significant contributions of D/deaf and disabled artists working with Live Art have also been acknowledged by trusts and foundations, with artists such as the vacuum cleaner being awarded the prestigious multi-year Breakthrough Fund grant by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation in 2018.  

Over the years, organisations with infrastructural interest in Live Art have also worked with disabled-led arts organisations such as the well-established DaDaFest, with Liverpool’s the Bluecoat hosting the festival and co-presentations of work with SPILL Festival. Live Art as a fertile ground for the investigation of illness and disability, has more recently led to the development of Live Art festivals with a particular focus on D/deaf and disabled practitioners, and mental health, including SICK! Festival (operating since 2013) and Sick of the Fringe/Something To Aim For (established in 2015). 

C. Live Art, race and ethnicity

The term ‘diversity’ has often been used euphemistically in arts policy as a reference to visible protected characteristics. This section consciously takes up the term’s veiled references to race and ethnicity in relation to UK arts policy, in order to unpack, challenge and offer insights into narratives of practitioners from ethnically diverse backgrounds who work with Live Art in relation to other protected characteristics.

Histories, visibilities and archiving

In his seminal report from 1990, ‘Cultural Grounding: Live Art and Cultural Diversity’, Michael McMillan wrote, ‘Live Art operates on the margins of the visual arts, because of its “avant-garde” and ephemeral nature. Yet dominant definitions of performance are Eurocentric and exclude many Afro-Asian (Black) artists’.⁷¹ The report was written in the context of the rise of the UK Black Arts movement.⁷² McMillan’s insights keenly influenced the analysis and recommendations about diversity featured in the report ‘National Arts and Media Strategy: Discussion Document on Live Art’⁷³ written by Lois Keidan in her role as Live Art officer for the then Arts Council of Great Britain, and continues to inform contemporary understandings of diversity in Live Art.

In my academic and curatorial work, I identify more with the term ‘performance art’. The reason for this is that I work with/on international/diasporic artists (mainly from South and Southeast Asia) in the UK and Europe, whose practices/artistic backgrounds don’t always identify with the term ‘Live Art’.

Respondent, 2019 survey of individuals

Whilst many artists from ethnically diverse backgrounds have embraced the term and context of Live Art, others who use methods and strategies of Live Art choose not to identify as working with Live Art. A number of factors contribute to the term ‘Live Art’ having less currency for ethnically diverse artists and practitioners, including the power to define, present and promote Live Art being shaped by white-majority organisations, the continued whiteness of academia, and institutional racism in the performing arts.⁷⁴ Hence, many legacies of ethnically diverse arts workers within Live Art, and the UK’s cultural history as a whole, remain sadly neglected and under-articulated. 

The politics of diversity initiatives

A notable exploration of Live Art and race was LADA’s first edition of Restock, Rethink, Reflect (2006), which involved professional development, events and publication of the resource Documenting Live, developed with curator David A Bailey and artist Rajni Shah. 

Given the unequal distribution of consciousness about diversity across the regions of the UK, it is important to note that these activities have taken place within metropolitan contexts. Our research conversations and survey data find that in rural or non-urban locations, arts organisations have often viewed work that sits outside white, cis-gendered, heterosexual, able-normative frames as financially and artistically ‘risky’. The scarcity of opportunities for artists working with Live Art is doubly exacerbated by programmers and audiences who may shy away from experimental work and multiplies the marginalisation of ethnically diverse artists, especially those who also face barriers of class and disability. 

Our 2019 survey of individuals found that of the 216 people who answered as to whether or not they identify as a person of colour/from a Black, Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) background, 40 answered yes, 164 answered no, and twelve preferred not to say (they have been removed from the analysis) (Q38, SurvInd). The results translate to 18% of respondents identifying as from ethnically diverse backgrounds. According to the ‘Creative and Cultural Skills Workforce Analysis 2018’, 12% of the UK workforce are from a ‘BAME’ background and 9% of the UK’s creative workforce are from a ‘BAME’ background.⁷⁵ Importantly, the Creative Industries Federation’s ‘Creative Diversity Report’ shows that in order for the creative industries in the UK to be sufficiently diverse, 17.8% of the workforce would have to be BAME.⁷⁶ By way of context, the ‘Equality, Diversity and the Creative Case: A Data Report, 2019-20’ from the Arts Council of England shows us that 13% of the total National Portfolio Organisations workforce identify as ‘BME’.⁷⁷ Therefore, we can argue that the Live Art sector is diverse in proportion to population diversity, and does better than the creative and cultural industries, as a whole, which has a significantly lower BAME representation. We note that our 2019 survey of individuals was undertaken towards the end of Diverse Actions (2017-20), a major Live Art UK initiative championing ‘culturally diverse (Black Minority Ethnic) ambition, excellence and talent in Live Art’. 

Diverse Actions

Supported by an Arts Council England Ambition for Excellence award of £500,000, Diverse Actions was the largest project of the Live Art UK network to date and the most significant UK project with a specific focus on diversity and Live Art. Consisting of thirty-two commissions, seventeen professional development bursaries (coordinated by Artsadmin and LADA), six leadership bursaries (coordinated by LADA), a symposium and publication, and involving twenty organisations across the regions and nations of the UK, Diverse Actions was led by a steering group and coordinated by project managers based at the project’s host organisation, Cambridge Junction.⁷⁸

Diverse Actions’ successes included introducing new voices to the Live Art sector, broadening artist networks and supporting the development of a considerable number of artists and practitioners of colour through the project’s different strands. The professional development projects – particularly the DIY programme of professional development for artists by artists, coordinated by LADA – enabled ethnically diverse artists and practitioners working with Live Art to gather, develop mutual support and cultivate exciting practices. Notable examples of this were Ria Hartley and Ana de Matos’ exploration of virtual reality and intimate performance; sorryyoufeeluncomfortable’s encounter with Black histories, presents and futures in Glasgow. Similarly, the visibility and financial support of the leadership bursaries has allowed recipients – such as artist, writer and dramaturg Season Butler and producer and cultural organiser Joon Lynn Goh – to develop and approach their practice strategically, expanding their profile and reach. 

Moreover, Diverse Actions has boosted the commissioning and presentation of Live Art by artists and practitioners from ethnically diverse backgrounds across the UK regions and nations. Through more than forty associated public events, with an approximate audience of 37,000 (not including online audiences), Diverse Actions has enhanced the touring network for both Live Art and performance, and work by ethnically diverse artists. Several of the artists who were commissioned through the Diverse Actions New Works strand have gone on to attract extensive touring opportunities, including Rachael Young’s Nightclubbing, which was nominated for the 2019 Total Theatre Award for Innovation, Experimentation & Playing with Form.

At the same time, Diverse Action’s project organising structure and the almost exclusively white-led organisations participating in the project, highlighted the systemic inequality faced by artists and practitioners from ethnically diverse backgrounds who work with Live Art and the arts and cultural sector more broadly. Whilst the project’s steering group and project managers were from ethnically diverse backgrounds, project funding was held by white directorate at Cambridge Junction. Due to the structure of the project, programming decisions were made by predominantly white staff at Live Art UK organisations. This contributed to a perception by some in the sector of white gatekeeping that was at odds with the principles of the project, a point highlighted at our audience engagement activity in 2019, at the Diverse Actions-organised Skin in the Game symposium. Indeed, Diverse Actions foregrounded structural issues around progression, leadership and a lack of ethnically diverse workforce at senior and directorate-level in the UK Live Art sector. 

Key findings for Diversity

• Individuals participating in the UK Live Art sector are diverse in relation to ethnicity, race and disability, and the sector does better than the creative and cultural industries as a whole.
• Artists and organisations working with Live Art and queer culture have been particularly prominent in the UK Live Art sector. 
• Live Art practice and disability arts have informed and exerted significant influence on one another.  
• Historically, the UK Live Art sector has not supported ethnically diverse leadership. 
• The UK Live Art sector supports artistic practices that contribute to discourse and intersectional, holistic approaches to addressing equity, access and inclusion.

Footnotes

61. According to the Equality Act 2010, the nine protected characteristics are age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. See Equality Act 2010, part 2, c.1. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/part/2/chapter/1 

62. Darren Henley, ‘Black Lives Matter’, Arts Council England, June 2020,  https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/blog/black-lives-matter  

63. Moving forward Arts Council England aims to more directly address issues of diversity in workforce, leadership and governance through the roll out of its new strategy Let’s Create. This positions Inclusivity and Relevance as one of four central investment principles, and places a greater responsibility on funded organisations to develop workforce, leadership and governance that reflect and represent the communities they are serving. 

64. Defined under the Equality Act 2010 as a person with a physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative effect on the ability to carry out normal daily activities. Equality Act 2010, part 2, c.1. ,https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/part/2/chapter/1 

65. Creative and Cultural Skills ‘Workforce Analysis’, 2018, https://www.ccskills.org.uk/knowledge-centre/workforce-analysis 

66. Scope, ‘Disability Facts and Figures’, 2020, https://www.scope.org.uk/media/disability-facts-figures/

67. See Allan Sutherland’s extraordinarily detailed timeline of the disability arts movement in the UK. Allan Sutherland, ‘Chronology of Disability Arts, 1977 – 2017’, NDACA, 2020, https://the-ndaca.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Allan-Sutherland-Chronology.pdf

68. The Arts Council of Great Britain was replaced with National Arts Councils and National Lottery in 1994. Arts Council of England and the 10 regional arts boards merged in 2002, and in 2003 the new organisation was named Arts Council England. See https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/our-organisation/our-history

69. Lois Keidan and CJ Mitchell (eds), Access All Areas: Live Art and Disability, London: LADA, 2012, back cover.

70. Unlimited has received significant funding from the British Council and UK arts councils. Being co-delivered by Shape Arts and Artsadmin since 2013, at time of writing, Unlimited is in the process of transitioning to become an independent organisation. 

71. Michael McMillan, ‘Cultural Grounding: Live Art and Cultural Diversity – Action Research Project’, A Report for the Visual Arts Department of the Arts Council of Great Britain, London, 1990, p.4.

72. At the same time, the hugely influential group exhibition of ‘Afro-Asian artists’ curated by Rasheed Araeen, The Other Story (1989) opened, which featured artists working with Live Art and performance, including David Medalla and Sonia Boyce. 

73. Lois Keidan, ‘National Arts and Media Strategy: Discussion Document on Live Art’, Number 26, London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1991.

74. See Stuart Brown, Isobel Hawson, Tony Graves, and Mukesh Barot, ‘Eclipse Report: Developing Strategies to Combat Racism in Theatre’, an Arts Council of England, East Midlands Arts Board, Theatrical Management Association and Nottingham Playhouse initiative, 12–13 June 2001, https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/Eclipse_report_2011.pdf. For an overview of Arts Council England’s strategic initiatives in the arena of race equality from 1980s to late 2000s, see Will Hammonds and Lakhbir Bhandal, ‘Where to Next for Diversity? An Assessment of Arts Council England’s Race Equality and Cultural Diversity Policies and Emerging Trends’, Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events 3, no.2 (2011), pp.187–200.

75. Creative and Cultural Skills, ‘Workforce Analysis’, 2018, https://www.ccskills.org.uk/knowledge-centre/workforce-analysis

76. Creative Industries Federation, ‘Creative Diversity – The State of Diversity in the UK’s Creative Industries and What We Can Do About It’, September 2015, https://www.creativeindustriesfederation.com/sites/default/files/2017-06/30183-CIF%20Access%20&%20Diversity%20Booklet_A4_Web%20(1)(1).pdf

77. Arts Council England, ‘Equality, Diversity and the Creative Case: A Data Report, 2019-20’, 2021, p. 11 https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/Equality_Diversity_and_the_Creative_Case_A_Data_Report__201920.pdf 

78. Live Art UK archive, held by Live Art Development Agency. ‘Diverse Actions (2017-2020), Evaluation Report’, Live Art UK, 2020.

Section Seven: Sustaining and Organising

There is an assumption that Live Art costs less.

Focus group participant, 2019

In this section, we examine the ways organisations and individuals working in the Live Art sector are organised and funded, the working conditions within the sector and other forms of labour that sustain the sector as a whole. We place these issues within the wider economic and labour conditions of the arts and cultural work. We will then look at data from organisations and individuals about their activities prior to March 2020.

Research into resilience and sustainability in the arts sector commissioned by Arts Council England in 2018 deemed individual resilience beyond the scope of the project.⁷⁹ While it focused instead on organisational survival, the research noted that issues relating to individual wellbeing were repeatedly raised by people working in the arts and should be central to grasping a more holistic, systems view of arts sector resilience. The report explains,

A systems view of resilience requires an understanding of the number of individual artists and creatives who contribute to a diverse and thriving sector while freelancers or self-employed – as well as the fact that many small organisations fundamentally serve as funding vehicles for individual artists or creatives.⁸⁰

The report goes on to cite the Department of Culture, Media and Sport’s Sectors Economic Estimates 2017 report ‘Employment’, which found that 49% of jobs in the cultural sector were self-employed, compared to only 16.3% of UK jobs overall.⁸¹

The UK Live Art sector echoes wider trends within the arts and cultural sector where issues of individual and organisational wellbeing and sector resilience intersect. Through our research consultations, qualitative responses to our 2019 survey of individuals, and 2021 organisational questionnaire, we note that across organisations and individuals, the challenge of being under-resourced due to disinvestment in the arts by public bodies has been met by the sector through partnership working and attempts to generate income through alternative sources (including ticket sales, consultancy services, sales of physical artworks and documentation). However, we also note troubling and dangerous practices of over-production by those working in the sector. Increasingly competitive conditions, fear of losing out on funding or future work often appears to be met by those working in the sector over-promising on what can be delivered. This has negative impacts on individual, organisational and sectoral wellbeing.  

Much like the wider arts and cultural sector, annual income in the Live Art sector is considerably lower than national average incomes. Based on the data from our 2021 organisational questionnaire, the average daily rate for project-based workers is £169, lower than the suggested daily rate indicated by the Artists’ Union of England of £175.13 for recent graduates.⁸² The annual salary for core workers in organisations working in Live Art, based on data supplied by organisations to our questionnaire, ranged from nothing to £40,000, with the majority below £25,000.

Working in a Live Art organisation includes those working on freelance, fixed term or permanent contracts, on either a part-time or full-time basis. Due to the structure of funding which tends to focus on fixed-term projects, a considerable proportion of roles within the Live Art sector (and the broader arts and cultural sector) are on a freelance, fractional or fixed-term basis. This offers potential flexibility for artists and makers who wish to structure their working time to take up creative development opportunities, however, these types of contracts tend to reinforce labour and income precarity.  

Recent studies of the theatre workforce have not included data on total annual income, however, the Society of London Theatre’s ‘Theatre Workforce Review’, conducted by Nordicity,⁸³ found that low pay in off-stage roles was the most frequently cited reason why people might leave the theatre sector. The Theatre Workforce Review also noted both a preponderance of freelancers within the theatre sector and low freelance pay.⁸⁴

That the Equity/ITC Ethical Manager Agreement in February 2020⁸⁵ sets an agreed daily rate at £100, a 24% increase on the previous informal day rate of £80.50, reflects the high rate of unpaid and underpaid labour that takes place within the theatre sector. 

In 2018, the TBR report ‘Livelihoods of Visual Artists: 2016 Data Report’, surveying 2007 respondents and representing the largest survey of artists undertaken in England, found that ‘the mean average total income for artists across England in 2015 was £16,500’.⁸⁶ This is considerably lower than the average wage in the UK in 2015, which was £27,600, as collated by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). As noted in the upcoming section on organisations, ONS reports annual average wage in the UK as of 2019–20 was £31,461. ⁸⁷

A. Individuals 

Practitioners within the Live Art sector do multiple types of work within the sector, including working as artists, producers, programmers, researchers, educators, or professionals working in areas such as marketing and project administration.

Of the 258 respondents who answered our 2019 survey of individuals in relation to length of time in the Live Art sector, 26% had been working less than 5 years, 31% between 5 and 10 years, and 44% have been working for 10 years or more (Q5, SurvInd):

Of the 258 respondents to our 2019 survey of individuals, 32% made over half of their annual income from Live Art in the last 5 years while 65% did not and 3% of respondents preferred not to say (Q7, SurvInd).

I am mostly able to make my performance work because of the funding support I have received as a researcher through higher education institutions and research council funding. Without this, I would not make enough money to be able to make work.

Respondent, 2019 survey of individuals

In relation to how people made their income, of the 258 respondents to our survey 24% made their incomes through working as an artist, while a slightly higher proportion of respondents (26%) were employees of organisations (including higher education) (Q8, SurvInd). As we have noted in the section on higher education, there is a considerable crossover between practitioners working with Live Art and working in higher education. 14% of respondents made their income as a freelance arts professional. Through our research consultations, we have noted that a mixture of income sources for those working in the sector, also known as a ‘portfolio’ career, has been a common feature of the parallel roles people play in the sector.

Individuals within Live Art receive support through grants, development funds and commissions. Although the number of trusts, foundations and funding bodies offering direct funds to individuals is limited, schemes for individual practitioners include the UK’s national Arts Councils, for example, Arts Council England’s National Lottery Project Grants awards for practitioners in England. Other notable schemes include Jerwood Arts’ awards focusing on practitioners at a pivotal point in their development, and Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Ideas and Pioneers fund. 

In our 2019 survey of individuals, 221 responses identified the average amount of funding awarded in the last 5 years per grant (Q33, SurvInd). Respondents were offered several monetary bands to choose from. The largest percentage (29%) of responses were allocated to the £5,000-£15,000 band, followed by 25% of respondents who had been in receipt of no grant funding.   

Further contextual data from Arts Council England shows us that from April 2019 until March 2020, of the 176 successful Project Grant applications from individuals and organisations to Arts Council England that included the key word ‘Live Art’ or ‘Performance Art’ in the application project title, applicant name or project description and/or related sub-classifiers ‘Disciplinary type – Visual Arts-Live & Performance Art’ or ‘sub art form – Visual Art-Live Art’, 102 of these were for under £15,000. The figure of £15,000 is the maximum amount that can be applied for on the lower band of Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grants.   

There is never enough funding. This breaks relationships, through difficulties in production, due to hierarchies

Focus group participant, 2019

Through our research consultation findings, such as the previous quotation, there is a large amount of unpaid and underpaid labour within the UK Live Art sector. Focus groups have reiterated the increasing competition for arts funding, affecting individuals and organisations across the Live Art sector and the cultural sector as a whole. For individual practitioners, this pressure on funding has often resulted in fees from commissions and presentations that do not reflect recommended daily rates, or that have not risen in line with inflation. At the same time, we note that the UK Live Art sector is marked by a prevalence of peer support and community goodwill. Our 2019 survey of individuals found that 81% of the 221 respondents to our survey question on contributions of non-financial support to the sector report that they support the Live Art sector sometimes, often or very often (Q35, SurvInd). 

When asked to identify the kinds of non-financial support offered by individuals in the sector, 220 respondents described a range of unpaid activities, with 49% (107) of respondents identifying mentoring as an unpaid activity; as well as marketing and PR 18% (39); giving feedback, crits and advice 17% (38); and producing 11% (25) (Q36, SurvInd). Other non-financial support activities individuals contributed to the Live Art sector include: professional and technical services such as installation of artwork, dramaturgy, curating, and writing letters of support for peers. Survey respondents also identified offering welfare support to peers including offering food, space, accommodation, childcare, emotional support and access support.   

In addition to subsidising the sector with their unpaid labour, 58% of 221 respondents to our 2019 survey of individuals sometimes or often contribute to fundraising initiatives to support the sector (Q34, SurvInd). 

B. Organisations

A total of twenty-two organisations/groups working across the Live Art sector responded to our 2021 organisational questionnaire. As this is the first piece of research of its kind, it is difficult to establish whether the sample of twenty-two organisations is representative of UK primary organisations who see working with Live Art as core to their work. For reference, the Live Art UK network consists of thirty organisations and respondents included organisations outside this network.

By way of context, seventy-nine organisations who had the disciplinary sub-classifier ‘Visual Arts – Live & Performance Art’ applied for National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) funding from the Arts Council England in the period of 2018–2022. Of those applicants, eleven organisations identify their main discipline as Combined Art, five Theatre, two Museums and sixty-one Visual Arts. 

However, as Live Art is not a disciplinary funding category in and of itself, it is not possible to determine through Arts Council England’s data on NPOs the degree to which Live Art and performance are core to these organisations’ offer or commitment. As mentioned previously, the wording of the sub-classifier ‘Live & Performance Art’ is not necessarily consistent with the use of the term Live Art. Further contextual data from Arts Council England shows us that from April 2018 until March 2020, 782 project grant applications from individuals and organisations to Arts Council England included at least one of the following: the key word ‘Live Art’ or ‘Performance Art’ in the application project title, applicant name or project description and/or the sub-classifier ‘Disciplinary type – Visual Arts-Live & Performance Art’ or ‘sub art form – Visual Art-Live Art’. 

The challenges in disaggregating core and project support from Arts Council England to Live Art organisations indicates an area of further research and consideration. As part of mapping the work of Live Art in the UK we offer this snapshot of organisations who participated in our 2021 organisational questionnaire to provide a partial overview of how the sector functions. The purpose is to inform future work on priorities and ways of working for the sector.

Range of organisations

The twenty-two organisations that engaged with our 2021 organisational questionnaire undertake the following types of work (Q1, OrgQues): Artist development (18), commissioning (18), curating (17), advocacy (16) and producing (16).

Types of activity described under the category ‘Other’ included: publishing, archive and bookshop (1); festival making (1); activism (2); present peripatetic programme of Live Art (1).

When asked to indicate which of the above activities was the most important to their organisation, of the twenty-two respondents, seven indicated producing, three stated artist development, three said commissioning and another three said venue (Q2, OrgQues).  

Of the twenty-two respondents who participated in our 2021 organisational questionnaire, seven had been operating for more than 20 years, five had been operating between 10 and 20 years; three between 8 and 10 years; four between 5 and 8 years and three between 1 and 5 years (Q4, OrgQues).

Most organisations who responded to our 2021 organisational questionnaire followed traditional legal structures for arts organisations, such as being incorporated as a company limited by guarantee and a charity. However, four organisations are unincorporated groups and four are community interest companies (Q7, OrgQues).

Income and Funding

All twenty-two organisations who responded to our 2021 organisational questionnaire offered financial information, with most organisations operating at a relatively small scale with small core teams.

Twelve organisations, which is more than half of the respondents, had an average annual turnover of £250,000 or less between 2016 and March 2020 (Q9, OrgQues) and core teams of eight people or less (Q21, OrgQues). Of those organisations operating under £250,000, three had a turnover of £100,000–£250,000; four had a turnover of £50,000–£100,000; one £25,00–£50,000 and four less than £25,000.

Five organisations had an average annual turnover of £500,000 to £2million, of which four are venue-based and one is a programme with two delivery partners.

Income

Half of the twenty-two organisations responding to our questionnaire receive regular core funding from one of the UK Arts Councils (Q8, OrgQues). The other half did not receive regular core funding. Three respondents commented that although they are not in receipt of core funding, they often receive project funding from a UK Arts Council or another body at varying levels of support.

Of the twenty-two organisations who responded to our questionnaire, seventeen respondents identified core and project funding from a public funder as the most significant source of income and two respondents identified core and project funding from a trust or foundation as the most significant. Of the remaining respondents’ partnership funding (2), ticket sales (2) and consultancy (1) were the most significant sources of income.  

Most respondents (20) generate some income from partnership funding as well as project funding from trusts and foundations (18) (Q10, OrgQues). Respondents also noted that they generate income via ticket sales, consultancy, donations and sponsorship.

Network collaborations and partnerships have also been vital ways for Live Art initiatives, organisations and the sector as a whole to diversify sources of income. The UK Live Art sector has benefitted from partnership working in the form of opportunities to connect and broaden networks, share learning, develop new ways of working, as well as share resources. The Live Art sector has responded to Arts Council England Development Fund calls (previously known as Strategic Funds, or Managed Funds) by identifying specific urgent needs in the sector and partnering to develop co-produced programmes such as Diverse Actions. LADA, Artsadmin and Home Live Art were awarded consortium funding (2013–15) from Arts Council England’s Catalyst programme which aimed to build capacity in fundraising and philanthropic giving within arts organisations. LADA, Artsadmin and Home Live Art worked with Platform to look at ethical fundraising and practices of philanthropic giving, resulting in a step change for the organisations’ approach to fundraising, increased donations, and sharing of knowledge with the wider sector. 

Another example of investment in order to develop long-term benefits within the Live Art sector was the In Between Time International Showcase in 2017, which received strategic funding from Arts Council England to raise the visibility of UK Live Art practice – presenting twenty-two shows – much of which had never been seen by international audiences, and subsidising international delegates to develop new global markets for UK artists. From our research consultations we know there are aspirations for more networked, collaborative practices and ways of working. A consortium made up of Battersea Arts Centre, Dance4, Fierce, GIFT, MAYK and Transform (commissioned by Arts Council England) will deliver Horizon, an international showcase as part of the Edinburgh Festivals in Summer 2021. This type of partnership working perhaps points to future shifts in organising within the sector.

Expenditure

For the twenty-one organisations who responded to questions about their expenditure, wages and fees for artists were the most significant areas of expenditure (Q11, OrgQues). For 90% of respondents, wages and artist fees were ranked in the top three areas of significant expenditure. For the remaining 10% of respondents, wages were ranked in either the bottom two areas of expenditure or marked as not applicable. 

All twenty-one organisations spend some money on marketing and audience development. Fifteen organisations spend some money on training and professional development for their workforce and two allocate no expenditure to this activity. Eight organisations list venue and office overheads as one of the top three areas of expenditure, while for five organisations there is no allocation for expenditure on this area. Thirteen organisations allocate funds towards fundraising and sixteen on legal and financial services. Other significant areas of expenditure drawn out by organisations, and not directly included in our questionnaire, include production, technical and equipment costs.

How people work in organisations

Organisations responding to our 2021 organisational questionnaire were asked to differentiate between ‘core’ and ‘contingent’ workforce. We defined the ‘core’ workforce as workers that kept the organisation running on an ongoing basis and ‘contingent’ as those that work on a project or event basis. As we understood that there would be groups with a range of organisational models responding to our questionnaire, we asked respondents to respond to these categories in a way that made most sense to them.

Between 2016 to March 2020, of the twenty two respondents to the survey, 50% have a core workforce of three people or less (Q21, OrgQues). Of these eleven respondents, only one organisation had one member of full-time staff, four had a core staff primarily made up of freelancers, three primarily of part-time workers while another two rely on a mix of voluntary and paid work from their core team. One organisation relied wholly on voluntary workers.

Eight organisations have a core workforce of between four and eight people. Of these, five have some full-time staff. One organisation relied wholly on freelancers and another wholly on part-time workers as their core workforce.  

Two organisations had a core workforce of twenty-five and twenty-six respectively, and the number of full-time employed sat at twenty and nineteen respectively. These organisations had an annual turnover of between £1 million and more than £2 million. One organisation had a core workforce of forty-eight, of which thirty-five are volunteers, four are full-time and the remainder part-time and freelance. It has an annual income of between £500,000–£1 million.

A total of twenty-one organisations provided details about the average gross annual yearly wage for core members of the workforce (Q23, OrgQues). Across these organisations, seven had an average yearly salary of between £30,000 and £40,000, six between £19,000 and £25,000, three between £12,000 and £15,000 and two gave the figure of £5,000. Two organisations work on variable daily rates and felt the question was not applicable to them and one organisation is composed of all volunteers. The mean average wage in the UK for full time annual employment in the UK for 2019–2020, as collated by the Office for National Statistics, was £31,461.⁸⁸

Between the period of April 2016 to March 2020, all organisations responding to our questionnaire engaged contingent workers to undertake a range of activities (Q30, OrgQues). The vast majority, nineteen (86%) commissioned artworks by artists, followed by fourteen (64%) engaging contingent workers to participate in talks and workshops, and twelve (54%) engaging them as associate artists/artists in residence and in artist development. Thirteen (59%) engaged contingent workers to work with their organisations in marketing and producing roles.

Across the nineteen organisations who provided details on the average gross daily rate for contingent workers, the mean average rate was £169 with the lowest daily rate at £100 and the highest at £300 (Q31, Org Ques). For context, Artists’ Union England’s day rates of pay as of are April 2021 sit at £175.13 per day for a new graduate artist, £229.85 per day for someone with between 3 and 5 years experience and £284.58 per day for someone with 5 or more years experience in their field.⁸⁹

Key findings for Sustaining and Organising

• Individuals in the UK Live Art sector hold multiple roles and many make less than 50% of their income from working in the sector.
• The UK Live Art sector is supported by freelancers, part-time, and fixed term workers.
• The UK Live Art sector is supported by self-subsidy and much of the work undertaken, including artist commissions, is underpaid. 
• Organisations in the UK Live Art sector are predominantly small with small staff numbers.
• The UK Live Art sector has a track record of successful partnership working and network collaborations.

Footnotes

79. Sophia Woodley, Patrick Towell, Richard Turpin, Sarah Thelwall, and Philippe Schneider, ’What is Resilience Anyway’ in Golant Media Ventures and the Audience Agency’s Report commissioned by Arts Council England, July 2018.

80. Ibid. pp.10-11

81. Department of Culture, Media and Sport, ‘Sectors Economic Estimates 2017: Employment’, London, July 2018, p. 19, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/726136/DCMS_Sectors_Economic_Estimates_2017_Employment_FINAL.pdf 

82. Artists’ Union England, ‘Rates of Pay Guidelines’, April 2021,  https://www.artistsunionengland.org.uk/rates-of-pay/

83. Nordicity and Alistair Smith, ‘Workforce Review of the UK Offstage Theatre and Performing Arts Sector,’ London: UK Theatre and Society of London Theatre, June 2017, p.54, https://uktheatre.org/theatre-industry/guidance-reports-and-resources/theatre-workforce/

84. Ibid., p.60

85. Equity, ‘A New Deal for the Independent Sector’, February 2020, https://www.equity.org.uk/news/2020/february/a-new-deal-for-the-independent-sector/

86. TBR, 2018, p.10.

87. Office of National Statistics, ‘Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings: 2015 Provisional Results’, November 2015, Section 1, https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/annualsurveyofhoursandearnings/2015provisionalresults; Office of National Statistics, ‘Employee Earnings in the UK: 2020. Measures of employee earnings, using data from the Annual Survey for Hours and Earnings (ASHE)’, April 2020, Section 2, https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/annualsurveyofhoursandearnings/2020

88.Office of National Statistics, ‘Employee Earnings in the UK: 2020’.

89. Artists’ Union England, ‘Rates of Pay’

Section Eight: Post-March 2020 Conditions

In this section, we consider some of the key issues impacting organisations and individuals in the UK Live Art sector post-March 2020, including COVID-19, Brexit and renewed calls for anti-racist action. In compiling our analysis of the sector since March 2020, we purposely draw on wider contextual data about workers in performing arts (dance and theatre) and visual arts sectors, as these sectors are most readily recognised by practitioners working with Live Art, as evidenced in our 2019 survey of individuals.

We are also informed by our ongoing research activities, including roundtables and our 2021 organisational questionnaire. Through our research activities since March 2020, we have noted the ongoing personal and professional pressures and challenges facing individuals and organisations in the sector due to the continued impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A. COVID-19

Our research conversations with practitioners working with Live Art, together with reporting in the wider arts and cultural sector tell of the tremendous impacts of COVID-19 on personal and cultural life. These impacts have been complex, affecting individuals, organisations and activities in different ways. Whilst some have seen demand for their work plummet or faced redundancy, others have managed to continue working. Circumstances have been extremely challenging, especially for those whose work relies on physical, in-person interaction, something which is core to much Live Art practice. 

A recent study examining the impacts of COVID-19 on creative and cultural organisations in the South West of England found that organisations and practitioners in non-digital sectors (such as theatres, festivals and events) are 5 times more likely to be negatively affected (temporarily closed, permanently ceased production or severe reduction in production) by the pandemic, compared to digital and hybrid sectors.⁹⁰

Although arts and cultural spaces have been closed to the public, artists, organisations and projects in the Live Art sector have demonstrated remarkable creativity, quickly responding and developing digital methods to create, produce and distribute Live Art. As activity recommenced during the first year of the pandemic, artist development became a more significant strand of activity for organisations, particularly for those organisations who were pivoting to working with digital. 

Impact on organisations

Most of the twenty-two projects and organisations who responded to our Spring 2021 organisational questionnaire about the impact of COVID-19 noted that their operations had been dramatically changed by the global pandemic. Building-based organisations shut their premises, with some putting their staff on furlough. A small number of organisations reported receipt of arts and culture sector government support in the form of emergency and recovery funds.

We noted through wider consultations with the sector that organisations’ annual fundraising targets were imperilled due to the suspension of funding programmes by trusts and foundations. However, some organisations in receipt of funding through specific programmes were given extensions to reallocate grant support.

Organisations noted that the government schemes to support organisations and workers in the first year of the pandemic have impacted them in different ways. Some organisations commented that the majority of people working with them were freelance workers, and therefore the initiative or organisation was not eligible for the UK government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS). It was unclear whether those individuals were able to claim other kinds of support such as Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS), emergency funding from UK arts councils, or other governmental support. Several organisations have undertaken staff restructures in order to minimise redundancies. 

Impact on freelancers

Low eligibility for support schemes was noted as placing increased pressure on freelance workers in the Live Art sector. According to the Centre for Cultural Value’s analysis of Labour Force Survey data from the Office of National Statistics, freelancers who make up a large proportion of workers in the performing arts ‘are at the epicentre of the crisis for freelancers’,⁹¹ with many seeing their livelihoods significantly hit by COVID-19, ineligible for forms of government support or support from emergency culture funding, such as the Cultural Recovery Fund. According to a DACS survey of visual artists, 73% of respondents’ livelihoods were affected by COVID-19 through the cancellation or postponement of projects, and being left out of pocket due to project expenses or non-payment of fees.⁹² ONS data shows that women and those from younger age groups are particularly impacted. ⁹³

The pandemic shone a light on the central role freelancers play within the wider arts and cultural sector, with artists and practitioners working with Live Art participating in the Freelance Taskforce.⁹⁴ Through our consultations we note that organisations and initiatives within Live Art have become more proactive in seeking to work with freelance artists and arts workers since March 2020. This has consisted of a mix of extensions or modifications to existing projects, new projects or events to be delivered online, support for digital/online residencies, sponsorship of an artist or freelance worker as part of the Freelance Task Force, and research bursaries for artists. Some organisations repurposed money allocated for marketing to support artists and freelancers. 

Based on our research consultations and wider research, impacts and considerations in light of the COVID-19 pandemic include: 

• Prioritising provision of access and addressing barriers faced by artists and practitioners working in the Live Art sector that have been amplified by the pandemic, particularly the experiences of individuals from marginalised and minoritised backgrounds and individuals with caring responsibilities.
• Cultivating sustained forms of financial and pastoral support from funded organisations to artists/freelance practitioners. 
• Building on knowledge and resource sharing practices developed since the COVID-19 pandemic to create more accessible and inclusive working practices in the sector.
• Examining the impact of social distancing on artform development, teaching, research and audience development.
• Considering the effects of social distancing on the presentation of Live Art in smaller venues and spaces, and how this issue may be pertinent to support for the presentation of Live Art in non-urban and rural locations.
• Investment in digital, as a means to further distribute Live Art and explore artform development.

B. Brexit

At the time of writing, many initiatives and organisations have yet to experience the full impacts of the UK’s exit from the European Union as much international activity has been halted due to COVID-19: Over 90% of Live Art initiatives and organisations responding to our 2021 organisational questionnaire reported that they feel inadequately prepared for Brexit.

The pandemic has prevented us seeing the worst impacts of Brexit on our ability to further internationalise our programme, specifically in terms of mobility and bureaucracy.

(Respondent, 2021 organisational questionnaire)

There remains a need for government clarification over mobility and visas for international artists and freelancers working within the UK. Wales Arts International/Arts Council of Wales, Creative Scotland, Arts Council England and Arts Council Northern Ireland are working on Arts Infopoint UK, a joint pilot initiative to develop resources that support visiting artist mobility, particularly in the areas of visas, taxation and social security. Changes to how the UK works with the European Union, Europe and the wider world are certainly at play within the wider arts and culture sector, yet it is anticipated that effects are especially felt for artforms like Live Art that rely on bodies being present in the presentation of work.

The impacts of Brexit on funding of Live Art organisations and initiatives are varied, with some organisations and initiatives continuing to participate in programmes of work and in receipt of funding from European foundations and EU Culture funding, such as Creative Europe.⁹⁵ Meanwhile, others have lost funding for planned partnership work with UK organisations who are no longer able to participate in Creative Europe programmes. Additionally, artists, cultural workers and organisations based in the UK working with/in Live Art have expressed fear of reputational damage that Brexit has caused to international relationships. 

We have direct experiences of the hostile environment policy that has been further exacerbated by Brexit, however, the different layers of obstacles Brexit is creating for cultural workers are manifesting in new ways every day and in every interaction we have with individual migrant workers that share their experiences.

Respondent, 2021 organisational questionnaire

The expected impacts of Brexit for artists, cultural workers, initiatives and organisations working with/in Live Art internationally include: 

• Confusion around inadequate guidelines for touring companies.
• Additional costs and administration required due to visas, tariffs and emerging rules on international touring EU nations and the UK. 
• Reduced access to European partnership, co-production and funding opportunities as UK organisations, artists and cultural workers will be considered ‘third country’ partners within EU funding frameworks and will lose eligibility for other funding based in Europe.
• ‘Brain drain’ of artists and cultural workers who are EU citizens leaving the UK in light of continued uncertainty and no longer feeling welcome in the UK. 
• Increase in costs and administrative time for travelling (for migrant communities of artists that means also increase in emotional stress due to the inability to meet relatives and friends in one’s country of origin) and obtaining visas.
• Fear that if you invite artists to come to the UK, they will face increased risk of being denied access at the UK border. 

Despite these extremely challenging circumstances as outlined above, as well as fear of cultural isolation within the political context of increased nationalism, the majority of UK Live Art organisations and initiatives reported that continuing to take creative risk and devising solutions to the additional barriers to collaborating with European partners remains an important aim.

C. Racial equity

The rise of Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Summer 2020, following the murder of George Floyd, have resulted in a groundswell of discussion, pledges and activities in the UK arts and cultural sector to address systemic racism. Whilst this has taken place locally within organisations, it has been significantly bolstered by networked groups of individuals and initiatives within the arts and cultural sector, led by Black and ethnically diverse artists and practitioners building anti-racist accountability across the arts and cultural sector. Notably, the Theatre #PullUporShutUp campaign has called for transparency about ethnic diversity representation within the theatre workforce; the Manifesto for (Better) Representation in UK Performing Arts, developed as part of the Freelance Taskforce, provides a toolkit of questions from freelancers towards organisations to help define and nurture representation and accountability; and Inc Arts’ Speak – Listen – Reset – Heal anti-racism conference created a space where voices, experiences and people impacted by racism were acknowledged, those empowered to make changes listened, and learnings have developed into the Inc Arts anti-racism Unlock toolkit. Organisational partnerships created by Black Womxn In Theatre (BWIT) and Eclipse Theatre in partnership with the Bush Theatre created resources such as the #allofus Redundancy Care package and #heretostay programmes to support ethnically diverse and migrant arts workers facing redundancy.

These renewed calls for anti-racist actions and racial equity have been timely for organisations and projects working with Live Art in the UK, as they coincide with the conclusion of Live Art UK’s Diverse Actions project. From our research consultations, experiences of racism – including microaggressions, emotional abuse and victimisation of practitioners – within the Live Art sector mirror those found in the wider arts and cultural landscape. We also note that these experiences influence individuals’ decisions to leave the Live Art sector, and therefore negatively impact ethnically diverse representation in senior roles. Indeed, ONS figures for 2019 and 2020 reveal a drop of 44% of Black and minority ethnic women working in the arts and entertainment sector.⁹⁶

Responses to our 2021 organisational questionnaire highlight the opportunities, aspirations and steps towards making significant change in the Live Art sector. Organisations and projects reported that actions they are undertaking so far include – anti-racism training across Live Art UK members, overhauling recruitment and retention strategies to support individuals from ethnically diverse backgrounds, developing anti-racist tour riders, and actively recruiting artists and staff from ethnically diverse backgrounds. 

Research dialogues and conversations have noted future racial equity actions as including: 

• The development of accountability mechanisms to report and address issues of discrimination.
• Ongoing commitment and responsibility to racial justice, with appropriate resources to build equitable ways of working and organisational structures – including decision-making and pay structures.
• The development of Live Art’s role in decolonising artmaking practices and investment in diverse-led spaces.
• Long-term investment in recruitment, progression and leadership support structures for individuals from ethnically diverse backgrounds to thrive and develop throughout the workforce of the Live Art sector. 
• Recognising the knowledge of ‘experts by experience’ and valuing the contributions of artists and practitioners from ethnically diverse backgrounds. ⁹⁷

Above all, research conversations about the impacts of COVID-19 and calls for racial equity have brought to the fore the importance of provision of access and structures of care. Whilst transformations of working environments and conditions in light of COVID-19 have been challenging, there have also been advantages: namely, increased awareness and provision of access. D/deaf and disabled people within the Live Art sector, carers, and people from marginalised and minoritised backgrounds have been vocal in demands that Live Art and the broader arts and cultural sector needs to continue improving and addressing accessibility as part of broader aims of removing barriers to participation and continued working within the arts. This is especially relevant to the Live Art sector, where bodies are the focal point of the artform – these body-based practices require care and access provision. 

Footnotes

90. Tarek Virani and Jen Blackwood, ‘From Catastrophe to Hybridity to Recovery?’ Bristol: Bristol + Bath Creative R&D, 2021, p.7.

91. Rebecca Florison et al., ‘The impact of Covid-19 on jobs in the cultural sector – part 3’, Centre for Cultural Value, 2021,  https://www.culturehive.co.uk/CVIresources/the-impact-of-covid-19-on-jobs-in-the-cultural-sector-part-3/

92. DACS, ‘Manifesto for Artists’, London, 2021, p.7, https://www.dacs.org.uk/getattachment/Latest-News/DACS-launches-Manifesto-for-Artists-%E2%80%93-a-roadmap-fo/Manifesto_for_Artists_2021.pdf.aspx

93. Office for National Statistics, ‘Coronavirus and its impact on the Labour Force Survey’, October 2020,https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/coronavirusanditsimpactonthelabourforcesurvey/2020-10-13

94. The Freelance Taskforce was established set up in Summer 2020. It was initiated by Fuel Theatre, in partnership with over 100 organisations. Sponsoring over 160 self-employed people working in theatre and performance arts across the UK, it was set up to examine the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on England’s performing arts freelance workforce.

95. Conditions of participation in Creative Europe funding have been outlined in a memorandum from Creative Europe Desk UK, and are no longer updated as of 31 March 2021. See Creative Europe Desk UK, ‘The UK’s Participation in future Creative Europe programmes’, 30 March 2021,   https://www.creativeeuropeuk.eu/news/update-creative-europe-and-outcome-eu-referendum 

96. Trades Union Congress (TUC), ‘Jobs and Recovery Monitor – BME Workers’ Report, Issue 3’, January 2021, p.4, https://www.tuc.org.uk/research-analysis/reports/jobs-and-recovery-monitor-bme-workers.

97.  As explained by Baljeet Sandhu, experts by experience denotes individuals ‘who seek to use their lived experience to inform the work of social purpose organisations, to drive and lead social change, and/or to drive their social impact work’. See Baljeet Sandhu, ‘The Value of Lived Experience in Social Change’, 2017, p.2, http://thelivedexperience.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/The-Lived-Experience-Baljeet-Sandhu-VLE-summary-web-ok-2.pdf

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Appendix I: List of members of the advisory group supporting this research

Brian Lobel, Performer, and Professor of Theatre & Performance at Rose Bruford College, London

Daniel Brine, Artistic Director and Chief Executive, Norfolk & Norwich Festival

Professor Dee Heddon, James Arnott Chair in Drama, University of Glasgow

Giulia Casalini, Independent curator, co-director at Arts Feminism Queer (CUNTemporary) and PhD candidate at Roehampton University, London

Sara Sassanelli, Curator, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London

Selina Thompson, Artist, Writer, Artistic Director, STLtd, Birmingham

Shaheen Merali, Independent curator/writer, London

Aaron Wright, Artistic Director, Fierce, Birmingham

Alessandra Cianetti, founder and curator, performingborders, London

Annie Jael Kwan, independent curator, researcher and educator, Asia Art Activism, Asia Forum, Central St Martins, University of the Arts London

Helen Cole, Artistic Director/CEO, In Between Time, Bristol/South West

Jo Verrent, Senior producer, Unlimited, Bradford

Louise O’Kelly, Founding Director & Curator, Block Universe, London

Mark Waugh, Curator/Writer, Director of Business Development, DACS, London

Mary Paterson, London

Dr. R Justin Hunt, Lecturer and Creative Producer, Arts Council England, Syracuse University, London

Sophia Yadong Hao, Director & Principal Curator, Cooper Gallery, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee, Scotland

Dr. Steve Greer, Senior Lecturer in Theatre Practices, University of Glasgow, Glasgow

the vacuum cleaner, Artist and mental health activism, Margate

Tracy Gentles, Creative Director/CEO, Something To Aim For / The Sick of the Fringe, London/Glasgow

Appendix II: List of Live Art UK members

Arnolfini

Artsadmin

Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts

Battersea Arts Centre

the Bluecoat

BUZZCUT

Cambridge Junction

Centre for Live Art Yorkshire

Chapter

Colchester Arts Centre

Compass Live Art

Contact

Fierce Festival

Forest Fringe

hÅb

Home Live Art

In Between Time

Lancaster Arts

LIFT – London International Festival of Theatre

Live Art Development Agency

National Theatre of Scotland

Norwich Arts Centre

SICK! Festival

Steakhouse Live

Take Me Somewhere

Tempting Failure

Marlborough Productions

Transform

Wunderbar

]performance s p a c e[

Appendix III: List of individuals consulted

We are grateful to all the individuals who have participated in this research, including those listed below 

Dr Áine Phillips, artist and lecturer, head of sculpture Burren College of Art County Clare, Ireland

Alexandrina Hemsley, dance artist, writer and facilitator, Creative Director of Yewande 103 Limited, London

Alister Lownie, creative practitioner; Director, Two Destination Language

Anna Hodgart, Engine Room Producer, National Theatre of Scotland, Glasgow

Anne Bean, artist, London

Annie Lloyd, Co-Director, Compass Live Art, Leeds, UK

Bean, anarcho-feminist mother-fucker artist

Bojana Janković, artist and PhD Researcher (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama), Belfast/London

Cassie Leon, Arts and Cabaret producer, The Cocoa Butter Club// Raze Collective, London

Dr Cath Lambert, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Warwick, West Midlands

Cheryl Pierce, Head of Performing Arts & Learning, Creative Folkestone, Folkestone

CJ Mitchell, freelance producer, Faversham (Kent); (formerly Co-Director, Live Art Development Agency, London)

Clare Qualmann, Artist, Researcher, and Lecturer at the University of East London, London

Dr Daniel Oliver, Live Artist and Lecturer, London

David Cahill Roots, Arts Partnership Manager, Wellcome Collection, London

Demi Nandhra, Artist, Birmingham

Dr Diana Damian Martin, Senior Lecturer, Performance Arts and Course Leader, BA Hons Contemporary Performance – Performance Arts, Royal Central School of Speech of Drama, London

Dominic Johnson, Professor of Performance and Visual Cultures, Queen Mary University of London

Dr Eleanor Roberts, Senior Lecturer in the School of Arts at University of Roehampton, London

Dr Elena Marchevska, Associate Professor in Performance Studies, London South Bank University, London

Fox Irving, Artist / Producer, Hastings

Prof Gavin Butt, Northumbria University, Newcastle

Dr Gillie Kleiman, artist and academic, Newcastle upon Tyne

Heike Roms, Professor in Theatre and Performance, University of Exeter, Exeter; and project director of “What’s Welsh for Performance?”, Cardiff

Helen Davies, Co-CEO, In Between Time, Bristol

Jade Foster, Curator and Creative Producer, Black Curators Collective, New Art Exchange, and Primary, Nottingham

Jade Montserrat, Artist, North Yorkshire

James Stenhouse, artist/co-artistic director, Action Hero, Bristol

James Tyson, Theatre & Dance Programme Manager, British Council, London

Jane Trowell, Arts educator and curator, Platform, London

Jo Bannon, Artist, Bristol

Jon Opie, Deputy Director, Jerwood Arts, London

Joshua Sofaer, Artist, London, England

Karl Taylor, Producer for BUZZCUT & Take Me Somewhere, Glasgow

Katy Baird, Artist, Director of Home Live Art and Producer at Steakhouse Live, Hastings

Kelly Green, Artist, academic and visiting lecturer, London

Kira O’Reilly, artist, Helsinki, Finland

Laura Sweeney, Independent Producer and Co-Director of The Uncultured, Essex

Lena Šimić, artist, politician, researcher, Liverpool

Liz Clarke, Artist, Bristol

Liz Tomlin, Professor of Theatre & Performance, University of Glasgow

Lydia Cottrell, independent artist, producer and digital marketer, Director of SLAP, York

Professor Maria Chatzichristodoulou, Associate Dean Research, Business & Innovation, Kingston School of Art, London

Matt Fenton, Artistic Director & Chief Executive, Contact, Manchester

Migrants in Culture

Mike Pony, Artistic Director, Submerge, Manchester

Dr Owen G Parry, Artist, researcher and Associate Lecturer in Fine Art, Central Saint Martins, UAL, London

Patricia Lavery, Visual Arts Development Officer, Arts Council Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland

Patrick Fox, Heart of Glass – St Helens, Merseyside

Dr Paul Geary, lecturer, UK

(Dr) Paul Hurley, Artist/Academic, Bristol

Peter Reed, Co-Director, Compass Live Art, Leeds, UK

Pippa Frith, Executive Producer, Fierce Festival / Independent Producer, Birmingham

Rachel Cunningham Clark, Producer, Forma

Dr Rachel Gomme, independent artist, performer, researcher and teacher

Rachel Rogers, Producer & Consultant, DaDaFest & Freelance, Liverpool

Rebecca Weeks & Ian Whitford AKA (Weeks & Whitford), Performance Artists & Curators, Performance Platform, London

Rhiannon Armstrong, independent self-producing artist, London.

Richard James Hall, Performance Artist, Tyne and Wear

Roberta Mock, Professor of Performance Studies, University of Plymouth, and Chair of the Theatre & Performance Research Association (TaPRA), Devon

Rosana Cade, Artist, Glasgow

Rosie Cooper, Head of Exhibitions, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-sea, East Sussex

Sam Trotman, Director, Scottish Sculpture Workshop, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

Sandra Corrigan Breathnach, Artist and Co-Chairperson BBeyond, Bbeyond, North West of Ireland

Sebastian H-W, Live Artist, West Midlands

Shabnam Shabazi, independent maker and enabler, London

Simon Casson, Producer, Duckie, London

Steven Brett, Programme Manager Theatre and Dance, The Americas, the Caribbean and EU Europe, Cultural Engagement, British Council

Sylvia Rimat, Performance Maker and Producer, Bristol

Tamsin Drury, Director, hÅb & Word of Warning, Manchester

Tania Camara, Interdiscplinary Artist, Manchester

Dr Tara Fatehi Irani, artist, performer and educator

Tarik Elmoutawakil, Independent Artist & Creative Director, Marlborough Productions, Brighton

Tim Etchells, artist, Forced Entertainment, Sheffield/London

Tim Other, Director, The Raze Collective, London

Vanessa Boyd, Interdisciplinary Performance Officer, Creative Scotland, Glasgow

Vee Smith, independent performance artist, Glasgow

Vijay Patel, Performance Artist/Writer/Neurodivergent Access Consultant (Freelance), London

Whiskey Chow, artist, artist-curator and Visiting Lecturer/Tutor, Royal College of Art, London

Colophon and credits

Live Art Sector Research – A Report Mapping the UK Live Art Sector

liveartresearch.uk

Published in 2021 by the Live Art Development Agency in partnership with Live Art UK 

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