Meeting minutes from initial event at the Royal Court Theatre
Supporting Playwrights Event
Notes & Actions
Date of Event - 5 June 2024
Event Leader - Anna Jordan
Event Coordinator - Jane Christie
Event support & minutes - Lou-Lou Mason
OVERVIEW & PURPOSE
Using the Open Space principles, we aim to create decisive action to support emerging playwrights. To do this we will be addressing the following question through a range of open discussions and break out groups:
How can established theatre artists support new and emerging playwrights in these difficult times?
AGENDA
Welcome & introduction
Exercise One
Breaking down our overview question in sub questions.
Exercise Two
Based on the questions raised through exercise one, topics will be collated for discussion through breakout groups.
Exercise Three:
Bringing the discussion highlights in Exercise Two back into the main group for sharing.
INTRODUCTIONS
Broad spectrum of the industry are in the room and on the call – approximately 65 artists in total, comprising directors, writers, producers, dramaturgs, literary agents, casting directors.
OPEN SPACE GUIDING PRINCIPLES
Whoever is here in this space are the right people
Whatever time we do this is the right time
Whatever place we do this in is the right place
Whatever happens is the only thing that could happen
When it’s over it’s over!
Social media:
The hashtag for the campaign is #SupportPlaywrights
EXERCISE ONE
The first thing we are going to do is identify sub-questions to break down our overarching broader question:
How can established theatre artists support new and emerging playwrights in these difficult times?
RESULTING QUESTIONS:
· How can we identify those playwrights in need of support?
· How can they find me – the helpers and mentors?
· Is there a way to match me to those who will find it most useful?
· Can we do this geographically to create regional hubs relevant to geographics?
· How can we establish non reliance on venues to progress people’s careers?
· Can we go to where writers live? Shopping centres, community centres, fish and chip shops etc
· How do we identify and direct junior writers to helpful resources better?
· How do we make support for playwrights truly accessible
· How do we manage our own deadlines and workloads with helping artists?
How to create more scratch nights?
Are there spaces that can be taken over as zones for creative activities (some immediate suggestions – suggested that we wait for the detailed discussion breakout groups).
How can we help new writers see what their career might look like and their writing career journey – the view of what possibilities are and what the lack might be?
How can established playwrights have a voice and become a force outside of buildings to help next generation of playwrights?
Is there a way to build support outside theatres, directing and dramaturgy - something like arts emergency?
How can we support the creation of work? For example, table reads with actors and drama schools
Programming – how can we encourage established new writing theatres to open their doors to make room for new writing, to fill the space? For example, at different times of day, rooms available, spaces available so artists can use it – expand their community outreach and programming.
How can we expand scratch opportunities? For example using longer format than ten mins.
How can we create opportunities to see read through for 10 mins/20 mins sections? Supporting writers to then properly hear a scene to support drafting/redrafting.
How can we create more paid opportunities and offer more support? Especially in the context of everything already being so limited and overstretched.
How can regular groups be set up for playwrights who want to work in devised context?
How can we work towards sustained work and efforts in this space, maintaining momentum so that the work is not spasmodic?
How do we lobby for transparency?
How do we fund new writing?
How can we convince people to take risks in risk averse climate?
How can we be realistic on the scale of need across what’s available?
Through what mechanisms did we become established that isn’t available now?
How can we access funding to set up events and projects that will set up emerging playwrights?
How do we better understand what is risky and what is commercially viable to support pitching etc?
How can we share info that might help others (without feeling this limiting our own opportunities the sense of scarcity is creating intense competition?
How do we better embed mentoring into the theatre industry?
How do we help the mentees make the most of their opportunities and the mentorship they have received?
Space – there is a lot of space, and a flawed ecology and space – so many spaces. How do we open the space?
What are the legal and personal problems of an unpublished play? SUGGESTION: Community mentoring in Scotland – look to Olly Emanuel – wonderful playwright we sadly lost recently – as a model for mentorship and support.
How can established writers support emerging writers in a direct and meaningful way without this becoming just another form of who-you-know/potentially exclusionary practice?
How can a collective lobby the new government for funds to do any of this and how can new writing be promoted in schools and colleges to mean more young people engage with it in the first place?
How can we help find ways for emerging writers to experiment and practice their craft in a cost effective way?
How can we encourage better communication between organisations and writers at all levels? Especially with dwindling literary departments - who is the playwrights’ advocate within the institution?
How do we help playwrights believe in/trust/navigate the industry?
How can we pay for everyone's time? Established and emerging
How can we come up with new models to provide the kind of dramaturgical and career support that literary managers used to provide, given that they are fast disappearing?
How do we support a diverse range of emerging playwrights who feel that their stories are incomprehensible to the majority of theatre goers?
What kind of (collective/individual) pressure can established artists apply to orgs on behalf of new and emerging artists, and what would we ask for?
How do we get money/funding to freelancers to live/thrive outside of commissioning?
How do we make sure that any answer has equity geographically when it may not be at the forefront of regional arts spaces?
How can we leverage our knowledge and contacts sustainably and with care?
How do we find the new and emerging artists to support?
Exercise Two: Topics for discussion
Based on the questions above, the event team categorised the questions into topics for discussion.
Those topics are:
1. Opening spaces (theatres and otherwise)
2. Creating an independent body of artists to support playwrights
3. Accessibility (including geography)
4. All things mentoring
5. Getting work off the page (including scratch nights and readings)
6. Sharing knowledge and information
7. Interacting with venues
8. Getting paid
9. Creative risk
10. Education
Exercise Three: Sharing the results of the discussion groups
These topics generated some further discussion and further questions as well as suggestions, actions and work to be carried forward. Actions and suggested are clearly marked through each captured topic in the minutes below.
Notes for onward work and further discussion:
· Owners for each action and onward work needs to be established.
· We were not able to discuss and share back every topic, or at the same level of detail across all topics.
· Therefore, further work and discussion is required beyond this meeting across the discussion topics more generally as well as the specific actions recorded.
Opening spaces
Thinking about ad hoc spaces versus regular spaces. Supermarkets, museums, libraries, churches as ad hoc.
There is an opportunity to build on more consistency of space being utilised. Therefore annexing the space on a regular basis, whether dedicated or non-theatre related space. Creating a consistency that something is happening at a regular slot through the week/month, for example a church hall could be used every Wednesday for different projects/artists.
An opportunity to look at relationship with Councils and utilising council owned spaces.
ACTION: need to nominate people to support working out how this works.
Creating a data base of space and activities that could support regular utilisation of spaces and events? The strength in the community and network needs to be more regular.
Further ideas/models that we could tap into:
· Guardian buildings – can these be used by creative practitioners?
· The Theatre Deli model on using office space. Can we get them to come and do a workshop?
· Disused building doesn't charge rates if you’re a registered charity??
· BOLD – rehearsal space offering
· London Writers Salon – will share the info about how to connect
· Creative check in – will share the info about how to connect
ACTION: Anna/Jane/LouLou to share details of Creative Check In and LWS/Writers Hour.
There is an opportunity to look at how to harness the infrastructure we already have through the spider network – ie the network of contacts at greater degrees of separation between artists, both established and emerging. If we are seeking to develop and create space to practice, we should be leveraging the network better. How can we use this most effectively?
The most effective, most genuine change creation is done through leveraging our networks better, through cascading and offering info/mentoring/space.
Spider networks include options social media, subscribing to newsletters/leveraging newsletter content and tapping into connections and contacts that network people already have. If we were all in the forum able to share our networks among us, we could open a lot of doors!
Creating an independent body of artists
We must acknowledge deep rooted multifaceted issues:
Developing artists must still remain a key role for theatre companies and venues
It’s not for established artists to fix necessarily all of these institutional issues
Formalising a group cannot create the remedy of this issue for free.
Creating a body of people to exchange and give network of development.
How is it funded? How is it sustainable?
This group could potentially be a lobbying force, bringing together activism and activist movements. Then how does that get paid for and what’s the structure of that group?
There should be no permission sought for creation. Everyone should be and is allowed to create. The utopia is that, although utopia is not tangible so how do we break power dynamics in order to create abundantly?
· A good example that we could leverage is the abundance that we can see in online content, reels, YouTube, social media, etc. How can we create infrastructure/practice which generates/supports the same level of abundance and focusing on the joy of PLAY.
· This abundance should come through making creative practice open-source and not owned. It is in space which is both metaphorical and virtual.
· Creating work in this way can range from the small: character, scene, ten mins... but also can be bigger – pulling together all those threads everything discussed here into our Formalised Body to create an abundance of work.
· Breaking the power structures and dynamics, taking it from venues and maintaining a place of creation, while not worrying about the commercial value, the output, the product – instead doing the work and creating.
· Practicalities, artist led takeovers and that is where is the abundance is – we can JUST MAKE THE WORK and people will be interested.
· Make it attractive and they will come!
Accessibility
Accessibility covers all forms of access: disability access as well as other intersections of access. It also includes geographic access and location based challenges.
Need to have these conversations to be around disability –where intersectionality dilutes the conversation it excludes disabled voices
Access should be at the START of every conversation and needs to be embedded from the start, to stop it being an afterthought.
Who are the top-down leaders and are there disabled people in leadership?
Access is often the last thing that is put in place and then it is done in a very clumsy way. Is there something we can have like access support workers: Access and Assistance for All etc.
We need to move towards eliminating tokenistic attitudes towards disability and breaking down both the stereotypes and the gatekeeping. There isn’t just one slice of the pie for access and other marginalised groups are all lumped in together fighting for access.
Need to have intersectional marginalised groups creators - need to have a list of plays and writers that are made by these groups of people.
ACTION: create a list of plays written by intersectional, marginalised writers, so that we can share those titles widely. Crowd source.
Art is a human right not a luxury and its there for everyone.
Fighting against govt institutions who are breaking down the arts and trying to control voices and opinions.
Where people start in terms of school and how arts are represented in schools – should be viable skill and role and necessity not a nice-to-have.
Suggestion to have a writer in residence in every school which will encourage people from marginalised communities being seen regardless of identity and ethnicity. It is about having the same voice as you in the room about the history that you learn.
Actively creating places for additional value and perceptions that art brings to education. Art and artistic value being usurped, and the value that we bring isn’t ever truly valued. How do we change that?? Need a cultural purpose and brand change, broadcasting what artists actually DO. Needs to be a national programme.
Education and how to make art relevant and take it out of drama depts, make it relevant to other school departments and broaden the creative scope and use of plays.
The ability to diversify and develop isn’t there because we are too scared about losing funding that is allocated elsewhere.
Working with Venues
· Engaging venues – could we set up a masterclass for this forum that travels around theatre venues?
· How can we encourage buildings to be more accessible.
· How can we get people into the season announcements so there is more exposure/inclusion for developing artists?
· Making our proposals to venues as easy as possible to execute so that so that venues it’s hard to say no.
· A campaign to get a writer on every single board member for all venues. However, it can be demonstrated that writers don’t pursue board application opportunities. In which case to transform this dynamic and support increased board representation, could we provide masterclasses and sessions on skills sharing across groups and boards. To create and increase more board member opportunities and provide career progression.
· Groups that we can leverage for this include the Creative Check In forum.
· Theatre 503 offering too – running the writers programme and a series of How To content.
All things mentoring
· People who submitted answers to the questions mentioned mentoring as something they would really appreciate.
· How can we formalise and create a mentorship resource for new artists? Shadowing schemes and ensuring that expenses are covered to help people get into the building that wouldn’t normally be able to access. One of the key factors will be getting emerging artists into the building.
· Mentoring isn’t ‘I know everything’ but more ‘I'm a bit further down the road that you're on, and can help you navigate what is coming for you, but also sharing that established artists also don’t know what’s in front of them – creating allyship.
· Network of people and how we can help each other out.
· Making sure it’s safe and sustainable within bandwidth creating contract and set of expectations
Offer mentoring to people who emulate your practice or those who are different? How do we match mentors to mentees? Is there an overflow from theatres and venues of those that they aren’t able to expand their mentorship to?
How do you connect mentor and mentee? How does the exchange of work happen?
Buddy system? New writers with established writers – ongoing buddying and learning together?
Championing mentees and leveraging the power dynamic and privilege – emerging artists platforming their mentees.
Looking at previous models: platform presents, etc. Lily Driscoll has set up Demystify – paying people to train. ACTION ALL to support and amplify and then also talk to Lily to find out what the model is like and how we can use similar principles.
Getting work off the page
· Hearing the work as an integral part of the development practice. But it was noted that getting the timing right is critical and needs to work within the comfort of the writer, for example rushing into a rehearsed reading–this can be a lot of pressure. How can we define supportive processes and infrastructure to getting work off the page?
· How hard it is to get actors together?
ACTION: who in the forum has experience with setting up table reads and gathering actors. (LLM has loads and has an actor list).
Drama schools might want to support. Can we involve schools to support with creating table reads.
ACTION: pull together network of contacts in drama schools for support with this.
When we talk about what people can give back – relationships with our previous drama schools? Building the bridge, when we have the contacts and supporting those who don’t, who haven’t gone to DS.
Regular co-operatives set up by theatres/venues/companies, instead of making a one stop one-off shop, making it regular means that people will be able to fit it around their lives, jobs, work, caring responsibilities, etc.
Harnessing the desire to read and participate – creating a time bank to collate the voices and collaborators who are willing and have capacity for support.
ACTION: Time bank coordination
· Feedback processes – How do we define and create feedback processes that are useful? Models that we could look at: Papatango is a positive example of written feedback is really great, and encouraging this.
· Scratch nights are often very disconcerting where audience feedback is so unmoderated or the feedback is live and not properly moderated by someone who knows how ask the right questions so new writers aren’t crushed by the critiques
· If people want to volunteer to lead a creative check in, please put your hand up!
ACTION: Jane to create google form to send out
Sharing knowledge and information
Information often comes in two categories, some that costs nothing and easy to give away and some feels precious. Unofficially can be through Socials / word of mouth etc, and then also formal schemes. Peer to peer and networking, etc.
How a person wants to share info, but also needs to protect your capacity and bandwidth. Playwrights could have something on their website, or our collective website, which provide FAQs. Or top five tips on your socials. And then when there is a reach out for contact, can point people to those FAQs/space for questions.
Emerging artists often contact us because they have particular resonance with different backgrounds, or they need info on rights and legal information. Another example is reaching out due to a commonality with emerging artists for sourcing this info, such as identity intersection.
How do we make information access feel less impenetrable? Including interacting with venues.
Getting paid
· The shift from profit share to getting paid properly has created a contraction in the theatre production market.
· How do we create opportunities for paid work? How can we fund or maintain funding, or create new funding structures in the industry?
· The idea of 1% to create radical change – where writers who get huge paid work can donate a percentage of their pay to a fund to support emerging artists. This would also be tax deductible. Creating fund raising project, ‘TV for theatre’ suggestion – people who started in theatre and now work in TV donating money to support those struggling in theatre. (Aware many are struggling in TV too!)
· When creating funding structures, where is the money going to come from? Lobbying people who have money is like banging heads against the wall.
· Money and scarcity perpetuates the culture of scarcity. Supporting practice not just paying for projects specifically.
· Venues/production teams who are benefitting commercially, swooping up and taking the glory and the return on the investment. ACE symposiums philanthropists co producers to create funding to support the artists that we do. ROI will go back to the investors if the show does make money they will get ROI.
TaskRabbit type of support to disperse money out of venues, by hiring writers to work as freelancers, on big tasks support the venues, using the spare time of the writers, paying them for big one of admin tasks, like documentary archiving etc. Which also has the added bonus of getting them in the door to meet people.
Creative Risk
· What risk means, and with what venue, building, theatre goer.
· Seasons are curated and how an artists work could match – how do we find these themes ahead of curation? Can we encourage venues with habits to break them and try a different approach?
· Finding newer spaces that take risks, then forget the venues we can’t change.
· Where can we create the spaces ourselves to avoid having to deal with risk averse venues.
Education
Writers in residence
Using schools as venues
ACITON: For further discussion
NEXT STEPS:
What do we want to do, how are we going to progress, what happens next?
UPDATE IN WEEK SINCE MEETING:
Since meeting we have created email lists for those interested in supporting and a Whatsapp group for those interested in supporting the day to day activity of the Support Playwrights Collective. First email going out today (Wed 12th June)
The following press coverage has been published:
The Stage:
· Playwrights call for mentorships and scratch nights to fix 'broken pipeline' 7 June 2024
· In difficult times, leaving the ladder down for others will be essential 27 May 2024
We have been contacted by the following organisations who are keen to support the work we are doing and Morgan and Anna are meeting to discuss the best way to move forward with this. (updated 17th June)
· Theatre503
· Paines Plough
· Royal Court
· Methuen
· Theatre Centre
· Cardboard Citizens
· Sheffield Theatres
· Leeds Playhouse
· Off West End
· Nick Hern Books
· Wellbeing in the arts
· The Playwrights Club
· Chichester Festival Theatre
· Bruntwood Award
Papatango Prize· Curtis Brown
· Polka theatre
· Finborough Theatre
We have set up an email address – artistsforartists24@gmail.com. This email address is purposefully non-specific in not mentioning playwrights as it means we can support other artists further down the line.
Anna Jordan has scheduled a £10 online workshop called Self Care For Writers. This is scheduled for 21st June at 7pm – 9.30pm. We’ll talk about we'll talk about defining self care, lowering the stakes, routines and rituals, changing things up, finding joy and pride in what you already do, tools for recovery and creativity, living a full life and cutting yourself some slack. If the £10 fee makes it difficult to attend please email withoutapaddle@yahoo.co.uk.
More to come soon.