Why do freelancers fall through the gaps?

For the launch of the State of the Nations report ‘Who stays and who leaves? Mapping arts, culture and heritage careers‘, we asked Paule Constable to detail why freelancers continue to fall through the gaps in terms of adequate representation and priority focus.

Paule is an award-winning, freelance lighting designer working in the Performing Arts. She has received six Laurence Olivier Awards for her lighting design work, which includes War Horse and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Creative PEC.

During the pandemic, as our world went silent, I joined a group of other freelancers working in my sector to form an advocacy group called Freelancers Make Theatre Work.

Much of our work is quite simply explaining who we are and how, again and again, we as freelancers fall through the gaps in any kind of representation or in the development of policy in our sector. In the structures of power within the Performing Arts the freelancers are consistently overlooked, unseen, and unheard. Ironic really, considering that the majority of those we see and hear on our stages are freelance.

The public see them – but often to the Treasury, to policy makers, to the sector, we are both dispensable and invisible. It’s a heady mix of the often unemployed and oversubscribed world of performers, to the highly skilled wig makers and voice and dialect coaches who are so often unseen, or the creative leaders who direct and design and deliver. It’s a hugely complex interdependent ecosystem – and one I think conversations like this, which gather around entrepreneurial choice and microbusinesses, need to engage with to try to understand a little about the unusual, unique and messy nature of the Performing Arts freelance workforce.

Here are some of the provocations I’d like to share:

Uniquely in the Creative Industries, an estimated 70 to 80% of the workforce in the Performing Arts are freelance¹. That’s a huge dependency upon an unseen, less regulated, largely unsupported group of people. And sadly, only around 56% of these people are in a union. Union membership is mostly focused around performers and stage managers (Equity) and the technical skills (BECTU) that are shared with TV and film with many feeling there is no natural home for them and their skill set. Likewise, with Arts Councils we see only around 8% of freelancers have received funds from them directly². And beyond funding there has been little to no engagement from these funding bodies with the wider community. When the pandemic started, we were shocked to discover that no one had any data at all to show who the freelancers are, what skills we hold, and what our realities are. In response to this, we undertook our first exercise in data collection to ensure that our value was included as the companies and sector support bodies attempted to articulate the value of the Performing Arts to the Treasury. The original Big Freelancer Survey: Routes to Recovery landed on the right desk and was, we are assured, considered when the Cultural Recovery Fund was announced. That was a win. But then our lack of visibility, our complex earning patterns, our mixed portfolio careers and tax codes meant that the Treasury, while understanding our value, could see no mechanism to get funds directly to freelancers. Only 41% of us qualified for the government’s Self-Employed Income Support Scheme³ – a figure which, had the scheme functioned effectively, should have been 100%. Sadly, 29% of freelancers received no government support at all during the lockdown era. Again we fell through the gaps…The CRF went to the buildings and companies. The assumption was that the funds would trickle down to us, but work needs to be being made for those funds to trickle. And trickle-down economics is no way to invest in almost an entire skilled workforce.

It’s a common misunderstanding that we are all happily freelance by choice. That is not the case in our part of the sector. Jobs such as my own, actors, directors, casting directors, musicians: we are all freelance by necessity – there are no longer any salaried positions in these disciplines in this country. For example no UK theatre offers a resident lighting designer role anymore. This has been a slow but unnoticed shift. 30 years ago, most small towns and cities had resident repertory companies. Those companies had carpenters, scenic workshops, props departments, tailors and cutters where these skills could be held, developed and shared. As funds have got tighter, so those roles have all been outsourced. At the same time, 30 years ago ACE offered training opportunities to young directors and practitioners to go and develop knowledge and skills within that network of rep houses. None of that is possible anymore. The vital skills sit outside of the buildings; the buildings are funded to maintain the minimal administrative staff and the bare bones of what once were technical departments, and the makers have been moved out. Often an artistic director is the only “maker” in a building on salary. Most shockingly, this is now seen as a legitimate standard money-saving policy. Consider the difficult choices being made by companies such as Welsh National Opera now: outsourcing their orchestra and chorus cuts down expenses. Freelancers’ rates of pay have dropped below their salaried colleagues – a recent Musicians’ Union survey⁴ found freelancers overall earning an average of 26% less than musicians in salaried employment. Logically, this is the opposite of what should be the case, since freelancers need to cover additional costs such as training, holiday pay, sick pay, pensions, and so on. While this inequality persists, organisations will find it hard to resist hacking away at the salaried positions which provide the artistic foundations of their work and skills.

This leads me onto the exposure of critically low pay. One of the interesting things about our data is that we are trying to articulate what the daily lives of freelancers are like. While it can be hard to pin down exact rates of pay, since there’s no such thing as a “typical working week” for most arts freelancers, we are able to estimate the effective net income per hour for freelancers over the course of a financial year. This is only one of many factors to consider when trying to fathom why there is a critical skills shortage in some areas, and why we are losing so many people so rapidly. Some of the headlines on pay that really talk to our freelance lives in this year’s survey are as follows:

44% of Performing arts freelancers are working at levels of pay that would be illegal for salaried employees.

75% of freelancers expressed increased work-related expenses over the financial year 2022-23, while only 30% reported increased income – and 40% reported a decrease in income.

90% of respondents reported working a significant number of unpaid working hours. 32% of respondents reported that 50% or more of their hours worked are unpaid.

Freelancer median pay is sitting at £12.23 per hour – a 32% pay gap with the National median pay level of £18 an hour.

And incomes overall were down 16% on average compared to the previous financial year.

Ouch.

Beyond all of this painful news a piece of data bubbled up that was truly shocking. Our 2023 survey exposed a 37% gender pay gap – which widened to 48% for freelancers of between 21 and 30 years of experience, showing both embedded sexism and ageism. This year’s data sits at very similar levels, with equally worrying figures for anyone with protected characteristics. Funding cuts were frequently cited as the reason why any progress to become a more diverse and progressive industry are unrealistic – with, for example, one freelancer saying ‘with the funding cuts and cost-of-living crisis, it’s getting harder and harder for people from working class backgrounds or lower-income households to work in this sector.’ Multiple “glass ceilings” exist within the career structures for freelancers in the industry. In the 2024 survey when we looked at high earners – those earning £100,000 a year and above – women were underrepresented by a factor of 6.6 in this group, at only 19%. Precisely none of these high earners of any gender were from less-privileged socioeconomic backgrounds, with equally shocking underrepresentation of people from the global majority, and of those with a disability. When we consider why so many people – and particularly women or those with protected characteristics – are leaving the industry, and we see pay gaps such as these, in the context of overall low and decreasing income, and increasing costs, it is hardly surprising to also discover that 2/3 of Performing Arts freelancers are unsure that they have a future in the industry.

So why does this matter? The creative industries have been identified by the government as one of the key areas for growth, an accolade we have earned as we have continued to grow over the past 10 years despite the trend being otherwise in almost every other sector. The roadmap for this growth is contained in the Creative Industries Sector Plan, and in that plan freelancers and the workforce are central to the success of the sector. The policy acknowledges that in the world of AI, “human endeavour and creativity will be more valuable than ever.” And yet our freelance-focused data is clearly saying that we are not valuing those creative humans. The policy further acknowledges that we need to “build a resilient, skilled and diverse workforce fit for the future.” But to do that we need to understand who is in that workforce – what skills they carry and what we are losing, and how to strategically ensure that those skilled freelancers are there to build this vision of our shared future. The Performing Arts are making the grave mistake of viewing freelancers as a raw material, rather than as human beings. We are pushed down in value and worth, and that point of tension is starting to do really deep damage. To make performances, we need people. Theatres are optional – people are not. If theatre buildings didn’t exist, then theatre would still happen. But not without people.

If we want to discuss our future, then we need to do that together and, as acknowledged in the Creative Industries Sector Plan, freelancers are vital to that future. The very success of this industry is dependent upon building “a resilient, skilled and diverse workforce fit for the future.” So please let’s stop being scared of what we have to say. Let’s stop sitting at opposite sides of the table or, worse still, letting employers and funders speak for us. We shall only succeed in becoming this extraordinary economically vibrant sector by learning from each other and working together. Welcome freelancers – with radical ideas and difficult thoughts – into the conversation, and be surprised as to what that might reveal.

The government’s commitment to a freelance champion for the creative industries is an opportunity to start this work. It is big and complicated, but we have to focus on rebuilding trust and moving from discussion to action.

Making work in this sector – the Performing Arts – is a collective endeavour. We have to reframe the conversation and ensure that we work collectively.

Visit Freelancers Make Theatre Work for further information and detailed reports.

Read the ‘Who Stays and Who Leaves?’ full report

Photo by Wesley Pribadi on Unsplash