What We Learned

When Tonic first met with us to discuss our research question, we said we had noticed that of the artists and companies we had supported to date, a greater proportion were male/male-led and we wondered if that was because they had been more proactive about knocking on our door and more confident in their dealings with us.

The research did indeed show that women tend to be far more reticent in asking for things from theatres, and are more concerned about being seen as a nuisance or taking up people’s time. Given that the messages women receive often dissuade them from being front-footed or assertive it perhaps isn’t surprising that this translates into how they may interact with venues. This led to thinking around how we can be more proactive in making offers to artists, rather than waiting for them to come to us.

We learned that advice and provision currently available to artists is largely geared up to anticipate a certain kind of career trajectory, and assumes a particular way of working. This doesn’t necessarily apply to as many women because, we heard, their lives, and therefore their careers, don’t necessarily follow a linear route, nor are they automatically interested in having just one creative outlet, but may want to combine several, something that artist development programmes – or the way that venues think about developing artists and companies through how and in which spaces they programme them – don’t always respond to. We found that much support is concentrated at early-career level but we heard that artists, and especially women, may instead want support at later points in their careers, especially after taking time out or focusing on another strand of their practice. It seems that less rigidity in development support, and a greater level of responsiveness to the individual circumstances of artists is important.

Research has shown us that women, even later in their careers, are less likely to have their work programmed on bigger stages (thereby commanding a higher fee and insulating them financially so they can go on to make more work) and we heard suggestions that in part this may be because their work – how they tell stories, what stories they choose to tell – may be less immediately understandable to funders and venues because it doesn’t resemble the kind of work that has been dominant and which they are therefore used to seeing or have ‘short cuts’ to understanding.

We heard that brief coffee meetings with programmers or the limited word count on a funding application form may not provide the space for artists with less familiar modes of expression to convey what it is they do. Artists also spoke about the frustration of being put ‘in boxes’ based on their gender (and in some cases, their gender in combination with their ethnicity) i.e venues and programmers making assumptions about what they would want to make work about and on what scale. Paradoxically, they said it could also be difficult it they confounded the expectations of programmers and venues who struggled to identify where on their ladder of progression to accommodate them, something that could result in artists and companies getting ‘stuck’ on the lower tiers.

We learned that overwhelmingly support offered by theatres for artists and companies focuses on supporting the creative work itself, but rarely the career/organisational structures underpinning it. So lots of free rehearsal rooms and opportunities to do scratch performances (which are of course valuable) but very little on business planning, financial strategising, or organisational skills. This means artists or companies may be flourishing artistically but failing to develop their sustainability, meaning their artistic work – however well-developed – is at risk. For women, given the greater level of financial instability they may be experiencing, this can be particularly dangerous. We know that the question of whether organisations can support the business side as well as the artistic output of independent companies and artists is something Northern Stage is now also thinking about.