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Another Parliamentary committee criticises UK government’s COVID support for music festivals and cultural freelancers
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 24 June 2021
Another Parliamentary committee has criticised the UK government’s support of the live entertainment sector during the COVID pandemic, putting the spotlight in particular on the need for state-backed insurance in the festival sector and the general lack of support for freelancers in the events industry.
The latest criticisms come from Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, which has published a report on the government’s specific COVID funding for the creative industries via the £1.57 billion of monies that were made available to the cultural and heritage sectors. In England, that support was distributed via the Arts Council’s Culture Recovery Fund.
It acknowledges that that £1.57 billion in funding was the “biggest ever single investment” by the state “in the arts and culture sector”, and that the government’s Department For Digital, Culture, Media And Sport worked pretty quickly to get that support in place as the pandemic unfolded last year. However, the committee says there are still some issues regarding the allocation of those monies, and in relation to some big gaps in the support available.
In a statement alongside the launch of the report, the committee states that it “acknowledges the department’s efforts to help cultural bodies survive”, but “it also highlights that some organisations reported difficulties in accessing funds and others receiving no feedback whatsoever following unsuccessful applications, leaving them in perilous financial situations”.
On the big gaps, it adds: “There remain big questions over whether the fund reached the freelancers, commercial organisations and supply-chain businesses essential to the sector, and this year there is also a ‘survival threat’ to Britain’s treasured summer festivals without a government-backed insurance indemnity package against the risk of cancellation”.
The music industry has repeatedly called for more support for freelancers working in the sector, many of whom were not eligible for general COVID funding because of the way they had set up their freelance businesses, and were then unable to apply for Culture Recovery Fund grants which were targeted more at companies and organisations.
The PAC says that not only is the freelancer support gap a problem, but the DCMS doesn’t currently have a full understanding of the extent of that particular issue. In its conclusions, the committee writes: “The department lacks a comprehensive understanding of the coverage and impact of its funding on parts of the sector which found themselves without funds”.
“The department and its arm’s-length bodies have distributed around £1.2 billion to 5000 organisations and the department is confident that all applicants that met criteria for cultural significance and sound finances received funding”, it goes on. “But the department’s analysis of how the funding has been distributed is incomplete. For example, the department has only partial knowledge about the fund’s impact on freelancers, commercial organisations, supply-chain businesses and festivals”.
As for festivals, the committee also notes the repeated calls by the live industry for state-backed insurance for major music events, which are unable to get such insurance on the commercial market, and therefore face crippling financial liabilities if COVID regulations extend forcing the last minute cancellation of 2021 editions.
The lack of insurance has forced many festivals to preemptively call off their 2021 shows, even if it turns out COVID regulations do lift next month and they could have gone ahead.
Again, the DMCS is criticised for lacking data on this particular problem. “Festivals are making difficult decisions about whether to risk their survival by going ahead this summer”, the report states, “but the department has not modelled the cost of underwriting festival indemnity insurance”.
Commenting on the report, the committee’s Chair Meg Hillier MP says: “The pandemic has exposed just how poorly departments across government understand the sectors that they oversee. DCMS was clear that it ‘would not save every organisation’, but we are concerned about the impact of COVID-19 on those organisations vital to the culture sector – sound engineers, lighting and technical support”.
“The government must urgently consider support other than cash”, she adds, “such as insurance indemnity, or parts of the sector risk as second summer of forced inactivity with all the devastating consequences to their survival. This is a sector famed for making the show go on, no matter what, but it has been hammered by COVID-19 – mostly unable to operate at all for most of the last fifteen months. If the pandemic is allowed to steal a significant part of our creative and cultural sector it will have impoverished us indeed”.
