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JOHANNA TOWN, CHAIR OF THE ASSOCIATION OF LIGHTING DESIGNERS (ALD) Chair of the Association of Lighting Designers (ALD), Johanna Town hopes for a sense of community from every lighting professional, pulling together for better conditions as the live touring and theatre workforce takes its first tentative steps back to work.
As lockdown restrictions begin to ease and the touring and theatre industries take tentative steps back to work, it is my greatest hope that lighting production personnel can resume their professional roles with dignity and security, bolstered by a sense of community. There’s no doubt the pandemic has exposed the precarious position of the live events and theatre-based workforce. Existing as a huge tribe of freelancers, we have a very poor structure within which people have to carry out their duties. Though we are all in a cooperative situation, who do we turn to when things go wrong? I don’t think my colleagues at the ALD or I realised just how desperate the industry had become. It’s a situation that has enraged, but also empowered us to pull more of the community together to create a hub for opportunities and support. At the beginning of the pandemic, for
example, manufacturers who were unsure of how to help, threw training at us from every direction – and wonderful though it was, it was hard to keep up. We recognise the continued importance of that training, formalising it for our members into a monthly online event. Corporate ALD members are an important link that helped to keep ALD members up to date with the latest technology, which enabled new expertise to be learned from even the most remote locations. We need manufacturers to continue in their role as providers of much needed career progression development. As ALD Corporate members, manufacturers are a strong focal point in our ecosystem and play a crucial role in the ALD creating the community upon which our members rely. We need communities – the pandemic has demonstrated that. The ALD is determined to put such structures in place. We need to support members 12
