Theatre Forum is committed to promoting good employment practices in the performing arts. For many years, members have been able to download and adapt sample contracts for their production, so our sample contracts have been widely shared and circulated.
More recent legislative changes, a focus on cancellation clauses during Covid as well as fee negotiations now involving streaming and Video On Demand meant that all Theatre Forum’s sample contracts drafted pre-Covid needed updating.
Last year, Theatre Forum took the opportunity to work with solicitor Andrea Martin of MediaLawyer Solicitors to draft new sample contracts and take all the legislative, contractual, and employment changes in the sector into account. You can see the contracts here.
Pay and Conditions Survey
Theatre Forum and First Music Contact, in association with the Association of Irish Stage Technicians (AIST) and other resource organisations, are working together to campaign for more sustainable careers for people working in the cultural sector. Both organisations believe if artists and musicians are to have the opportunity to make the art that enriches our lives and our communities, then the sector must heed old and new evidence and take responsibility for cultivating the conditions that allow artists, makers, and creative practitioners to support themselves through their art.
Theatre Forum and First Music Contact are acting together to collect the evidence about pay, conditions, barriers to career progression, and the challenges of retaining talent and experience in the cultural sector after the pandemic. This evidence will be used to make the case that the sector’s employment frameworks must be re-engineered to eliminate the double whammy of poor pay for intermittent work and artists and musicians not afforded parity of pay or esteem.
Facts collected using this survey will be used to back up the case for better pay and conditions as well as securing the roll-out of the Basic Income for the Arts scheme after its pilot stage. Links to these Pay and Conditions surveys are being shared with artists, arts workers, musicians as well as the sector’s organisations. Once the anonymised survey results have been collated and analysed, findings will be widely shared and discussed with all the arts and culture sector’s stakeholders to advocate for positive change.
Help collect the evidence to advocate for positive change.
Surveys should take you about 15 minutes to complete. The more responses we get, the stronger the evidence. Please respond by Thursday 16th March and share widely. If you’ve any questions about the surveys, just mail coordinator@theatreforum.ie.
Save the Date
Theatre Forum’s next large gathering event will be in Waterford on May 30 & 31 this year in Theatre Royal and Garter Lane.
Click on Theatre Forum’s Jobs Board and Opportunities Board for new content.