Six months of planning undone in a few hours
At the Lyric Theatre in Belfast, Christmas had already been cancelled.
“I waited as long as I could to give it a chance. I couldn’t wait any longer,” said executive producer Jimmy Fay. “We have to keep banging the drum as we try to march forward. Any package will be useful, though there won’t be any time to re-do Christmas.
“At the Lyric, we employ a lot of freelancers to create work and even before lockdown, what we were being able to do was diminishing as the arts was always the first sector to face cuts. This year, we have lost over £2m in box office revenue alone.
“We’re an industry that brings people out of their homes, into venues, into towns and cities. Just likes the restaurants, the bars, the farming community, the big business community we employ, we provide a service. We need the same respect. Any more blows and we’ll be handing back the keys.”
But the arts sector is about much more than venues and performers. Michelle Mcternan, manager and promoter of some of the top names in the business, relies on venues being able to host performances.
“In the past couple of months, I’ve had eight festivals cancelled. That’s thousands of pounds,” she said. “There’s so much more to this business than watching a singer on stage. Events needs organised, promoted, sponsors need to be found, tickets need sold. That takes time. It can take months of work to get events from conception to completion and in this business the promoter only gets paid on completion of the event.
“Summer should have been the biggest time of the year for us. Christmas should be next. Summer didn’t happen. Christmas won’t either.”
This weekend, Michelle was supposed to be finally enjoying the Younique festival she had worked long hours to arrange,
But six months of planning were undone in the space of a few hours, live music a victim of further restrictions.
“It’s heartbreaking,” she added. “I spent the day cancelling what I’d been working for six months on. What should have been a crowd of over 600 was going to be around 100. But that’s gone now as well.
“We’ve had to come up with new ideas. I have Nathan Carter doing a live pay-per-view concert at Crumlin Road Gaol in October, so that’s something on the horizon. You do what you can to survive.”
Singer Conleth Kane was due to be on stage twice this weekend alongside Belfast’s Brian Kennedy as part of that Younique festival. He flew in from his home base in London to the news that the gigs had been cancelled at the last minute.
“It’s a horror story. But there was a conversation no one wanted to have. The focus has been on Covid, on shops getting open, on virtually every other business getting back. No one wanted this virus to happen, but it has been a hard pill to swallow seeing others get back to work,” he said.
“People say to me, ‘Sure, you can just go back to your day job now.’ This is my day job. It’s my career. People might go to concerts as a hobby, but it’s everything to me.
But the venues, even around London, are all empty and artists have been on their knees begging for help.
“The last time I performed on stage was on January 27. I’d worked hard on an album earlier this year and spent February and March filming videos, but I wasn’t able to do any promotion work after that.
“I’m self-employed and I fell just short of qualifying for any Government support. I was caught in a perfect storm.
“You could look at it as professional trauma. Your career just halts overnight. Everything you worked towards just isn’t there anymore. Mentally, it’s tough and there will be some who can’t deal with it.”
With the destination of £29m still to be decided by the Department for Communities, there will be more than a few waiting and hoping it can kick-start a cultural recovery. But it may not get actors back on the stage just yet.
It’s not over until the fat lady sings, they say. But she’s staying quiet and, for now, she’s stepped off the stage.