Culture sector faces ‘tsunami of job losses’ as Tate cuts posts

The Tate and Sadler’s Wells theatre have became the latest arts institutions to announce redundancies – prompting a warning that the culture sector is facing a ‘tsunami’ of job losses.

More than 300 retail and catering jobs will go at the Tate galleries’ commercial division, Tate enterprises, which represents around half of staff.

Meanwhile a quarter of staff at dance powerhouse Sadler’s Wells will lose their jobs.

Bosses at both institutions said they had been forced to make the cuts after the long period of closure during lockdown and no prospect of a return to full visitor numbers any time soon. The announcements are the latest in a jobs bloodbath that has hit the arts sector since the pandemic.

There have been at least 6,500 jobs losses so far in the industry, including at the national Theatre and london’s Southbank Centre. labour’s culture spokesman Tracy Brabin said the job loss ‘storm is becoming a tsunami’. ‘This is affecting all regions, all sizes of organisations, metropolitan areas and towns alike. It is seismic and I fear only just beginning,’ she said.

The Tate’s director Maria Balshaw said yesterday: ‘It is with great sadness that we have had to lose many of our colleagues in Tate enterprises.’

She blamed ‘the loss of revenue during lockdown and the dramatic drop in footfall in our galleries since reopening’. alistair Spalding, chief executive of Sadler’s Wells, said he was ‘heartbroken’ at the job losses.