A Message from Adam Szabo, Chief Executive
We all have good days and bad days.
On the good days I come to work, I look around our (distanced, quiet) office and marvel at how far Manchester Collective has come in such a short time. It’s been a wild ride. The band is sounding amazing, the work we’ve got in the can for Bedroom Community (our record label) has huge potential, and we’re commissioning some of the most exciting composers working in the UK today. We’re very lucky. We can still connect with our audiences, albeit in very new ways. We can still pay our staff, and we have musicians in work. Objectively, we’re ok. We’re doing well.
Notwithstanding, on the bad days it feels very difficult. We got into this game so we could connect with live audiences, and as we all know, live programming is in a pretty tough place at the moment. We’ve got a few shows in the diary, and we’ve played to a couple of gorgeous distanced crowds who have turned out in their full masked regalia, but the sheer devastation of a year of cancelled concerts is taking a toll on all of us. We desperately miss sharing live work.
Artistically, we are stepping into the unknown. It’s impossible for us to plan ahead with any degree of certainty, and while we’re all thinking as creatively as we can to come up with new, viable ways of presenting work, it feels very scary. In the background, we all feel the pain and loss in the industry that we love. Many of our closest friends and colleagues are suffering badly, livelihoods and careers decimated overnight.
This morning, DCMS and Arts Council England awarded us a significant grant from the government’s Cultural Recovery Fund. It’s no small thing – the money will help us through what is likely to be an extremely tough winter. It means we can keep our incredible team working away – Rakhi and I creating new projects, Joanne, helping us to connect with audiences all over the world, Linda, bringing us together with new partners and supporters to help us on our way. Our basic organisational and infrastructure costs are now covered for the next six months – we’ve finally got some breathing space that we can channel into the creation of new work.
We’re very well placed to find new ways of creating and reaching audiences. Much of this year has been about us developing new artistic partnerships, designing digital, cross-arts experiences that are brilliant on their own terms, not just a meagre substitute for ‘proper concerts’. Slowly, we’re also finding ways that we can safely deliver live shows in the ways we want – shows that feel like the ‘Manchester Collective’ experience that our audiences so often fall in love with. It’s vital that we keep taking artistic risks – there’s a real danger in a petrified arts sector that turns out safe, middle of the road work. In art, being able to take risks is everything.
While it’s easy to feel like we’re spinning out of control, I stand by our mission to showcase brilliant, unusual, provocative art, and to connect with and include a wider audience than ever before. We’re working with great focus and determination to keep creating. I know we can do it.
Of course, for this work to happen it will have to be subsidised. We’re on a keen lookout for new commercial opportunities, but our bread and butter revenue streams have been dealt a full body blow. For the next couple of years, sector-wide, making art without significant further subsidy is going to be impossible. More than ever, our work is going to be the result of a team effort: funders, audiences, venues and partners working together. From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank you for your support. The messages we get from our audiences are what have kept us going in these last, difficult few months.
We’ll be in touch again soon – we’re working on some fantastic new projects that I can’t wait to share with you all.
Adam & MC