I’ve been up at Edinburgh Fringe for the first time in, I think, 7 years. The last time we went we’d booked accommodation and then the week before got an e-mail informing us we’d have to pay an extra £500 or our accommodation would be cancelled. It was an e-mail with a tone of “well, of course you’re going to cough up”, after all, this was really really late notice. We had a really lovely holiday that year, in the Netherlands, Utrecht as it happens (where I went to drama school), for far less than the then annual jaunt to Scotland.
This year I had some holiday left over and an end-of-year cut-off fast approaching, so I booked into a hostel (mistake), some trains that stopped at an improbable amount of stations (mistake) and decided to only book shows when I got there so that I see saw that’s a bit different (mostly a mistake).
I’ve been writing bits of a new show recently (which is about, predictably, love, fatherhood and memory). I tend not to write anything really but rather sketch out ideas and structure for months before really getting down to some writing. I’m also trying to work out how to level up my work – some of which is technical (upgrading to Qlab and more video based projection), some performative (maybe not using a little book). What’s nice about the fringe is seeing a range of performers/shows and thinking could I do that? Now of course the answer is “I am uncomfortable with full frontal nudity” but my point still stands. I’ve currently got three show ideas whirring away, and, I suspect, am suffering from a slight paralysis with it all. I need a deadline ideally, but currently no venue has said “what about the 13 Jan” so my work is abysmally slow.
Anyway, with that in mind, and also knowing that I find myself light on ideas for all three shows I thought I’d take some time out to write some Arts Marketing thoughts. In particular about a recent revelation about myself and trying to change how I work.
Start at the low point.
I was ill at the back end of last year – a combination of stress, anxiety and overwhelming sadness – one day I was in work (seemingly fine on the outside), and then, I wasn’t. I felt incredibly guilty leaving the brilliant team I’m part of to pick stuff up in a Sam-free-void. They dealt with it, as I should have expected, professionally, expertly, and with good humour and grace.
Thinking back it was almost inevitable. What’s curious is that a few people saw it coming. That I’d been walking towards the cliff edge with my eyes wide open but still hadn’t seen the drop. Or maybe that I thought that if I just worked a little harder, for a little longer, and worried a little more then I could just work my way away from the drop. I suspect the truth is that for a long time I’ve hovered, walking along the cliff edge and have just managed not to fall. Just. Sometimes, however, to continue the metaphor, the winds just blow slightly too hard and down you go.
I know lots of people who lead marketing teams in theatres – a side effect of 20+ years in the industry. There’s huge commonality to all the people who do this role – a love of the arts, hard work, obsessiveness, a certain level of geekiness (I literally know one cool Head Of Marketing, and if you think it’s you then sorry, it’s not you), and an eagerness not to let people down. There’s also a huge number who have been, like I was, signed off for periods of time – who exist in a near-constant state of anxiety and high stress – some of whom I’ve heard/seen cry.
Why am I overwhelmed?
The job has changed hugely of late – which is good, it should be dynamic. The rise of social media, multi-channel PPC, the content creation culture, the new what the fuck do we do with this AI – technology that was all meant to save us, to bring in new audiences, but that has, unwittingly, created a new prison in which to trap us, moving the job from a 9 – 5 (or let’s be realistic, it used to be 10 – 6) to something that can be near-constant.
I got an e-mail the other week asking me if I’d seen a group of comments on a post we’d done and that they need moderating. It was 9am on a Monday. Straight away iIcould feel my shoulders tighten – “Fuck” I thought, “I should have caught this”. Later that day I noticed that our PPC Google Ads for one campaign were all spending out by 9am – “Fuck” I thought, “I should have caught this”. Then a UK theatre announced something that we’d been doing for ages but had never shouted about, or, perhaps more accurately talked about – “Fuck” I thought, “I should have caught this”.
My work/life balance has never been healthy – when people asked me how I was doing so much the answer wasn’t an unholy speed or workrate. It was that I did more hours. If I woke up at 2am I’d check something. I’d go to sleep at 1am frequently. Sunday’s became gradually harder and harder – I could feel the pressure on my chest, pushing down from about 2pm. Around 8pm I’d nip on to my work laptop to clear a few things to make Monday more manageable, just for 30mins.
Then I’d nip on at 7pm. Then 6pm.
Just for 40mins. 1 hour. 2 hours.
You’re either not doing the job well enough or the hours to achieve the job are unrealistic. Which is it?
There’s a saying I heard (and I might be getting this wrong) which goes “What’s the best way to get £1m in theatre? Start with £3m”. It’s, generally, a loss-leading industry, or rather, the bit of it I work in is (regional producing venue) – far up the food chain millions are being made. The strength of the UK’s cultural economy, of that huge semi-weaponised soft-power of artistic projection however is built on foundations where each brick is constantly at risk of disappearing, on a knife edge or lightly crumbling in front of our eyes, subsidies are harder earned, smaller and with far higher expectations.
There’s a huge reliance on a culture of “above and beyond”, working beyond our contracted hours, of near-constant availability. I remember talking to an arts leader once and they explicitly stated that “above and beyond” was what they looked for in an employee, “going the extra mile”, “putting in extra”. I challenged it, “so a willingness to work for free?” They didn’t really have an answer.
I’ve got particularly gnatty about positions not advertised with either salary or working hours. “The hours required to get the job done” is nonsense – it makes a mockery of the advertised salary. I questioned it when I was approached a couple of years ago about a job with a large regional producing theatre in the north of England (narrows it down right?). The reply? It’s because of the seniority of the role and the salary. To be clear it was a £44k role. A good wage, but not good enough to accept working for potentially infinite hours.
I think part of my anxiety was (and still is) from worrying constantly about letting people down. When everything always feels on uncertain footing, where disaster lies around each corner, where even a success merely mildly moves the focus, and particularly the repeated refrain of “we’re going to struggle to break even” – then that worry passes my heart, mind and soul. My anxiety has always been that if I fuck up, if I don’t overdeliver, if I don’t meet expectations then people might lose their jobs. Of course the reality is that I’m a small cog in a bigger machine – my impact is, relatively, minimal. But reality and what plants itself in my head, my reality, are not always terrifically aligned.
I think that many of the fundamental business models on which subsidised theatres are built on, are, for want of a better word, a bit fucked. The expectation of exponentially doing more constructed over decades, often a fear of change in case we lose what we have (and the lack of strategic reserves to back up any change), but also, worryingly, that audiences, who, let’s be frank, pay for what we do through their taxes already to a degree, can sustain higher prices indefinitely. At the same time mid and small scale touring is on its knees, the depth of touring product is shallower than ever and for organisations the break-even mark is always the goal (or maybe the dream). Add to that more competition for leisure time, organisations that are hugely multi-faceted, that don’t want things to be less or more important and so, consequently, everything becomes most important, that we don’t want to choose. Add all that up and it creates a potential perfect storm.
I think there’s so many factors that lead the arts, theatre, arts organisations, down a road that, can, has treated people (and I specifically think with my arts marketing & management hat rather than my writing/performing hat which is a whole different thing), if not deliberately badly, but perhaps unconsciously poorly.
Isn’t this an endemic lack of leadership?
Arts leaders generally get a bit of a shit deal too. There’s often criticism around a lack of vision – but when your time is filled with, in the best case, maintaining the failing status quo, bailing out a boat riddled with holes, or, in the nearly-worst case, constantly putting out fires (while also bailing), then there is little time left. That and having to constantly second guess what trials and tribulations will kick you unexpectedly. Maybe it’s an audience member who disagrees with how you run the place (“I for one, will never return to your establishment and I’m sure many agree with me”), a right or left wing local council member who believes in freedom of speech (but not for the other guys), an actor who’s kicking off about, well, something/everything, or even a Director Of Marketing who’s a bit broken but really needs a change. It’s easy to see why you see arts leaders go from being optimistic dream carriers to tired shallow husks of their previous selves. It’s why you see shoulders lift when they leave. It turns out that the arts is not the exclusive home of green grass (in fact, the grass sometimes is quite parched on our side of the fence).
Is there an optimistic, non-harrowing bit of this?
So where does this leave us? Trapped? Broken? Tired? All and more?
I’ve been trying to work this one out over the last 6 months. Try and work out what I can do, as a cog in the machine. If we accept that change can come from anywhere and that leadership doesn’t necessarily always have to come from the people right at the top (The Jordan Henderson Effect if you will). Then it is, to a large part, down to me to make the change I want to see.
That lead me initially to values.
The arts loves values. Mostly. Sometimes.
I’ve got lots of friends who are signed up, card-carrying members of political parties (to be clear, Labour and the Greens – I work in the arts after all). They define their values by their alignment to a political flag. I guess I’ve never really, strongly, tried to articulate my values in a really clear way. I think I’ve struggled because whereas some of my friends have values that are cast in iron my thoughts have always been fluid and also drifted to exceptions that undermine the values I think I might have.
I sat in a meeting once and was, halfway through, asked for my opinion. I gave it and was promptly told “well that’s not what you thought last month”. I suspect I mumbled something quietly, when what I later recounted during my drive home (probably chuntering I suspect as I replayed the interaction), was that actually, actually the ability to get new information, understand it, and then feel okay to change an opinion, probably isn’t a bad thing.
I think that trying to be joyful and funny at work is a good thing. The counterpoint however is that it can easily feel like a defence mechanism, a way of hiding vulnerability, of maintaining a facade. Sometimes that facade can start to feel like it morphs into who you are. Maybe it’s not a value, it’s simply a behaviour, it’s trying to fit in, not be hated, be liked, feel part of the gang.
So how am I trying to change?
I think that over time my approach has changed slightly. Probably for good reason, my life has changed – I have a son, I’m older, I’m now allergic to shellfish, I still quite like physical theatre and puppetry. But I’ve also become less proactive, less outward facing and probably less willing to play the games in the arts where I’ve previously been burnt. With my shows for example I push back at press because I got assassinated in a review about 14 years ago. I don’t tend to invite artistic directors to see it (because they never come). And I won’t apply for opportunities because I think someone better deserves it.
With that in mind I’ve been thinking about four behaviours I want to champion in my own life for the next six months to make change. To be proactive and try and get my zing back a little. Because zing is important – as a leader everything you do, say, communicate, can impact those you work with and for.
- Trust
This is a big one for me. I’ve always been a terrible delegator. It’s not that I don’t believe that people can’t do things as well as me (apart from small-scale touring storytelling where I absolutely do believe that) – it’s that my head needs closure on tasks, needs to know with absolute certainty that I’ve done the best. It’s closely linked to the not letting people down thing, but also a feeling of responsibility, as a senior leader, to try and prevent as many “Fuck, I should have caught this” moments as possible. So I’m trying to let people be great more. I’m trying to step back more. To let plates fall occasionally. To be less of a safety net and more of a health & safety officer.
This is important, all my biggest learning moments have come from failure, from things not quite being good enough. Without opportunity to fail then we stifle opportunity to grow. And I have been guilty of that. - Bravery
I hold back more than I should (which will, I’m sure for a few people I work with, be a surprise). I can trace it back to a meeting in a library I was in once where I put my head above a parapet and got shot down fairly brutally. I’ve been thinking about what my job actually is. Leading a team, managing people, asking questions. Part of the role of a senior leader is to ask difficult questions, dig into answers, play with ideas. I got the brilliant Katie Moffat to do a digital review for us recently – absolutely terrifying – but deliberate because I want to be brave, put what I do under a microscope and invite scrutiny (which KM does in a very understanding way). Because without that scrutiny I’m not going to get better, but also I need to re-learn that scrutiny, questions and difficult questions aren’t always an assassination attempt – sometimes they can make genuine change. - Work Boundaries
I’m being much more proactive in having work boundaries. I don’t log into my laptop out of hours and wouldn’t unless there was an emergency. I’m managing my time-off-in-lieu much more effectively to take breaks and, crucially, have taken all my holiday. When I was in Edinburgh I saw things for me, not for work. Sure, occasionally they may overlap, but it’s the choice. I need to be rested, not burnt out and also, to let my head recover from what I’m doing. Theatr Clwyd has twice annual Wellbeing Days – they’re brilliant because noone is working – we close up shop in the same way that only really happens on Christmas day. I always think about when I was doing my GCSEs in 1999. I created revision guides and would block out 3 – 4 hour chunks to “get on it”. I now think this is insane (as are 3 hour long meetings without breaks!) – it’s been proven that short sessions with regular breaks is more efficient and more effective. That’s an approach I need. - Curiosity
I’ve started watching Ted Lasso again. There’s the brilliant scene where Ted is playing darts (if you’ve not seen it then well worth researching). Curiosity can fuel the soul, provide inspiration, give direction and help with dreaming. I’m not been curious enough recently, I’ve been sitting back as if I’ve reached the top of the knowledge tree. Guess what, noone reaches the top of the knowledge tree – it’s too tall, spikey and constantly growing. This looks like taking meetings on new products to see how they work. This looks like visiting other venues and stealing ideas wholesale, but also asking “why” a lot. This looks like me, trying to be the 26 year old Head Of Marketing I once was, who had passion and excitement and once, talked at a CEO about Google Analytics so excitedly that they had to calm me down. It’s about finding me.
So yeah. A long post there, but hopefully interesting.
As always if you’ve enjoyed this then let me know. I also do one day, free consultancy (it’s not really consultancy, it’s me hanging out with you asking questions and being a sounding board, clearly, I am not a consultant) for arts venues if anyone wants it (ideally not a crazy drive from Chester, but if it’s interesting then I might be game).
And yeah. Anyone want a new show in Jan?
Best, Sam