4 working groups have been established (around venue infrastructure, audiences, touring, and those working in venues) across all types of venue (theatre, performing arts, music, etc). Julian Bird (SOLT & UK Theatre) is acting as vice-chair / convenor of this work overall with different chairs for each group. The aim is to make rapid progress in the next few weeks, and we will keep members appraised of discussions.Over the weekend there was some press activity by DCMS around this work – the key is to develop a practical action plan to get us open with full(er) audiences.

Over the next month these groups will be seeking an agreement to be able to re-open venues in full – as part of this work, we are launching a very simple data collection tool that we would like all venues (seated indoors, not outdoors) to complete so we can get a picture of what activity is happening, at what capacity and audience demand, and whether there have been any Covid issues. This data collection is being done across all music venues as well as theatre and performing arts.

This is vital as part of the data picture into the recommendation on Stage 5. It is a very quick and simple “survey” to fill in, and should be done weekly – in practice, there is little activity at the moment but we will get a growing picture of what is happening.

The link for venues to fill in details is: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/9F5SDTD