Lisa Nandy’s speech reflects back to us the sector’s existential confusion

While Lee’s pioneering 1965 white paper was not focused on creative freelance work, she acknowledged the precarity of this form of employment. Her vision of an Arts Council for Great Britain was one where government would build mechanisms to offer stable financial support for creative workers, emphasising that public arts funding was needed not just to support established institutions, but also those working outside of them.

The £270 million Arts Everywhere Fund announced by Nandy promises financial stability to creatives – but the details shared thus far suggest the focus is primarily on organisational infrastructure. No one can doubt the importance of government’s welcome support for the sector’s exhausted and failing infrastructure – through its £85 million Creative Foundations Fund and its earmarking of £120 million for the Public Bodies Infrastructure Fund and other initiatives – but there’s dissonance in a speech that starts with Jennie Lee then moves on to be about buildings: the focus on capital is needed, but what’s been announced is largely a series of one-off investments rather than sustained spending on the sector’s workforce.

So long as theatre complies with an approach that splices policy in terms of ‘buildings’ and ‘people’, it is rendered susceptible to government’s own number-crunching priorities

While acknowledging the interconnectedness of the creative industries and cultural sector through referencing the cross-pollination of talent from stage to screen, Nandy barely mentions investment in theatre’s unique ‘capital’ – its people. So long as theatre complies with an approach that splices policy in terms of ‘buildings’ and ‘people’, it is rendered susceptible to government’s own number-crunching priorities.

What government recognises as business capital is of critical importance when we think about cultural investment. Theatre’s bricks and mortar, and exploitable (commercial) intellectual property, means the spend – and return on investment – can be quantified by the Treasury. But theatre’s uniqueness – its real crown jewels – are the people who realise that intellectual property, the creative vision.

So how does the Treasury – or the sector itself – articulate the sector’s ‘capital growth’ that happens when a freelance producer transitions from mounting solo fringe events to producing multiple syndicated performances worldwide? Once commercialised, the capital gain is tangible, but the sector skills and the business knowledge gained and shared by that producer are not.

Theatre’s own challenges in capturing, harnessing, knowledge-sharing and evidencing freelancers’ sustainability and growth mean that the sector risks losing the profit that comes from freelancers’ career progression. We need a concerted collective effort to articulate the evidence and advocate for this recognition.

How do we make ourselves more visible to government? By bringing clarity to our own sense of ‘value’ – and to how we apply that to theatremakers, both as assets and as individuals with a multiplicity of views.