ABO Director: 'there is now an urgent need to implement a programme of change'

It is staggering to think that it is coming up for 2 years since the COVID-19 pandemic slammed into our industry. When I wrote my ‘state of the nation’ report last year, I talked about the devastating impact it had had on ABO members, but how impressed I had been by the ingenuity and resilience they had shown.

Since then, we have seen a reopening of venues across the UK, alongside the ending of government support measures and further tranches of funding from the Culture Recovery Fund. So, it’s time to take stock of how things are looking for our members.

First off, there is a nervousness about a return to ‘business as usual’. Infection rates remain stubbornly high, we have the new Omicron variant, and concert plans are still being impacted by musicians testing positive. While some orchestras have seen no option but to return to full forces on the platform, others, particularly outside England, have been more cautious and have stuck with social distancing. This in turn impacts on earnings, especially for freelance musicians.

The same concerns apply to audiences. With the doors back open, and many venues willing to fill to capacity, it’s clear from the data across the nations that was presented at the ABO’s Audience Summit on 25 November by the Audience Agency, Indigo Arts and Purple Seven that we are down about a third on pre-pandemic levels, and concerts aimed at a younger audience or families are doing better than those which rely on the core classical audience. The older generation do not yet appear to be comfortable coming back to the concert hall, in spite of the vaccination programme, and the fact that many people disregard venues’ pleas to wear face coverings isn’t helping.

Our members are also still navigating the shift to digital that we saw last year. Even with a return to the concert hall, orchestras are sticking with hybrid models and have ramped up their digital offering. We are seeing this transition in their Learning & Participation work too. There has been huge demand from schools for digital content this past year, which is likely to continue, especially as so many schools remain reluctant to let musicians on the premises.

We expect the situation for concerts and education to remain pretty much as is until Summer 2022, which means there will be a continued squeeze on finances. We are grateful that the Government recognised this in the October Budget with increases to departmental spending and a temporary uplift in Orchestra Tax Relief.

The Government has also recognised the challenge that Brexit poses for our members, but it’s been harder finding solutions for this. Progress has been made on the vexed issue of visas including the recent announcement from Spain of a visa waiver. The ABO has been at the heart of discussions with the UK Government, providing substantial evidence from our members of its negative impact, and has had welcome support from our European federation, Pearle, in getting traction from the EU. But we have been unable to make any headway with the stringent road haulage limits that have been imposed by the UK-EU Trade & Cooperation Agreement. We have gone directly to officials in Brussels to see if they might be willing to work with the UK Government on a compromise, but hit a brick wall. Whatever side of the argument one is on, the fact is that there are two intractable ideologies at work here: the UK Government’s obsession with taking back control of the border; and the EU’s obsession with protecting the purity of the Single Market.

All of this has put the ABO team under huge pressure these past two years and so the ABO board agreed that we simply had to increase staff capacity. We were delighted to welcome Hanna Madalska-Gayer in the new post of Head of Policy & Communications in September and she has taken on most of the work on Covid and Brexit. This frees up me and the rest of the team to focus on delivering a comprehensive package of events and support for members, and devote time to some other key priorities, not least Diversity & Inclusion, and climate change, both of which will feature heavily in our forthcoming conference.

The theme of this year’s ABO Conference in February is ‘Rebound’. Along with a close look at what recovery looks like to our members as we emerge from the pandemic, we will also spend a lot of the conference continuing the in-depth conversation which has been going on over the past few years about how our sector can become more inclusive. It is becoming ever clearer that funders are putting inclusivity at the heart of their future decision-making, which means there is now an urgent need to implement a programme of change. We therefore welcome the recent publication of Arts Council England’s Fair and Inclusive Classical Music report, which provides a platform on which our members can build their action plans.

We will also follow our members in going hybrid. Alongside a return to an in-person conference in Glasgow (depending on Covid restrictions), we will run an online conference, offering the best of both worlds. Our digital conference last year proved hugely popular, reaching significantly more people than would normally attend. So we hope to retain those numbers through a hybrid event.

What we have seen, however, is a hunger to meet again in person. We have not just detected a delight from members at the prospect of reconvening in Glasgow but have also held two well-received in-person events, the Find Your Way residential course in August, and our Leaders Retreat in September. Our thanks to the team at Britten Pears Arts for hosting both of these.

It’s clear the challenges the ABO and its members have been through these past two years is going to continue for some time yet. But the ABO is now in good shape to absorb the blows, and forge solutions to the benefit of our members.

The ABO conference will be held in Glasgow from 9-11 February. To find out more and book your tickets for the 2022 conference, visit the ABO website.