5 Years on… The story of how a community music organisation coped with Covid-19

The year started so well. We’d just come off the back of hosting a very successful music conference – On Point – on January 31st, 2020.

At that time, there was more hoo-ha around the UK leaving the EU, and Covid-19 wasn’t really being mentioned at all; especially not as any kind of looming threat.

January and February tend to be the quieter months of the gigging year, so it’s always a slow start – waiting for people’s pockets to recover after their Xmas and new year spending.

Gigs were just beginning to ramp up gradually, and our next big event was our Stockton Calling festival on the 11th of April 2020.

Towards the end of February, the festival partners, began to discuss the rising possibility of the festival not happening due to worries around rising infection rates from Covid-19. At this time, although infection rates were rising, death rates weren’t being reported as abnormally high. There was still no firm advice from national or local government as to what we could expect.

In the world of gigs, events are largely driven by artist contracts, with heavy financial penalties for venues cancelling – less so for the artist cancelling. There was no indication from booking agents that pulling gigs was being considered. If an artist doesn’t perform, they don’t get paid – nor do their travelling crews or indeed the agents themselves… and of course venues can’t earn the essential bar income that keeps their doors open.

It begins… or does it?

On the 16th March, the UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, held a much anticipated special news conference – the first of many. During this news conference, he urged people to work from home where possible – and to avoid gathering in pubs and restaurants, to help stop the spread of Covid-19, and to give the NHS time to prepare. To us, that was absolutely useless advice. There was no firm guidance about what we could or couldn’t do; but in the same breath, he was advising our audience to stay away. Result: mass confusion.

Our next event was a private hire in our small venue, The Green Room, featuring The Lottery Winners – a band that was attracting a strong following. This took place on Wednesday 18th March and 40 people gathered in the room. Because of a lack of guidance, we remained contractually obliged to stage the show. Not to do so would have financially penalised the band and the local promoter who organised the show. We discussed cancelling, but felt that we’d be “damned if we did and damned if we didn’t“…

Now it begins…

On the 20th March, the UK government announced the enforced closure of all pubs and clubs – although shocking, this at least gave us the necessary reason to cancel shows without exposing us to financial claims against us. Lockdown had begun… Bizarrely though, the lockdown of pubs and venues didn’t begin until midnight – so cue stories about people making beeline for crowded bars in an effort to beat the lockdown drinking deadline…
 
As a result of the lockdown announcement, we began cancelling all of our live events. But because there was no firm end date for lockdown,  we could only gradually remove gigs from our calendar month by month on a rolling basis.  So began a long cycle of postpone, rearrange, postpone again and rearrange again.  On the 23rd of March, we also announced the cancellation of Stockton Calling.  
 
Despite the tragedy of the rapidly developing health emergency,  there was a certain “togetherness” about lockdown  – although, ironically, actual togetherness was forbidden; so we made to with an online version instead. 
 
A gradual programme of support began to emerge from central government,  local government and some of the organisations that provided funding for organisations like ours.
 
Like others, we rapidly redefined what we did to provide online and remote activities to replace our live programme; and we applied for much needed financial support to replace the income that we were no longer allowed to earn.
 
We were in the fortunate position of being eligible for a lot of support and funding.  Others weren’t so lucky. 
 
We manged to put a funding strategy together which included our first ever Crowd Funder campaign – we were delighted with the response to our appeal and local artists, technicians and promoters rallied round to support us as we offered a range of rewards to donors – including badges and tee shirts.   We raised a fantastic £25,522 – which was an amazing response.

Plans to return…

Lots of freelance workers – including sound and lighting technicians that we’d worked with for years – weren’t ineligible for government support.   Resourceful as ever, they realigned their skills towards industries that needed them – particularly as delivery drivers.  Ironically,  although now removed from the “glamour” of late night gigging, heaving heavy equipment around and putting up with (some) arsey band members and tour managers; a lot of our valuable technicians decided to settle for a steady wage, regular hours and paid holidays.  Our industry became poorer for the loss of them all.
 
It looked like live music venues might be allowed to open over the summer of 2020 – so in turn, we were allowed to return to work to make preparations,  under strictly (self) enforced Covid-19 restrictions – masks, social distancing,  and regular hand sanitising. 
 
Professional venues can’t just turn live music back on though. Gigs need planning and promoting – so the (quickly announced) re-opening of venues in July 2020 wasn’t a target we were able to hit. Getting the venue ready, confirming artists, getting gigs back on sale, and promoting them properly meant that our reopening was set for early October 2020.  
 
Gigs weren’t going to be the gigs we remembered. Although allowed to re-open, we were only able to do so under strict covid safe conditions. 
 
We wanted to do things properly,  and to make sure that our returning audience felt safe and welcome.   So after much cutting and hammering to create mini tables, and lots of deep cleaning and the application of miles of black & yellow tape, along with floor stickers – we were ready.
Social distancing rules saw our usual 300 standing capacity reduced to just 55 people, sitting down. Not just seated; people had to be channelled through safe corridors, and only to use the toilets or leave to go home. People couldn’t go to the bar. We had to serve them where they sat – using an app to order drinks – with online finance companies taking a nice slice of our income in fees for the privilege. 
 
Gigs were never going to be financially viable, but the funding support we’d received gave us a cushion to open anyway.   Artists wanted to play again,  technicians wanted to work again,  audiences wanted to attend gigs, and we wanted to do what we do best – put on live music shows. 
 
Despite the constraints,  it felt good to reopen and we set our stall out for a gradual relaxation of restrictions,   hoping to eventually build back up to full capacity gigs… eventually… eventually. 

Go! Now stop…

Unfortunately,  eventually never arrived.  We reopened on October 4th; and we’re quickly informed by the Government that the UK would be plunged back into full lockdown for the second time on November 5th.
 
Our last show of 2020 took place on October 31st.  In an effort to save Xmas,  lockdown would be lifted in December.  However, Teesside then became classed as “Tier 3” area – subject to a localised total lockdown; so no change for us.

 Knowing that gigs as we knew them weren’t going to be on the cards for some time, we embarked on a series of online events and socially distanced activities using some of the funding that we were able to raise.

Over the winter of 2020 / 2021, we provided a meals on wheels type service to local community groups who’d become isolated, as well as bringing ion local artists (under strict covid conditions) to play one off acoustic sets for streaming.

We felt that it was important to keep in touch with our community of local musicians and the staff and trustees at TMA came up with some innovative ways to keep music being heard.

January saw the 3rd national lockdown introduced – and it was later in the year until we were able to pull everything back together in order to reopen once again.
 
In the meantime, a rescheduled Stockton Calling – for 3rd April 2021, had to be postponed until the 5th of June 2021, then finally  cancelled again on the 18th January 2021.
 
The Georgian Theatre was finally able to re-open (again) in May 2021.
 
This time we were assured that further lockdowns would be unlikely – however, we were still only allowed to run 55 capacity events until restrictions eventually relaxed in July.

Go again!

We staged a series of “socially distanced, covid safe” events throughout the summer of 2021 and gradually things began to return to “normal”…
 
But what would “normal” look like?
 
In the months immediately following the lockdowns, we saw lots of events being cancelled or postponed due to covid related illness.  Frustratingly, it only took one essential person within the touring party – a musician, a sound engineer, a driver etc – and the whole show came crashing down.
 
And for over a year afterwards, we continued to provide hand sanitiser stations, undertook extra cleaning, and provided gloves, masks and other PPE for staff and customers until the threat of covid eased off.

And now?

To a certain extent, we’re still living with the fall out of the Covid-19 Pandemic. 
 
We know that some of our customers never came back – people’s cautiousness about gathering in large groups has continued to keep them away from gigs – especially those within enclosed spaces.
 
Lockdown had a huge effect on people’s mental health as a whole.  It’s hard to imagine anyone came out of the other side of the pandemic without suffering some form of stress or anxiety.
 
The “togetherness” of the pandemic soon gave way to the divisiveness of the cost of living crisis – to the point where some gig goers can no longer afford to come out to spend time and money watching the bands that they love, because they have to be more careful with their hard earned cash.
 
Even those who still come out are being more careful with how much they spend on going to gigs.  Visits are fewer for lots of us, and the amount we can afford to spend on tickets, food and drink is significantly reduced.  That in turn impacts upon the viability of music venues – they need income from sales to pay the bills and keep the lights on.
 
As a group though, music fans still come out to enjoy gigs when time and money permit.  And although nobody would choose to go back to a lockdown situation – it’s highly debatable as to whether society as a whole would allow our freedoms to be curtailed in a similar way in the future.
 
And, to end on a lighter note, if anyone has forgotten how frustrating it was to cancel, re-arrange, cancel and re-arrange all of those gigs…  here’s a song we commissioned from Faithfull Johannes that sums up where we all were at the time…