Union launches performing arts charter

The Equity performing arts practitioners’ union has launched a mental health charter setting out five demands after a global scoping review of 111 academic studies found “a clear trend for increased mental health concerns across the performing arts”.

The Equity-commissioned review highlights high levels of anxiety and depression among both students and professionals, and identifies a range of contributing factors. These include a culture of unstable work, antisocial working hours, time away from home, and financial fears. Job precarity, low pay, work over- and underload, and time away from loved ones all have a significant impact on mental health, studies have found. Negative relationships with others in positions of power in the workplace also create stress.

Many papers argued that education providers rarely provide sufficient support, with students “predominantly underprepared” for how to look after their psychological wellbeing once in the industry.

The union also highlights the “stark finding” that there is no research explicitly exploring mental health in relation to ethnically diverse and disabled performers, or social class.

In response to the findings, the union’s new charter lays down five key demands to improve mental health by bringing about deep-rooted structural reform.