Support Act launches ‘Emergency Appeal’ as Omicron places ‘enormous pressure’ on live biz
With the latest surge of COVID-19 infections dealing a crushing blow to Australia’s live industry, Support Act launches an emergency appeal.
Several leading lights from Australia’s music community are throwing their time and energy behind the 2022 COVID Emergency Appeal, announced today (Jan. 18).
By way of support, the likes of artists Sam Margin from The Rubens, Paul Gildea from Icehouse, lighting designer Deb Hatton, and Unified artist manager Caleb Williams have stepped forward to share their stories about how the industry charity services have helped them.
“Just when we thought 2022 might bring something brighter for our industry,” comments Clive Miller, CEO of Support Act, “the spread of Omicron is once again affecting live music, with events being cancelled or postponed, and now many music workers are also testing positive to COVID-19 and being forced to isolate, resulting in them losing critically important income.”
The health crisis is “putting enormous pressure on an industry which is still struggling to recover after almost two years of pandemic-related challenges.”
Since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak a global pandemic in March 2020, Support Act has allocated more than 15,000 Crisis Relief Grants to music and live performing arts workers, valued at more than $35 million.
The large part of that financial support came from the Australian Government.
Support Act’s 2022 appeal is a response to the latest wave of infections, which has unraveled first-quarter touring plans and undermined the live music sector’s comeback.
Earlier this week, APRA AMCOS CEO Dean Ormston reported that, based on the PRO’s data, live music activity in the month of December was at just 6 per cent of the pre-COVID period.
“The music industry has been one of the hardest hit sectors of the economy and was the first to be shut down by the necessary regulations to deal with the health crisis facing the nation,” Ormston said. “We are now approaching our third year of devastation.”
The governments of Victoria and, more recently, New South Wales, have unveiled business disruption funds for major events impacted by recent restrictions, though a federal response for the live music industry doesn’t not yet exist.
For further information or to make a donation, visit the 2022 COVID Emergency Appeal page.
This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.