Live events face skills crisis.

Skilled staff in short supply as recruitment crisis threatens UK live entertainment sector

by Rob Ashton

The live music sector is facing a massive crisis in skilled staff with a government body estimating that it needs to recruit at least 30,000 people or face a future of cancelled tours, postponed festivals and declining gigs.

The shocking state of an overstretched live entertainment sector has for the first time been highlighted during the preparation of a business plan that Creative & Cultural Skills is drawing up for the proposed National Skills Academy (NSA) for the creative and cultural industries.

The plan, which will be submitted to the Government on May 8, says that leading employers in the live music, events and promotions industries are reporting serious difficulties in finding, recruiting and holding onto staff experienced and qualified in disciplines including sound, lighting and rigging.

Currently, only around 40,000 employees work within the UK's live entertainment sector, split roughly between music and theatre, but C&CS estimates around half of those - 20,000 - will retire or move out of the sector in the next decade. The phenomenal growth of the live sector - the Live Music Forum says that the number of events attracting 5,000 people or more has doubled in the last two years - also means it will generate demand for an extra 10,000 skilled offstage and technical personnel by 2017. That leaves a 30,000-staff gap to fill in the next decade.

LMF chairman Feargal Sharkey says the live sector staffing levels are already understrength, but on top of that it is growing at huge pace; some estimates expect it could grow by 25% over the next 10 years. "Here's an industry which is going through growth and can sustain that growth, but ...