Thursday, April 07, 2016
crew safety meeting...for real. being a safety conscious touring industry.
this tour life: In light of recent events in the world (Brussels attacks), even more specifically in the music industry (Paris attacks), we have never been made more keenly aware of the need for emergency procedures when on tour. These horrific attacks have sparked discussions on how to create a safety conscious industry and what things to implement in case of such incursions. Venues all over the world have plans in place in the event of an emergency but does your touring crew know what those are? Do you know where all the exits are? Do you even know what the emergency number is for the country you are in?
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4 comments:
A lot of time people are focused on the safety of the performers and crew during the show and the possibilities of them getting hurt because something has gone wrong during a performance. With all of the recent attacks that have happened around music performances, it is important to think of the safety procedures for outside attacks. People who work on touring productions know the show very well, but often times do not really know the venue or the area around the venue. It is important for everyone in the touring company to know all of the emergency numbers and safe places for them to go in case of an emergency. There should be plans implemented so everyone knows what to do if there is an attack. It is impossible to fully be prepared for something bad happening, but a company can take as many steps in the right direction so they can react in the best way. There should definitely be people who are trained to help guide others in an emergency situation.
It is scary to have to think about an instance in which you could be in a foreign country and be stuck in a situation like this, but preparing for it can help with that scary feeling. I think that this article provides some great points that can help those in touring companies be prepared to handle emergency situations. Some of the tips provided in this article that really stood out to me are the code words that one could use during a show to help alert the company over radio that something bad is happening and to go into emergency conditions. I think that codes like these can be really helpful because they can get the attention of every department at once and provide everyone an equal chance to work together and get everyone out safely. Another tip that I found really helpful is to simply put all types of emergency information on the daily sheets that everyone gets. That way everyone will have this information readily available. Something that I had never thought about is that you might not even know the emergency number for whatever country you are in at the time and to have information like that available can save a lot of people from not being prepared in any situation. We all hope that we will never have to intact these tactics, but if we do, our best chances lie in being prepared to handle them.
It’s sad that recent attacks lead to the publishing of this information, but I guess knowledge is not just power, but safety as well. Tours involve a gross amount of people, from crew members to managers to locals hired up for the events, to drivers and everything in between. And handling all those people is hard enough, let alone in the case of a physical threat. People panic when they don’t have anything to do – no task leads to no direct action, therefore people act on their whims, which get all out of whack when they’re scared. Having an action plan may seem a little excessive in a normal everyday tour, but is totally necessary for when you need it. If everyone knows what they are supposed to do when things go wrong, there will be infinitely less chaos and trouble when there really needs to be. I also like the technology section about phone screen toggles because that is a feature I know many people do not use.
This article has a lot of great information in it. Some of it only applies to international tours, which is probably a fairly small percentage of the industry. The article also has some information that younger and more technologically inclined would already do, like having scanned copies of your passport or having ICE contacts on your phone. One of the things I appreciate about this article is that it makes a point of saying that much of the emergency preparedness effort is a combination of and communication between the touring staff and the local or house staff. I haven’t done much touring, but the little that I have done did include much of this information. In many of my summer stock jobs, a lot of the information has been similar in a welcome packet. This is information that I will hang onto, especially going into new environments and working conditions.
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