www.forbes.com: Like much of the world, the US has crossed the six-month mark since the pandemic forced most in-person gatherings to halt, which was primarily signified by South By Southwest's cancellation, one of the most well attended entertainment-based events globally. Predictions are now spanning well into 2021 and beyond to return to a "normal" state of events. The entire industry has been impacted, from musicians not able to perform and live crew out of jobs to countless industry professionals furloughed from music companies.
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Right off the bat, I was set aback by the realization that it has been six months already since we have needed to begin physical distancing. In looking at LinkedIn, many of the entertainment jobs will have over 200 applicants for one position. With much of the entertainment industry shut down, there are so many people who need jobs and so few available. It seems almost easy for people outside of the industry to “forget” how much they benefit from the arts. I have had many conversations with people saying that they don’t understand why anyone would pursue the arts and then will also complain that their favorite shows are being delayed due to Covid. It is hard to get people to understand, but I won’t let their opinions hold me back.
-Ariel Bernhard
I cannot believe we’ve been living this way for six months. It feels surreal. And this article really tackles a challenging part of the pandemic: employment. The fact that most career/resume websites are not catered towards our industry makes life more difficult. And what is also difficult is showing employers how our skills in some cases are transferable and make us desirable candidates. While this article focuses on how difficult navigation is on these websites only for the music industry, I find that the reasons for the difficulties are super applicable to the entertainment industry as a whole. And this article asks the tough question. How do we fix an industry’s career development problems? The rest of this article delves deeper into the music industry and how most musicians don’t go to college which makes the career development segment more difficult and how the language attached to career development doesn’t feel applicable to most musicians. Overall, this was a super interesting article to read and there were definitely applicable pieces and I also learned some cool facts about the music industry in particular.
I do not think that I had realized how long it has been since the pandemic started because to be honest, it feels like life has been this way for a long time, which is definitely not true: its been six months but the reason it pinches is because even after these six months, it seems like nothing really had changed: the pandemic is still there, people have had to adopt new ways of living and most importantly, unemployment has been rampant.
Now that cannot really be said about people in the tech industry because they can afford to work from home- people from other industries but especially from the entertainment industry has had to deal with this unemployment in the most real way- their work cannot be moved to a computer- they thrive on social gatherings to present their work and with that gone, these past months must have been really difficult. Hopefully, after this pandemic, people can realize the new changes that need to be incorporated so that something like this does not repeat again in the future.
While this article is focused on the music industry, I think the ideas discussed here apply well to the world of theater. Even in a college setting, it sometimes feels as though career centers & resources are more geared towards students studying in fields that are not the arts: maybe math, science, business, etc. And, with the pandemic still raging on, the world of live theater has come to a screeching halt (of course, theater has continued virtually, but that leaves venues, crews, venue managers, etc. out of work), which means re-imagining career development for artists is even more crucial than normal. Entering the professional world is a few years off for me, but I think this is an important topic to think about, even right here at CMU. I attended the Health & Wellness Advocates resource fair the other day, and a representative from CPDC spoke about their work with drama students; even though it can differ from other disciplines, we can still develop careers as artists through networks and portfolios. This article was a good way to think about career development, pandemic and all.
It is hard to believe that we have been in this mess for 6 month already. It seems to be one of the first times in history that the entertainment industry has come to full halt as the industry usually adapts to other hardships that have happened in the past. Although this article focuses mostly on the music industry, the principles within this article relate to all artistic industries. It was interesting seeing the topic of college come into the lack of career development as not many artists go to college. College is definitely as luxury for many artists as the admission process can be super confusing and expensive, with high schools giving no support in the process as they focus more on STEM majors. I also think college in general is very expensive and the idea of paying off student loans and college fees through an artist salary can be very daunting and turn many people away. It will be interesting to see how the industry works to solve the gap between artist that go to school and artist that decide to go straight into the industry as we can see success in both areas, however one has the potential of pushing the entire industry forward. The need to go to college to learn such resources is a big problem as it pushes out lower income students that could be revolutionary in this industry. It will also be interesting to see how the industry recovers after this pandemic and what will happen to the jobs that rely on in person venues (crews, riggers, ushers).
First of all, this headline is incredibly misleading, as the article speaks exclusively of the music industry specifically, and not everything translates across different parts of the entertainment industry. That being said, some of what this article talks about is applicable to anyone in the entertainment industry. I am very familiar with the world of career development. I was forced to make a LinkedIn profile my first year of college, and I’ve been to my fair share of resume workshops and networking luncheons, but that’s a very different scene than the one I’ve witnessed freelancing in technical theater. I can’t speak for the music industry at all, but as far as stagehands go, I fully believe there aren’t many college attendees in the crowd, and knowing how to brand yourself, and make yourself is a very esoteric skillset that is another layer on top of the actual skillset to do the job, and not something that can be easily learned on the job. A lot of people in the entertainment industry would certain benefit if career development was a more commonplace skillset.
I think this article is a good example of where the entire entertainment industry could be forced to go should this pandemic last well into next year. While attempts are still being made to adapt the industry to a distanced and virtual environment, it's hard for me to imagine that alone being enough to sustain the same amount of jobs that existed before COVID-19 hit. Sure, some additional jobs will be created with new systems and software being used, but these jobs will probably not be able to be filled by the professionals that have been furloughed already. Using career development applications will definitely help to supplement those people though, at least to some extent, which is greatly needed right now. I also think the college education point was interesting. From my own experience, a large majority of my classmates at my high school had no intentions of going to college, instead opting to try and go straight into the industry. Of course, that isn't panning out to well given the current circumstances, but I do think that just in general having a degree in your desired field helps in every career, even if that degree might not be fit the job you are trying to get.
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