Free parties and video-streams don’t pay the bills so I’m looking elsewhere for a livelihood
I’m Jai. I’m a freelance lighting and video technician, visual artist and circus performer based in London.
Jai Nobes, freelance lighting and video technician, visual artist and circus performer
Relatively new to the events industry, I was swept off my feet a few years ago by the feast to my senses at high production electronic music events such as Boomtown Fair, Arcadia Spectacular and Illuminaughty at Troxy – rave as an art form, distilled and polished to create unforgettable immersive experiences categorically different the rest of the world outside them.
I spent a year and a half juggling a job in retail against opportunities to get my hands dirty at events, and was finally making enough to quit my day job in October 2019.
Fast forward to 29 February 2020. I’m spending the night rocking visuals at Troxy for Illuminaughty and turn down jobs at Steelyard and Fire & Lightbox on the same night.
My “shift” is a gruelling nine hours building and programming, seven hours operating and five more hours packing up. I arrive, already a little worn out from operating at a cabaret show at Proud Embankment the night before, and turn up exhausted to operate at a club night at Fabric the night after. Business as usual.
Excluded from support
Then all at once everything goes quiet. I have my last paid job a week later on the 6 March (at a bowling alley, no less), a full two weeks before the rest of the UK lockdown on the 23rd – the much needed wake-up call to tell me this wasn’t going to blow over.
The diary I bought in late January – that had quickly become the single point of organisation for my entire life – was doomed to have every professional commitment deleted from it, including a whole summer of festivals.
By the time the government grant for freelancers was announced on 27 March, like many I had already been out of work and unpaid for three weeks. My friends at my old retail job had started paid leave that they have only just returned from last month.
Meanwhile, I discovered that since less than half my income the previous tax year came from being self-employed, I am frustratingly not eligible for the 80% government grant. My next avenue was to apply for Universal Credit, but there are extensive exclusion criteria that meant I wasn’t eligible for this either.
Initially, I tried to jump on the key-worker emergency hire bandwagon at local supermarkets. After queuing up for hours with a hundred other applicants (with poor social distancing enforcement) for a trial shift, I decided that getting a badly paid job in an industry I had only just managed to escape wouldn’t be worth the risk to the other members of my household, some vulnerable.
Living with family puts me in the privileged position of having flexible rent. If I was still renting on a contract I would have had to beg my landlord for a payment holiday. And we all know how much landlords love to hear that their tenants aren’t going to pay them!
For the many others less fortunate than myself, this will have been the reality. A gradual dawning that their work is gone, their income is gone, they are not eligible for support, and they are soon to be no longer able to make ends meet.
Ups and downs
If I focus on the positives, lockdown has meant I’ve been able to slow down and invest time into my skills to develop as both a technician and artist. I’ve finally been able to give my strength training the discipline and regularity it needs with a view to better endurance during load-ins and load-outs.
I’ve spent hours upon hours playing with virtual lighting rigs and making visual art.
I’ve streamed video for the strange phenomenon of livestream parties (shout out to my friends at DanceCulture.net!), hosted socially-distanced circus workshops for local children and been hired for a few small-scale performances in parks and gardens for birthday parties.
Lately, however, I’ve started looking for work in other fields. I’ve arrived at the realisation that the events industry is turbulent at the best of times and that as much as I thrive ion the chaos and unpredictability, my livelihood is safer if I have more stable ways of making money that I can fit around my wild 8pm-6am weekends.
It’s July now. I haven’t looked at my diary for months and wouldn’t know where to find it if I wanted to.
Free parties, free labour
Outdoor music events are officially allowed (with heavy restrictions) and have been since the 11th. However, the bulk of the demand for parties is being met by illegal raves in forests and truck stops, exempt from the rules by being against the rules in the first place.
Decommercialisation is a core tenet of the free party scene – by definition, they barely turn enough profit to run their own generators, let alone enough to rent lights or pay a technician to operate them.
As much as I respect the premise, I can’t help but feel a little resentful that these events continue largely unimpaired while the type of parties that can pay my wages and support my art are off-limits.
And that’s before I comment on how the lawlessness and lack of facilities will make these events hotspots for virus transmission. Licensed events almost sound like a harm-reduction measure.
Needless to say, the future of the industry will depend on how quickly the second wave happens and how the government responds to it.
With everything opening back up at such a rate, it seems entirely possible events will be re-opening soon and I’ll be spending another New Year’s Eve at Fabric.
It also seems entirely possible that easing restrictions will result in more cases, a bigger death toll and a second lockdown. Only time will tell… and in the meantime, if you have any work, my CV and references are available on request.