Holly Ellis is a freelance Lighting Designer. She desires to help create a more inclusive and accessible work space within theatre.
Holly, with other early-career professionals, has decided to commit to some practical steps she can take to move the industry forward. Stage Sight seems to be the best place to set out these aims and work with others in order to achieve them.
As early career Theatre Professionals, we understand that the scope and impact of what we can achieve is limited. However, we do not believe that this excuses us from taking concrete steps within our own practice to help enact a culture change in the industry. Where we feel we may lack the sway to make demands of our engagers, we can certainly lobby, and commit to asking the difficult questions to those above us.
We are not a collective, but have shared aims – and we encourage others to copy and expand upon those.”
We promise:
- To ask at every point in the process “How is this accessible?”
- To ask how diverse the team is on every prospective job. If it isn’t, to ask – why not?
- To request a comp (or if unavailable, use our second press night comp) to be made available to a current student – with priority given to students from marginalised groups – to attend the show, and offer our time afterwards to answer any questions about the process.
- To actively seek out and participate in schools outreach work where possible.
- To request diversity stats of shows we work on (team and audience), which we can publish on our websites.
- To publish earnings overviews for each tax year – with a breakdown of how much we earn from design jobs, and how much from other income sources, and what our expenditures are.
- To publish a (rough) estimate of lx power consumption for each show
- To work paperlessly where possible
www.hollyellislighting.com