OPINION
Why we launched an Artistic Code
Superstruct Entertainment chief operating officer Rebecca Kane Burton explains what was behind the festival giant’ s recent publication of the Artistic Code.
The best live events are built on preparation. Long before an audience walks through the gates, teams have thought about how the site will work, how artists will move through it, how people will be kept safe and how thousands of individual decisions will come together to create a brilliant show. The same should be true of artistic freedom. If we want artists to feel free to express themselves on our stages, the principles that protect that freedom need to be clear long before show day.
Artists can be booked many months before they appear on stage, and the world can look very different by the time they get there. That is why it matters to do as much of the thinking as possible early, rather than waiting until a difficult question arrives.
It is one of the reasons we recently published Superstruct’ s Artistic Code. It sets out our principles around artistic freedom, safety, inclusivity and fairness, providing guidance for the teams curating and delivering our events.
In any business, the point when a baton passes from one team to another matters. The people making a booking are unlikely to be the team that looks after them on site at a festival or event. Between contract and show day, information moves between agents, bookers, artist relations teams and production teams.
Getting those handovers right is critical. It might mean briefing an artist on the legal or cultural context of the country they are performing in, flagging something that has changed since they were booked, or simply making sure an agreement made with an agent months earlier reaches the production team on show day. Our Code helps with this process, giving festivals and their team members a framework so that they’ re clear on the principles that underpin our events.
The development of our Code was ground-up, with our teams bought in from the start. It had to work for all our festivals. The result is a piece of work by the people delivering our live events, in consultation with agents and the wider industry. It needs to stand up to reality.
That’ s true across a group like ours, operating in different countries, cultures and legal frameworks. The people closest to each festival understand their artists, audiences and communities best.
“ THE CODE WILL CHANGE AS WE ADAPT TO THE WORLD.”
That preparation becomes particularly valuable when circumstances change. Live events happen in real time and teams sometimes need to make judgement calls quickly, with different considerations to weigh up. That is not the moment to start deciding what you stand for.
Our starting point is clear. We protect artistic freedom within the law and create safe and welcoming events. Where there is a genuine risk to people, we act. But within those boundaries, artists should understand where they stand before they walk onto one of our stages.
A showstop procedure is a good example. Every event has one. Teams need to understand when a situation
Rebecca Kane Burton
creates a genuine safety risk, who can make the call and what happens next, all agreed in advance so people know how to respond when the moment comes.
We will not anticipate everything. There will always be new situations, different perspectives and things we learn along the way. The Code will change as we adapt to the world.
We prepare not because we know exactly what will happen, but because preparation puts people in a better position to respond when something does. For those of us curating live events, that means protecting artists ' freedom, and giving our teams the clarity to hold that line when it ' s tested.
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