As the touring sector contemplates the revival of event production, health and wellbeing tour manager – and The Back Lounge founder – Suzi Green has announced a series of ‘resilience workshops’ specifically for the UK live music industry.
Three free sessions will cover Mindfulness for Touring with Craig Ali (21 June 6pm), Healthy Boundaries with Laura Ferguson (14 July), and Sleep & Jet Lag with Matt Kansy (4 August) – all UK times. These will address topics ranging from coping strategies for dealing with ‘heated’ moments in high-pressure situations, how to naturally wind down at the end of an intense day, rate negotiation, managing workload and effective communication, maximising the quality of your sleep and techniques to combat jet lag and shift work.
The workshops are made possible through the Culture Recovery Fund and, although open to anyone in the music industry, will benefit the freelance touring community by equipping them with fundamental tools in resilience before returning to tough scheduling. Brought to the community by The Back Lounge, an online support group for out-of-work touring professionals that Green created during the height of the pandemic, the wider live music industry is now invited to sign up.
A seasoned tour manager whose clients include Placebo, PJ Harvey, Katie Melua and Wolf Alice, Green is passionate about wellbeing both on and off the road. Having experienced her own debilitating burnout episode, she left touring for ten years. ‘I thought my touring days were over,’ she says. ‘The industry simply didn’t work for me.’
She later returned to touring with new skills in wellbeing to the benefit of artists and crew, and believes training in resilience will help to guide performers and music crews, live events and festival workers – who have suffered collective and prolonged unemployment due to the pandemic – make healthier decisions as they begin to book more regular jobs.
‘People now have the opportunity to learn how to develop better coping strategies,’ she says. ‘We will all need to take our health seriously to survive long periods during busy touring schedules in the future.’
‘Everyone in the music industry is going back into an intense, fast paced environment after having so much time off,’ says Craig Ali, a Wellbeing Consultant, Health Coach & Mindfulness Facilitator who will host the first workshop.
The Mindfulness for Touring workshop will offer training in some of the most effective ways to do this on the go. Breathing and posture techniques will be taught to train the participants on how to stay calm, not be in reactive mode, create space in the moment and wind down the nervous system to promote recovery.’
To book a free place on a course over Zoom, visit: Mindfulness for Touring, Healthy Boundaries, Sleep & Jet Lag.
