 So from here we go on to something very important. I mentioned it already earlier, which is the study, the situation of theaters in the EU member states, which is part of the European Theater Initiative mentioned by Commissioner Gabrielle and by Barbara Gessler yesterday. So for this study, we are more than pleased to welcome the researchers Clementine Dubuff from GIA and Rasa Gostov-Tayte from PPMI. Welcome. And before this, we would like also to inform the participants from the guest list and on the live stream chat, on the live stream that they can start asking already questions using the Q&A tool on Zoom. Hello. Sorry, hello. Okay. So hello everyone. I am Rasa Gostov-Tayte from PPMI and I'm glad today with my colleague Clementine Dubuff from GIA to be presenting this study. And the study will be implemented by PPMI, Public Policy and Management Institute in cooperation with GIA, which is an international policy design research center specialized in culture and creative industry. And the purpose of the study is to provide a comprehensive mapping of the social and economic profile and impact of the theater sector in the U-Member States. The study has several specific objectives. And the first one is to make relevant data available which will bridge the knowledge gap about the theater sector. And in particular, we're gonna be looking at data related to socioeconomic situation and overall picture of the sector, data about the reactions of theaters following the COVID-19 crisis and data on the educational aspect of theater professionals. In addition, the second objective seeks to highlight best practices created and displayed during the COVID-19 crisis. The study also seeks to facilitate action at European level as well as cooperation between organizations and artistic companies. And finally, it seeks to provide recommendations for policy, input for policy recommendations and follow-up at European level. And in terms of the scope of the study, my colleague from GIA, Clementine, will present a bit more about it. Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for the invitation to present this study. Which is actually just kicking off now at the European Theater Forum. So with you now, I'm gonna delve a little bit more into the scope and what aspects we are going to be looking at in this study to start with the profile and the role of theater and theater sector in the EU. If you can move on to the next slide, please, Rasha. Yeah, thanks a lot. So of course, we will study all stakeholders involved in the theater value chain and what preliminary research has shown already is this flourishing ecosystem that theater has with a great diversity of stakeholders from artistic to technician and administrative workers. The strong link, of course, and it was already mentioned in the introduction, the interaction with the audiences in this common space, in this common live moment that we experiment in theaters. And of course, the intersection between this core activities of creation, of production, dissemination and exhibition of theater plays with supporting activities, education, preservation, archiving phases, advocacy and representation of the sector as well, copyright management and funding and legal support. So we are going to look at the socioeconomic profile and the impact of the theater sector in the European Union. Starting with, if you move on to the next slide, the importance in terms of economic terms and a number of companies. We see that the performing arts sector, just here I'm opening a little bracket that it's very difficult to single out at European level some specific data on theater. So now here in this slide, I speak about performing arts at large. So we have seen that in terms of number of companies, the performing arts sector is the largest among the CCS, the cultural equity sector in Europe. That there is a growing employment and employing highly qualified people, most of which are artists. Saying this, it's also possible in some European countries and we need to dig more into that in the study to find out specific data on the socioeconomic relevance of the theater sector. And of course, we already know that it's contributing at city and a more rural level to the local attractiveness and cultural vibrancy. And if we move on to the next slide, we are already, well, we have researched a preliminary, the labor conditions and some psychosocial risk associated with the theater sector. So what we are witnessing is a sort of shift from a more traditional model that is based on owning a venue, creating our own prediction with a permanent ensemble towards something more, let's say, non-standard or a typical working model where a company sell productions to venues, they have fewer permanent artists, they work more on a project basis with freelancers and short-term contracts, which also has some implications. And we've seen that in the COVID crisis in terms of higher risk of losing jobs or incomes and social security protection. What we can also say is that there is quite a low bargaining power of artists towards some traditional gatekeepers and that can lead to unfair compensation for creators and performers, as well as some disparity of treatments across the European Union in relation to social security, including the lack of information about taxation of VAT regimes. And I'm sure in this audience, in our audience today, we have organizations are very specialized on this and that have highlighted this issue several times. If we move on to the next slide about the characteristics of the workforce. So as in the cultural and critical sectors in general, it's quite a young workforce with an increasing number of professionals that we've just seen are operating outside traditional forms of employment. There is quite a growing number of companies which does not necessarily translate in employment opportunities, unfortunately for a workforce that is highly educated, as I just mentioned. Moving on towards the topics of diversity and gender balance in the theater environment. So it's, of course, this topic is very important towards the mission and the relationship that theaters have with their audiences. So this means access to theater education for people from all walks of life in the first place, but also means making performing arts programs accessible to, for instance, disabled artists or disabled audiences. So this theme of inclusion and access to theater for all is also going to be studied in the research. In terms of gender balance, well, as in the rest of the cultural and creative sector, it's still something that needs to be achieved at different levels from the creation to the managerial aspect, the statutory level of a female artist and as well as in terms of artistic choices. If we move on to the next slide, it's something that is not on this presentation is going to be part of the study, of course, is the social impact of theater, the cultural participation as a shared space. As Maria Gabrielle said, the theaters are places to exchange and to debate. So this study is also going to look more particularly at the impact of theater on the social perspective, representing, of course, the great variety and great diversity that we have in terms of languages in Europe and different ways of engaging audiences and improving as well some social aspects like mental or physical health. Moving now to a different topic that is also core of this study is a sustainability aspect. And I'm very curious to hear what will be said in the next session. So theaters are moving towards more sustainable practices in terms of content exploring, for instance, the topic of climate emergency, the waste or other environmental concerns can help raising awareness within the audience about the responsibility that we have and possible future solutions to this challenge. But of course, we know that theaters have quite an important environmental footprint. So it's about integrating environmental concerns in different parts of the theater productions for instance, the costumes or the electrical gear. So we know that we need more training and awareness raising about this. So it's quite a timely moment to rethink operations maybe in this challenging and opportunity times. If we move on quickly to the next slide, another aspect to study and to research is the educational pathways of theater professionals in Europe. So we know there's quite a number of diversity of courses. There are universities of course, but we have a long tradition in Europe of theater schools. The idea is to get an idea of what disciplines are taught for future theater professionals and also to research the way that these educational institutions prepare young professionals for a new life and providing them with a safe space to rehearse, to create and also some opportunities to internationalize and get in touch with other professionals from other European countries and beyond. So now moving on to the key challenges. So well, the key challenges of the theater sector have been, let's say highlighted even more in this recent coronavirus crisis. So it's about first thing, the social protection, the social protection and the working status of theater professionals. So while the crisis has shown the lack of social protection due to the statutes that I mentioned in the beginning of this presentation, there is, as I said, a severe disparity in social security taxation and fiscal treatments across Europe. And so the response to the COVID crisis would be about safeguarding the livelihood of artists, the companies, the technicians and all the organization that revolve around this theater sector. Internationalization, of course, theater is very language-based although there are some interesting initiatives that are cross-border in Europe. There are some difficulties in production and in the circulation of performances. And now the travel conditions have worsened and endangered this mobility, which is quite important for the theater sector, the mobility of not only artists and performers and also other theater professionals. In terms of adaptation to the digital shift, while they are already the theater sector is already creating and experimenting with digital forms and new technologies, but this cross-sector experimentation remain quite still a niche because there are some training and some skills to be acquired to be able to engage more in this cross-sector collaborations. So moving into the digital sphere is about finding new business models that the crisis has still, well, not yet shown concrete or sustainable new business model. Yeah, if we can move on to the next slide. Sorry if I'm speaking quite quickly. We have a lot of content to share in a few minutes, but I'm sure we can go back to some of the aspects in the question and answers and to finish with the challenges, of course, access to funding, whether public or private, whether prices it's likely that some of the budgets are going to decrease. So we'll see how this impacts the theater sector and how to ensure a continuous support both for the supply and the demand of theater content. And finally, the theme of inclusion and access to theater for all that was briefly mentioned before, taking into account all aspects of the audience experience and also how to see how theater interacts with other arts or cultural forms and is placed in the consumption patterns of Europeans and to see how the COVID-19 with the closure of theaters is also impacting the relation with the audience and to see how we could avoid social exclusion from some parts of the audience. And finally, the famous impact of the COVID-19 on the theater sector. So we've seen how interestingly the sector has been adapted, both moving to digital in the first phase raising also some concerns or issues about how to monetize this digital performances and how to create new partnerships with other types of organizations like streaming. Theaters have been hardly hit. I think there is no need to remind how this crisis has been affecting the theater sector. It's brought some very critical economic and social issues. So also the disparity and the fragmentation across the sector shows different types of impacts. For instance, for smaller companies or smaller theaters and the independent scene is quite at risk. We all see how the crisis also impacts the dependence or the impacts to the mobility and the touring in theater. And as well as study how the organization of the funding at national and at European level will maybe touch differently, different types of structures. So these are important aspects to be considered when looking at the impact of COVID-19 on the theater sector and ecosystem. I will move briefly on this response and adaptability of the sector. So I said there was the moving into digital and then of course preparing for new types or new forms of performing for reduced audience or how to respect the sanitary measures with the social distancing from the audience within the audience and between the audience and the artist and between the artists themselves. So we've seen a plethora of very interesting resilient initiatives in the theater sectors that we will continue studying within this study, within this research. And finally, the policy response, both at the national, local and regional level, collecting societies and trade associations have put forward measures to support the sector with some examples that you can see on this slide like emergency funds or add packages, subsidies, grants, compensation measures and digitization distribution of content information as well. At the level of European institutions, we have general funding response instruments that are listed here like Corona Responses Investment or the Next Generation EU or React EU funding programs. Of course, as already mentioned by Maria Gabriela, we have this Creative Europe program now with a new funding envelope or the CCS, the Cultural and Creative Sector Guarantee Facility that is going to adapt as well and be more flexible and accessible for cultural and creative sectors. And then for ongoing projects, we had the deferral or the extension of the deadlines as well as information sharing between among the sectors like the platform that was already mentioned. More specifically for the theater sectors, it was already presented this cross-border distribution and performing arts work call. The present study and the present forum and European theater initiatives. So I will stop here and let the Russia present the outline of the research program. Okay, so I'll talk a bit about the key steps planned in the implementation of the study. So under this study, we will undertake several tasks and the first one will be desk research and literature review. The main purpose of this desk research will be to collect all relevant data already available on the existing support measures for theater sector in EU and some other countries as well as to collect data on the measures undertaken by government and theater organizations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and also collect data and educational aspects. Following this, we will conduct an interview program. It will be a two level interview program, meaning that we will conduct 10 interviews at EU level and 50 interviews at national level. And these 50 interviews will be conducted in the scope of our case study program as we are going to select 10 countries for more in-depth analysis. For these case studies, as I mentioned, we will implement 15 interviews, meaning five interviews per country, and we will aim to interview some theater representatives of performing arts associations as well as policymaking representatives of policymaking institutions. We have not selected the countries for the case study analysis because we still need to refine the selection a little bit because our criteria for selection are balanced geographical scope as well as the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic hit different countries. So we will need to see before starting the data collection phase which countries to select concretely. And following this, we will also carry out a survey program. It will be the primary tool to collect the quantitative socioeconomic data on the theater sector. And all this data, qualitative and quantitative will feed into a comprehensive mapping of the socioeconomic situation of theaters in EU member states. And the result of the study will be a study report with conclusions and policy recommendations which will be discussed in a validation workshop where the preliminary results will be validated and discussed between the representatives of a commission and the stakeholders of the theater sector. And we believe that a key to successful implementation of the study is stakeholder engagement. So we think it's quite a good opportunity to just emphasize places where we will need that stakeholder engagement. And the primary like even in the desk research stage we may outreach to stakeholders to access relevant data because the availability of comparable data internationally is quite limited. So we'll need to check national statistics and maybe send inquires to national level organizations about any data they have. Then obviously our interview program is aimed to engage with stakeholders. And as I mentioned, it will be a mix of EU level interviews with representatives of EU level associations as well as representatives of a commission. And we already mentioned interviews at countries. And also very important is the survey. The launch of the success of the survey will very much depend on the engagement of stakeholders and their willingness to fill in the survey. So we will put all effort into disseminating the survey as widely as possible. And then also another element of stakeholder engagement is the validation workshop where the results of the study, the preliminary results will be discussed with some key theater experts. So that would be the outline of the tasks planned. And since we are just in the process of starting the study I cannot, unfortunately, we cannot say at this point when exactly each method will be logged. Each step will be launched but we will for sure try to disseminate the survey as much as possible. And do you have any questions about the study? There are indeed a few questions to the study. I will pass them over to you and you can answer them, of course. So first of all, one of the questions is, will the study also give insight in terms of numbers? I mean, simple numbers. How many theaters are there? How many people work in theater in Europe? What are their backgrounds? Yeah, of course you talked a little bit about this but let's stick to the first two. How many theaters are there, for example, in the member states and how many people work in theaters in Europe? Well, yes, we will try to collect this data as much as possible. We already identified some sources that we can look into at U-level and U-level and national level but obviously availability of data at national level is different in each country and there are some limitations to comparability of data but we will try to assess each data source and look into this aspect. Okay, at the end, you mentioned the time scale. Can you repeat what the time scale of this study is? For example, when do you expect to have first results? Well, the study is nine months long and we will start to implement it this month. So the study should be then finished in fourth quarter of 2021. Or not earlier on the third quarter but it will probably be, it will finish me the end of summer or autumn 2021. I have a question asked in the chat from Thomas Engel. We learned yesterday that the study will be one of the major communication towards the policy level and he asks if the whole study will be available for all to make comments. Well, the preliminary findings will be discussed at the validation workshop and the whole study, well, it will depend on the commission but studies are usually sometime, well, in many cases, published online by the commission but maybe something to add is that we will have two external experts that are going to review the study. So it might not be available directly for comments by everyone for implementation reasons but as Rasha mentioned all the different consultation steps aim at taking into account the most inclusive, in the most inclusive way different points of view from different types of stakeholders of the theater ecosystem. So we aim at representing the broad diversity of the stakeholders and not to represent one's only point of view. So we will conduct the scientific work in order to be as inclusive as possible and these workshops and validation steps are very important for us. Okay. Tobias White is asking how do you choose the participants of the study? Well, we have a foreseen that, for example, for the interview program we will develop some, deliver some EU level interviews and national level interviews. So we plan to at national level to interview at least one representative of public theater, private theater, representative of performing arts association, one representative of education, educational provider and these will probably be, we will select them based on maybe their presence within the theater scene in each country. Another question from Regina Ghoul is what's included in the term you used educational aspects? I think if I refer to the terms of references of the study is educational pathways. So apologies if I used aspects as a quick word. So it's educational pathways mainly. So understanding what education programs are available for future theater or theater professionals, where these are located, what sort of topics are taught and how also these institutions are adapting today to the new reality of teaching mainly mostly online and for performing art forms, the challenges of this kind of online teaching. So while this is going to be more elaborated but I think pathways is the right term. Here's another question by Elena Polifceva. Will there be any focus on multidisciplinary venues and companies which are very active in various performing arts forms along with theater? I can start on Sering and Rasha if you want to complete. I think this is one of the first things that we had to do also in this studio we have to do is to define or try to define the theater sector and this is quite challenging task considering exactly this, the multidisciplinary aspect and the fact that you have venues that are showcasing not only theater but also other types of performing arts so I think in terms of we'll see how we can put that together but yeah we'll try to of course it's the theater but I think we are going to be inclusive of live performances at large because this ecosystem is interrelated so that's a short answer but this is going to be one of the first tasks of the study to see I think there are no clear cut boundaries and we're going to research more and see how we can also include that aspect that you mentioned. Okay and a very last question here from the Association of Youth Theatre is performing arts for young audiences up to 18 year old audiences included in the study and the special reality this part of the sector has? I think maybe Clementine can comment a bit more on that. Yeah I see also the European Theatre Forum would like to answer this question live so I think I mean yeah why not I mean we still have to research if you have any material to send us relating to the specificities of theater for young audiences that could be very important for us maybe particularly in relation to the the social and educational impact of theater could be very interesting to look at this aspect. Okay thank you very much there's also a comment from the audience that I would like to share. No apparently that's it because we are running out of time and we still have something else to show you. Okay then thank you for this dense and in detail presentation I think we can say that this study is very much awaited by the sector and we will be looking forward to the whole process of course and the results so thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. And now before we take a short break a very short one because time is speeding up we want to share with you a message from Belgium about the importance of theater and the performing arts. Milo Rao the Swiss theater director and dramaturg I'm sure everybody knows him artistic director of NT Kent in Belgium has recently published a book called Why Theater at Febrecher-Ferlach in Germany gathering many important voices from the sector on the continent. His book gives critical insights as to why the theater and the performing arts are so indispensable today by some of the most influential artists and intellectuals of the of these present times. It seemed to us that during uncertain times like these raising awareness about the necessity of theater and the performing arts seems even more crucially important. That's why he has asked his colleague and co-editor Carmen Hohenboster to give you a short presentation of this book. That's what we will be seeing right now. Number eight. We must not only portray them we must become them. Number 22. Because here as watchers and as watched we are all breathers of the same air neutral authors of each silence. Number 49. A book you can just put a sign or way. Theater you cannot. This is the radical power that theater has. The suspension of freedom. Number 51. Theater now needs to become lighter on its feet. Examine its large administrative structures reduce its operational carbon be more flexible and how it moves between the digital and the light. Number 10. It's not about producing art it's about implementing it. Number 35. Because everybody knows what theater is because nobody knows. The quotes you just heard are taken from the book Wife Theater that the Antigant under the artistic leadership of Mila Rao recently published. Usually the answers are given by the making of theater itself but due to COVID-19 this was not possible anymore so we wrote a letter to more than 100 artists all over the globe and asked for their personal why. The statements you just heard or the quotes from the statements are from the Belgian theater maker Chakriven Chika the British director Tim Edschild from Foss Entertainment the French writer Iroha Luy the British opera and theater maker Katie Mitchell the Cuban artist and activist Tanya Brewera and Stefan Keegy from the German Collective Rémini Podekar Wife Theater because it makes the cosmic drama accessible it makes it proportional to the size of a human being because it sharpens the sense of reality as well as the sense of possibilities. Whereas Rémini Polish wrote in his contribution to Wife Theater I need someone to think. So now we invite everyone to take a very short comfort break and we'll be back at 10 o'clock for the session on environment sustainability and EU culture policies greening the theater and performing arts sector. See you soon.