New Spotlight and Equity membership criteria

[lbm1e14]

See link below for new criteria.

https://www.thestage.co.uk/news/2017/eq ... graduates/

[theMTAonline]

I'm so pleased that this has been posted. I would really urge all you parents out there to study the new criteria, as it has the potential to make a huge difference to your child's future prospects. Apologies if you all know this already....however I know that I wouldn't have understood this prior to being in the industry myself.
If Equity and Spotlight are only recognising the colleges that meet these criteria, it essentially means that if your child is on a uni course, where the study hours are less than 36 hours/week (which most of them are). . . they will no longer accept graduates from those courses to be a member of either organisation. With the size of year groups being so big at some colleges now . . .double check the size of the classes too, as I'm assuming that some colleges are going to need to make some major changes to accommodate this new low number
The days are long passed where you had to have an Equity card in order to work, so a career (and a good one at that) is still possible BUT not being able to join Spotlight really is a bit of a career breaker. For those of you that don't know, Spotlight is 'the' casting register for the UK. Every single casting director of note will be a signed up member of Spotlight. There are many debates around about whether it's right that Spotlight completely has the monopoly in this area. . . however, those debates will not help you or your children. It is 'the' register.
I know from first hand experience that many agents will not sign a client if they're unable to be a member of Spotlight - as they're too hard a sell. We all deal in Spotlight links and CVs.
Spotlight is the first port of call for all the top Casting Directors. It's how agents find out about the jobs before we do.
Up until recently Spotlight gave automatic membership to graduates from Drama UK colleges (and the dance world equivalent), in addition to that they would judge whether non accreditated courses were producing performers of a high enough calibre, with good training behind them, and at their discretion would admit their graduates to sign up too (although they went straight onto the main books, not the graduate books . . . however in reality that didn't make too much difference). e.g. The MTA never wanted to be a part of Drama UK, however, our graduates have always been able to be Spotlight members.
Before you sign up for £27K worth of debt - double check the contact hours, and indeed all the rest of the criteria mentioned in the article. So at least you'll know that if you child (or indeed you) are still adamant that they do 'that' specific course, the path into the industry is going to be much harder (and as we all know . . .it's hard enough as it is).
If you're unsure I'm doing another online Q&A on Saturday 3pm https://www.facebook.com/events/306501426430646/ and I'd be happy to answer any other questions that you might have about this . . . or at least give you my understanding on it.
I'll quickly add though - that IMHO this is a brilliant step forward for the industry

[TalyaB]

I know from first hand experience that many agents will not sign a client if they're unable to be a member of Spotlight - as they're too hard a sell.

I have a question re this - I thought that if a client has an agent, they could then be on Spotlight, whatever their training, and that these criteria applied to unrepresented performers. Have I got entirely the wrong end of the stick? I'd be grateful, theMTAonline - or anyone else, if you could clarify this.

[theMTAonline]

No an agent can't get them onto Spotlight, the onus is still on the performer to get the credits/training. I know that I had an email exchange last year with an agent who had tried to get their client onto Spotlight, but Spotlight weren't budging on their criteria. As a result the performer did lose the agent (as it's too hard to sell someone without that link). I hope that helps TalyaB?

[TalyaB]

No an agent can't get them onto Spotlight, the onus is still on the performer to get the credits/training. I know that I had an email exchange last year with an agent who had tried to get their client onto Spotlight, but Spotlight weren't budging on their criteria. As a result the performer did lose the agent (as it's too hard to sell someone without that link). I hope that helps TalyaB?

Thank you.

[TalyaB]

One more question, if you don't mind. I see that four professional speaking credits in full-length theatre, film or TV also entitle an adult to membership. Is it allowed if these credits, or some of them, are gained as a child? I don't think it says that they can't.
Thanks in advance.

[bop2thetop]

So what happens if you start on a course which has Spotlight and Equity access for Graduates and then it gets taken away because they no longer meet the criteria?

[theMTAonline]

In truth I think that Spotlight are the only ones able to answer those questions. I can't imagine for one moment that they'd pull away the right to membership to existing colleges (although their guidelines are brilliant, so I sincerely hope that they're policed). IMHO it's going to hit the uni courses the most (but there again, there are quite a few colleges working outside of the 22 students in a class rule aren't there?) Give Spotlight a call

[lyndahill]

Christ I would say many Colleges have more than 22 students in many of their classes - including some well known ones.!! At least they did when we went on Open Days.

[theMTAonline]

You're not wrong....which is why I was saying that I think that it'll be a great thing for training in the long run if the criteria gets policed. I'm clearly biased on the 22 number as that's the number of one of year groups, so I know from experience that it's a nice manageable number.

[pg]

Confusion over Spotlight arises because *children's* agents CAN get clients on Spotlight in the Young Performers section.

It's different for adult performers (and absolutely, any decent agent will want their clients to be Spotlight eligible).

[theMTAonline]

Confusion over Spotlight arises because *children's* agents CAN get clients on Spotlight in the Young Performers section.

It's different for adult performers (and absolutely, any decent agent will want their clients to be Spotlight eligible).

That's really interesting - I didn't know that (only ever really working in the 'adult' world). Thank you for clarifying the point.

[paulears]

I can't speak for the spotlight side, but from Equities point of view, it's a joke.

No conventional university programme has that amount of contact hours, and while the performing type places that offer the proper qualification almost as an afterthought, can tick the boxes, ordinary unis cannot, and colleges who do HND and Foundation Degrees certainly can't - many struggling to get to 16 hours a week - which is considered full time!

Equity are also shooting themselves in the foot. Each year, I host a meeting between their rep and the dancers in panto, who are usually out of education or perhaps in the final year - and they pick up very few new members nowadays - it usually boils down to is the £100 a year good value, with the other union benefits pretty far down the list to most of them.

I suspect what is happening is a desire to get rid of the non-serious people who often clutter up the lists and never do work - often doing an extra shift at Costa rather than going for an audition. So there could be something in this to encourage serious performers, but this does seem a bit blunt and totally lacking in understanding of the education system. Are they really saying that performers can ONLY come from the name establishments? When you consider all the names that have come from the non-specialist places, it's silly.

[theMTAonline]

Regarding the HND and Foundation Degrees - surely it's right that such little training shouldn't 'qualify' students to be called a professional performer? By the very nature of those courses they are designed to start the pathway into the industry, not allow the students to leapfrog into the 'real world'.

I think that Equity could actually strengthen their position in the industry if this is policed correctly. I think that professionals of a certain age would welcome this. The concern must be about courses (be they at uni's or vocational colleges) that just aren't delivering a good service. . . thereby effectively ripping off students that believe that spending £28k or more at that establishment is going to get them into the industry. Too many students and not enough hours to give them all the attention that they need.

There are some uni's at the moment actively bragging about what a 'cash cow' their MT courses have become. So much so that they're adding additional courses left, right and centre. That's not right. It's not fair on the staff (who are desperate to really 'train' the students), and it's not fair on the students, who truly believe that this is their way into the industry.

I see little value in spending £28k for a degree when you have to spend that (or indeed more in some cases) again in order to get the training that you believed that you were signing up for the first time.

We run a vocational course, we surpass all of this criteria by quite a large margin - over the years the amount of people that have come to us having already got a degree is so upsetting. Within the first week they're coming to tell us that they'd already learnt more (industry wise) than in their 3 years at the first place. Again that can't be right or fair on anybody.

There will always be a few people that break through via other routes - however those people are definitely in the minority.
All of this would be so much easier if every course (vocational and uni's) followed our lead actually, and published their stats annually.
You want to know what the odds are on a) getting an agent and b) getting a career. So a simple comparative website would allow parents, teachers and students to take a considered bet on a course, as opposed to crossing their finger's and hoping for the best.

Finally I think that Equity are actually getting stronger again. The 30+ age group are really rallying the troops. I know that all of our graduates join Equity as the student cost is so reasonable given the benefits you get (and the support during your early days too).

Anyway...just throwing a few more thoughts in there.

Unless they get an independent group of assessors to check on every course, then this is going to be impossible to police. . . however I do believe that the guidelines, were they enforced, would strengthen the training in the UK, and in turn strengthen our industry too.

[pg]

Paulears: "No conventional university course has that number of contact hours" - well, precisely. That's why they won't be regarded as proper practical training for the profession.

You don't have to have formal training to get into Equity - you can get your membership from working too (one job on an Equity contract or £500 worth of paid professional work, not a lot to ask). . It's a hell of a lot easier to get Equity membership than it used to be .

You don't have to have trained at drama school to get Spotlight entry either - you can get that by working too.

Theses criteria don't remotely stop people entering the industry via other routes, they just (hopefully) give some guidance about which courses provide training that will be considered relevant/adequate in the industry. It will hopefully mean people will be less likely to waste money on courses that employers don't particularly value.

I'm very glad that there is a bit more clarity for people when assessing courses now that Drama UK has disappeared.

There are FAR too many places offering "drama training" as it is. At least now there's a way to assess whether the training will mean that you'll be automatically eligible for Spotlight and Equity. I've known quite a number of people who've been hugely disillusioned and dismayed to discover that their University courses are not regarded as training by employers in the profession.