What to Do When Your Gigs Get Canceled. (Patreon)

I am creating a video tonight with this post serving as the outline, but I wanted to extend this to you on Patreon first before I create the video. This is also available in the Google Drive folder for LD tier folks.

Recent events out of our control have led to a cascade of industry-wide cancellations. Seemingly no event is immune; Massive music festivals, corporate events, conferences, tours and more have all evaporated overnight. In fact, I’ve already had multiple gigs and equipment rentals of my own cancelled in the last week and my next tour has already been postponed. A lot of people and many of my friends are experiencing hardship from a number of factors that are piling together:

• End of the slow season - Event workers have been living off of their savings already for the past two months, likely depleting much of it in anticipation for a very busy spring.
• Many workers are 1099 contractors, meaning no perks of employment as far as protection from cancelled work or sick leave/paid time off.
• Events as a whole are being cancelled in some cases, and some governments are explicitly banning gatherings over a certain size. Tours are flat-out postponing or cancelling dates and very few tours are out on the road right now.
• The shutdown of Chinese manufacturing in February led to shortages in our industry that is highly reliant on a supply chain that starts in China.

With that in mind, here are 8 things to do if your gigs get cancelled or you lose your job in the event industry.

1. Your new job effective immediately is to look for work. Contact old employers, reach out to friends, and don’t be afraid to take on part time work in something other than the event industry. Your number one priority is to increase your income by whatever means necessary and reduce your outgoing. Do not sit back and wait for someone else to give you work on a silver platter. You have to work hard at events to make the show go on, so put that same effort into finding new sources of income.
2. If you were an employee at a company, file for unemployment and research any special programs that your state, local, or federal government may be offering to aid people who have lost their jobs, especially now.
3. Make yourself more valuable by learning new skills and software in particular. These software tools are very useful to know:
   1. Lighting Programming - MA2/MA3/Chamsys/Hog4/Onyx
   2. Lighting Design - Vectorworks/Capture/WYSIWYG
   3. General coding - LUA, python
   4. External controllers for shows like Pangolin Beyond, Madrix, and Resolume.
   5. Notch - Real time visualization of video effects on camera feeds and more
   6. TouchDesigner - literally anything you can imagine for data/signal processing.
   7. Blender/Cinema 4D - for object modeling and animation.
4. Revise your resume and web presence to look more professional. Build/rebuild your website. Streamline your contact information (custom email domain, google phone number, email signature etc.). Make everything pleasing to the eye, consistent, and easy to understand. This will reduce the friction between you and your next prospective gig or employer.
5. Make friends and offer your help to others who might also be struggling during mass layoffs and cancellations. If you have a set of skills that you can barter with, offer those skills to trade with others, either for future work or just to trade knowledge. Find a buddy and teach each other something you know. We are all in this together and people will remember how you treated them. The efforts you make now will pay dividends in the future.
6. Cut back on every unnecessary luxury. Cancel all subscriptions, check through your card statements for charges you didn’t even realize were auto-billing, no more going out to eat. Prioritize the essentials for living first.
7. If you’re watching this video (or reading this), chances are that you are young and newer to the industry. Use that to your advantage. Once the world restabilizes and all of these postponed/cancelled gigs come flying back, you’ll be even more valuable and desirable. Build a solid personal budget and stick to it, find a financial philosophy that fits your lifestyle and do not forget how stressful all of this was. It’s true that money can’t buy happiness, but having an emergency fund that covers 2-3 months of your living expenses will afford you the greatest luxury of all: a clear mind when everything hits the fan. Panicked people make stupid decisions, and you’re not a stupid person.
8. Wash your hands.