The Future of the LCA

Hi all,

In this email, we outline our plan for the future of the LCA after the current Steering Group finish their term in November. We need your feedback – read on to find out how you can shape the LCA.

We’ve spent a long time speaking to other organisations, gathering examples, and discussing all of the options. What’s presented here is endorsed by the whole Steering Group as what we believe is the best structure for the LCA moving forward.

Over the last 6 months, the LCA has achieved a huge amount as a newly formed network of industry professionals. With over 1700 members, the LCA is now recognised alongside other industry bodies across the performing arts, and we’ve ensured that comedy has been considered in the national conversation around the arts & events sectors.

From our work ensuring comedy was officially recognised by the UK Government as a Creative Industry through to the #SaveLiveComedy campaign, alongside starting to make progress (we hope) on harassment and abuse in the industry and other issues faced by those that work in comedy, we’re incredibly proud of the work the LCA has achieved so far. 

But while the LCA will still focus on the industry’s response to the pandemic, the LCA was always intended as a long term project. As part of this, we need to formalise the LCA, so we can have additional layers of legitimacy and so we can function properly (for example, we can’t open a bank account without incorporating as an organisation).

As a simple overview: the LCA is to formalise up as a non-profit company - specifically as a Community Interest Company. The LCA will have two key parts to its structure - an elected Board made up of people working in the industry, and appointed Company Directors, who will take legal responsibility for the LCA - and will, once funding is found, seek to employ one part time staff member who will run the day-to-day administration of the LCA.

We have outlined the LCA’s long-term goals in its missions, aims, values and objectives doc which is available to read here. We believe that the LCA has shown itself as a valuable resource to the industry and want it to continue to be long-term.

These last six months have been far more work than anyone could have anticipated, and more work than anyone anticipated for when they accepted their volunteer positions on the Steering Group. We hope that this proposal gives the LCA a more sustainable approach for the long-term future, which allows for the involvement of more people from across the comedy community, asking less of any one individual moving forwards.

The list of questions below link to detailed answers on the LCA website explaining each element of how the LCA as a company will be run, as well as how decisions will be made, elections will be organised, what it will cost, and a timeline for all of this. We ask that you read as much as possible, and feedback any thoughts, ideas, or queries. 

You can submit your feedback using this form here, until Monday 26 October, 6pm. 

We hope that this vision for the future of the LCA sets the foundations for an organisation that can continue to advocate for our industry and better the lives and livelihoods of all those who work in it. 

Thanks for all of your support so far,

The Live Comedy Association’s Steering Group

• Monday 26th October: The consultation feedback form closes at 6pm.

• Friday 30th October: A final proposal will be sent to the membership with any major changes noted, following the Steering Group having worked through all feedback. The legal incorporation of the LCA will begin following this date.

• Monday 2nd November: Nominations for Board positions will open.

• Sunday 8th November: Nominations close at 6pm.

• Wednesday 11th November: Details of all nominated members will be distributed to the membership, and voting opens.

• Wednesday 18th November: Voting closes at 6pm.

• Friday 20th November: The Board will be appointed, with the week following dedicated to a handover between the Steering Group and the Board before the Steering Group officially step down.

The LCA will formalise up as a non-profit company - specifically as a Community Interest Company (CIC). A CIC is a type of company limited by guarantee (this guarantees that funds will be used to benefit the company’s social objectives rather than for individual shareholders, giving reassurance to investors, funding bodies, members, the wider industry, and the public).

The LCA will have two key parts to its structure - an elected Board made up of people working in the industry, and appointed Company Directors - and will, once funding is found, employ one part time staff member who will run the day-to-day administration of the LCA.

The Board will determine the LCA's direction, advise on work and priorities, represent the membership, and raise members' concerns.

Company Directors will ensure the LCA fulfils legal responsibilities associated with being a company & ensure that LCA continues to act within its formal constitution.

Alongside this structure, staff will be hired as soon as funding permits, initially on a part-time basis. Staff will be line managed by the Company Directors and will action the work of the LCA as decided by the Board.

A document outlining the LCA’s mission, values, aims, and objectives can be found here. The purpose of this document is to set out the LCA’s direction and what falls within its remit. These will be formally adopted by the LCA’s Board and Directors, and then revised on an annual basis if new elements need to be incorporated.

These missions, values, aims and objectives are the basis for all the work that the LCA will undertake. For example, the LCA has started the process of creating Best Practice documents for various working environments within our industry. By creating, and eventually adopting these we are working towards one of our aims which is “to improve the working lives and worth of members.”

The Board will be elected by the LCA’s membership. Members can nominate themselves for a specific seat on the Board before the set deadline, put together a short document outlining their priorities and background in the industry which will be sent out to all members, and then there will be a secret ballot which all members can vote in.

Members can also sponsor a nomination if there is someone that they think would be brilliant in a particular role. The person in question will then be contacted about their sponsorship and be able to decide whether they accept the nomination or not within the same timeframe as those that nominated themselves.

For all seats, along with all candidates who have been nominated, a ‘Reopen Nominations’ option will also be selectable - this means you'd rather have another election than choose any of the current candidates. 

If no one puts themselves forward for a position, the elected Board will then be responsible for recruiting someone for any role(s) which is vacant.

Each Board member will sit for two years. Because of the size of the Board, and to ensure continuity between each set of Board members, elections will take place every year with approximately half of seats up for election. These will be split between the Geographical & Representation/Inclusion seat, and the seats defined by role in the industry (e.g. performers, promoters etc.). So elections in coming years will look like this:

Election - Board Seats up for election

Nov 2020 - All Board Seats

Nov 2021 - Geographical seats, plus Representation/Inclusion

Nov 2022 - Industry Role seats

Nov 2023 - Geographical seats, plus Representation/Inclusion

Nov 2024 - Industry Role seats

The Board will be made of people working in live comedy and will determine the LCA’s direction and advise on all of its work. Meeting monthly online for two hours, we envisage board members doing less work than the current Steering Group have been doing, because there will be Staff to assist with the workload. For the initial period while funding is being secured to hire Staff, the Board may be required to take on more work to action the decisions made in meetings. In times of crisis and during the initial handover between the Steering Group and the Board, meetings will be held more frequently.

Board members’ responsibilities will include reading meetings’ agendas and accompanying documents detailing issues/concerns/programmes that the LCA is undertaking or facing, and then attending each meeting, bringing their own experiences, perspectives, and expertise to advise on these topics of discussion. In these meetings, the Board will make decisions on what work the LCA undertakes and what issues in the industry it should work on.

The Board will take a similar shape to the current Steering Group, but with some key changes. The proposed seats on this Board will be:

The increase of ‘seats’ for performers has been decided to account for the shape of the LCA’s membership, where two thirds of members are performers (while also holding other roles e.g. being a comic who is also a promoter). These seats will be elected in one election - the three nominees in the Performers category who receive the most votes will all be appointed to the Board

The Offstage Freelancers role covers those not currently represented, including photographers, designers, and directors.

You will notice that there is no Chair, or Vice-Chair seats up for election in this proposal. These seats have been removed in favour of adding more seats for various job-roles and Geographical regions. There is definitely a need for Chair of the Board, as that person is responsible for liaising between the Board, staff and the Company Directors, as well as representing the LCA in various external meetings with DCMS & the devolved governments etc. It is proposed that the role of Chair will be a member of the Board, voted on by the Board once they are all elected.The Chair of the Board will be appointed a Company Director of the LCA for the length of their time as Chair, unless they would rather not take on this legal responsibility. 

The role of the Board’s secretary will be filled by the LCA’s staff member. The secretary's role is to assemble meeting agendas, communicate the time and date of Board meetings to the Board, take minutes during meetings, and to share the minutes between the Board and the Company Directors in a timely fashion after each meeting. For any period where there is not a staff member, a Board member (who is not the Board’s Chair) will have to act as secretary. 

Board members may only sit on the Board for two terms (four years maximum), and must leave at least one term (two years) before nominating themselves again for a Board position. The Board ‘seats’ will be volunteer positions, and remain unpaid. Reasonable expenses for travel etc. may be paid to Board members, but we anticipate these being minimal as all meetings will be online.

At any time, Board members will be able to resign for any reason, and their position put up for re-election. In the case where a member of the Board breaches the Board’s Code of Conduct (currently the Steering Group’s Code of Conduct here) or Membership Code of Conduct, a disciplinary matter may be referred to the Board. In this situation, a two-thirds vote from the remaining members of the Board will trigger the removal of another Board member. 

Should a position on the Board become vacant, a new Board member will be elected in their position to sit for the remaining time of the two year term.

The Company Directors of the LCA are legal directors of the organisations, with relevant expertise in running this sort of organisation. They fulfill the legal need of a CIC to have registered Directors, without needing every volunteer member of the Board to become a legal Director of the LCA. They will take on the legal responsibility for the LCA, and be liable should the company become e.g. bankrupt through wrongdoing or mismanagement. The Company Directors will be responsible for the running of the company - filing Company Accounts and making sure the LCA continues to fulfill its purpose and obligations to members, as set out in the LCA’s mission, values, aims and objectives.

The Company Directors will be volunteer positions, and will be unpaid. The LCA’s Articles of Association will set out that any profits made by the LCA will be reinvested in the organisation’s work, and no dividends will be paid to its Directors. Reasonable expenses for travel etc. may be paid to Directors, but we anticipate these being minimal. Having unpaid Directors is fairly standard across Arts organisations and we don’t anticipate this being a barrier to finding the right Directors.

We propose that the maximum amount of time a person can act as a Company Director is eight years. This will ensure that the LCA has appropriate levels of turnover in these positions and help to attract potential Company Directors who may be put off by a position with no firm end date.

The LCA will actively recruit a number of Company Directors, limited to a maximum number of 7 (including the Chair of the Board) at any one time. Each of these will have a particular area of expertise important to the running of an organisation (rather than specific expertise about live comedy, which comes from the Advisory Board). 

This will ideally include:

• Lobbying expertise

• Finance/accounting expertise

• Legal expertise

• Fundraising expertise

• HR expertise

For each position needed, a role description will be written and a full recruitment process undertaken. These positions will be open to those within the membership and the industry, but knowledge of live comedy is not essential. What will be essential is an area(s) of expertise outlined above, and knowledge of how arts/culture/events CICs & other organisations like this operate.

The appointment of every Company Director will need to be approved by the Board in a vote, with two-thirds of the Board needing to be in favour of each appointment.

The Company Directors will be able to attend every meeting of the Board, but not vote in the Board’s decisions. With the LCA’s staff and the Board’s Chair, they will write the agenda for these meetings and be responsible for turning the decision making of the Board into practical, achievable work for the Staff to implement.

At any point any member of the Company Directors can vacate their seat, and their position will be filled via an official recruitment process. At any time, the Board may vote (with two-thirds of votes needed) to remove any Company Director if they believe them to be operating against the missions, aims, and values of the LCA.

It has been decided unanimously by the Steering Group that for the first six months, Bríd Kirby & Owen Donovan will be appointed as the LCA’s first Company Directors, in order to register the LCA as a legal entity. Within these six months, they will, along with the Board, focus on recruiting the LCA’s first staff member and the LCA’s Company Directors (appointed by a vote of the Board). By the end of this period, the handover will be complete, and Bríd & Owen will step down as Company Directors.

The Steering Group will be asked to stay in position for the first week of the Board’s tenure to meet with and help the new members of the Board. A meeting between the whole Steering Group and the full Board will be held to facilitate the transition between the two groups. 

The Board will be expected to continue the work on various projects that the Steering Group have begun. The Steering Group will hand over the details of these various projects to their respective counterparts on the Board and will endeavour to remain available for any queries the Board may have on this work. 

Steering Group members are eligible to nominate themselves for Board positions.

The LCA’s Staff will be how the organisation’s work is actioned. Taking lead from the Company Directors (who are in turn advised by the Board), the Staff will execute the LCA’s work, fielding member’s inquiries and concerns, dealing with new membership, leading on outreach, and organising the LCA’s various projects, campaigns & events.

We envisage this beginning as soon as the LCA is able to secure funding with a part time member of staff, likely 2 days each week. The Staff would then expand as the LCA takes on specific projects (and the funding for these). As the organisation grows, expands its membership, and takes on more projects, the core staff will likely need to grow beyond a single part time staff member.

Decisions on the direction of travel for the LCA and the work it does will be made entirely by the Board. 

The Company Directors can only question or block the decisions of the Board if those decisions are against the missions, aims, values, and objectives of the LCA, enshrined in the LCA’s Articles of Association. This is envisaged as a very unlikely possibility, as Board members will agree to uphold these documents when taking their Board seats and all parties must agree to act in the LCA’s interest.

The Company Directors will lend their expertise to the Board to assist with decisions being made where required. The Company Directors will then manage the Staff to enact the decisions made. If during this work, the Staff hits a junction where a decision on direction needs to be made, this is then brought back to the Board at their next meeting.

Decisions made by the Board will be made through a vote. A simple majority vote will be taken as a decision in most circumstances. A two-thirds majority will be required for decisions of higher importance: the appointment of new Company Directors or additional Board members; when deciding long-term projects that the LCA will undertake; when deciding on the allocation of any monies.

After each election, at the first meeting of the Board they may appoint further individuals (a maximum of 3) to the Board if they feel that the Board does not fully represent either the wider comedy industry or the world at-large (e.g. the election of 3 performers who don’t regularly perform on the circuit, or a Board that has no Black members). These additional appointments will need approval from over two-thirds of the Board. 

The LCA commits to ensuring diversity in the Company Directors who are recruited. In keeping with our values, the LCA will actively encourage & pursue applications from a diverse range of people for both Board and Company Director positions.

We anticipate the annual costs of the LCA to be just under £25,000. This includes a part time member of staff working two days a week, along with all other costs. A breakdown of these costs can be found here. We have budgeted for accounting and legal support, but the hope is that these costs can be brought down by recruiting individuals to be Company Directors who have these areas of expertise.

There is also an additional £3,000 of costs that have already been incurred by the LCA over the last six months (costs for the website, mailing list, design of logos, plus costs incurred for the #SaveLiveComedy campaign including the SLC website & logos. Wherever possible these funds have been spent with those in the comedy community - e.g. Foxdog Studios designed the SLC website.). As the LCA has not formally existed, these have been voluntarily covered by the Chair and Vice-Chair of the Steering Group. The current Steering Group has voted that these funds will be repaid to these individuals once the LCA finds funding, but this decision will need to be confirmed by the first Board.

This £25,000 cost covers the LCA’s core activity, e.g. lobbying, and communicating with the LCA’s members. Specific campaigns or programmes that the LCA wishes to run (e.g. a mentorship scheme, or a public awareness campaign concerning the industry), will need to operate out of their own specific additional budgets, and the LCA will need to find additional funding to cover these.

The financial priority once this proposal is finalised is to find the finances to support the LCA’s activity for the first three months (Nov-Jan) after this new structure is implemented - approximately £4,000. This is a priority simply so that the LCA can bring in a freelance staff member and reduce the amount of work needed from the volunteer Board members and Company Directors. This funding to recruit staff will give the LCA additional breathing space to find sustainable finances for the future.

Many industry advocacy/network organisations like the LCA are funded in part by membership fees, however, the Steering Group has decided that this is not a viable or responsible funding model for the LCA at a time of uncertainty and a lack of income for the industry.

Membership fees may well be part of the funding model for the future of the LCA once the industry has recovered. However, this will be a decision for the Board at that time, and the priority for the moment is to pursue alternate funding sources and maintain the LCA as free to access for all members. Most of these organisations (e.g. the Association of Independent Promoters or SOLT/UK Theatre) have tiered memberships, with low annual or monthly fees for individuals, and higher membership fees for organisations (often again tiered, relating to turnover or profit). 

Alternate sources of funding include philanthropy, grants from foundations and public arts bodies, and donations. Further down the line, the LCA may organise an annual gala fundraising event to showcase its work and source donations from wealthy individuals working in, or associated with, the industry. 

Conversations regarding these alternative sources of funding are currently ongoing - if you have any suggestions on how we can pay for the LCA’s costs, or want to help us find this money, please get in touch.

The LCA is an industry network, designed to advocate outwards in the interests of our members (and the wider comedy community), and to support the industry as a whole. A network is all interested parties coming together to recognise the issues affecting a particular industry and work towards improvement as a collective. Some other equivalent organisations are UK Music, Society of London Theatre, UK Theatre, Association of Independent Promoters & Association of Independent Festivals.

A union is an organisation that serves the purpose of discussing the pay, working conditions, and rights of workers with their employers, and takes action resulting from decisions on those matters. The LCA is not (and was never intended to be) a union, because it represents the industry as a whole, including employers and employees. 

Equity and BECTU both exist as unions for individuals within our sector, although the Steering Group recognises that some members have not been satisfied with their understanding of the specifics of the comedy industry. As has been demonstrated in the past, there may be the demand for a specific union for comics & performers. The Steering Group fully supports the creation of such an organisation, but this needs to be driven by a collection of performers.

The LCA’s values, objectives, and aims (particularly its aim to “improve the working lives and worth of the members”) set out clearly that the LCA is committed to improving the livelihoods and working conditions of all those that work in the industry, off-stage and on-stage, but from the perspective of being a network for all areas of the comedy community. The Steering Group have begun planning on programmes and campaigns that will work towards this. Examples of these programmes include a mentoring scheme for early career comics, a moderated jobs & opportunities page to assist in career development, and offering training in areas such as health & safety and dealing with harassment.

However, the LCA cannot deal with individual disputes between individual members, or between individuals and organisations. The unions mentioned above are specifically designed to assist in these matters and have the resources to do so, in a way that the LCA cannot. The LCA can provide advice on best practice in the industry, but cannot adjudicate between conflicting parties, nor can it police any individual or individual business’s conduct.

Over the last few months the LCA has created relationships with other Industry bodies across the arts sector and we looked into how they are structured and analysed the various options and the pros and cons with each model. 

Our current Steering Group decided unanimously on this structure for the LCA as it provides more long-term security and stability (largely through the expertise of the Company Directors) while also providing the easiest access for more people from the industry to run for positions on the Board. Alternative structures would require elected Board members to take on the responsibility of being a legal director of the company which is something that volunteers may, understandably, not want the responsibility of.

The Steering Group decided on the CIC legal structure as opposed to a charity largely due to the amount of additional work and oversight required from being a charity (e.g. reporting to the Charity Commission). It was also felt that the LCA wanted to act in the interest of a specific group of people (e.g. our industry) rather than for a ‘public good’, as required by charities.

A for-profit limited company was not chosen for obvious reasons. 

In addition to continuing the work of responding to the pandemic, Funding and Recruitment will be the initial priorities for the new Board as these are crucial to continuing to set up a sustainable structure which will allow the LCA to run efficiently on a long-term basis. 

As the pandemic is ongoing and our industry hasn’t gotten back on its feet, the LCA will continue to focus on the industry’s response to changing restrictions, getting venues & gigs reopened in Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland, and the need to lobby for ongoing support, particularly for self-employed individuals and businesses in areas with local lockdowns. The Chair of the Board will take over sitting in on the various meetings with DCMS and other cross-sector industry bodies, and they will need to assure that any new regulations are communicated as openly and transparently as possible to the membership. 

The work of the Harassment & Abuse Task Force will also continue as a priority, with members of the Board volunteering to advise on and work on this matter.

Great! We would really appreciate that. You can submit it via this google form here.