26th,may,2020

                                                  08:00pm IST

                              Published by: Indrani Kukkadapu

This following report briefly explains about the webinar issues confronted by kalakaron and lok kala during pandemic. It is also available on youtube as a link is;https://youtu.be/16cfpc78aRg .

The COVID-19 pandemic had a sudden and substantial impact on the arts and cultural heritage sector. The global health crisis and the uncertainly resulting from it profoundly affected organisations' operations as well as individuals—both employed and independent—across the sector. Arts and culture sector organisations attempted to uphold their (often publicly funded) mission to provide access to cultural heritage to the community; maintain the safety of their employees, collections, and the public; while reacting to the unexpected change in their business model with an unknown end.

By March 2020, most cultural institutions across the world were indefinitely closed (or at least with their services radically curtailed), and in-person exhibitions, events, and performances were cancelled or postponed. In response, there were intensive efforts to provide alternative or additional services through digital platforms, to maintain essential activities with minimal resources, and to document the events themselves through new acquisitions, including new creative works inspired by the pandemic.

Many individuals across the sector would temporarily or permanently lose contracts or employment with varying degrees of warning and financial assistance available. Equally, financial stimulus from governments and charities for artists would provide greatly differing levels of support depending on the sector and the country. The public demand for in-person cultural activities was expected to return, but at an unknown time and with the assumption that different kinds of experiences would be popular.

Facing at least several weeks of closure of their buildings and publicly-accessible spaces, directors of noted several immediate trends emerging: A "concern for staff wellbeing" (ranging from ergonomics to suicide), the expectation from many stakeholders to "move fast, but with drastically reduced resources and not a lot of strategy", "plunging revenue", probable layoffs "starting with casual and part-time staff", and a "rush to get online".

The simultaneous closure of the cultural sector, and home-isolation of much of the public, led to a heightened desire for people to obtain access to, and take comfort from, culture—right at the moment when it was least accessible to them. Many cultural sector organisations and individual artists turned to providing online activities—from social media to virtual reality—as a way to continue fulfilling their organisational mission and obtain or retain an audience.Individual artists of all kinds offered impromptu performances via their personal accounts from their homes—singing covers, performing live book or poetry readings, sharing their artistic process and drafts, or creatively live-streaming themselves doing both creative and everyday activities.

Several countries have already issued orders for meticulous preservation of official records related to the pandemic. This not only underlines the gravity of the current situation, but also highlights the importance of memory institutions in providing the records or information management resources necessary for understanding, contextualizing and overcoming such crises in the future. At the same time, records of humanity's artistic and creative expressions, which form a vital part of our documentary heritage, are a source of social connectivity and resilience for communities worldwide...

...it is essential that we ensure that a complete record of the COVID-19 pandemic exists, so that we can prevent another outbreak of this nature or better manage the impact of such global events on society in the future."

Due to physical distancing requirements many performing arts venues were closed, curtailing not only public performances but also rehearsals and performing arts schools. In some cases, such as for the Edinburgh Festival, launched after World War II as an effort to reconcile people through the performing arts, it was the first cancellation in more than sixty years. Many performing arts institutions attempted to adapt by offering new (or newly expanded) digital services to their audiences during lockdown. In particular this resulted in the free online streaming of previously recorded performances of many companies—especially Orchestral performances and plays—lists of which were collated by crowdsourcing and by journalists.

Upon reopening, many modifications needed to be made to both the venue and the performances in order to diminish the risk of disease transmission.