How has Covid-19 affected the Arts industry

The West End of Wales (The WeoW), a collective of Professional Musicians from across West Wales. Amongst our members we have players with orchestral positions, and chair holders in the London West End and in touring shows.

Covid-19 has devastated the Arts, with many of us unable to perform for several months now, and having no way to earn money by playing and creating music. The WeoW formed a virtual orchestra, specialising in music from the Musical Theatre genre. We have released four videos so far  via social media platforms, 2 of which we collaborated with Steffan Rhys Hughes and his Welsh of the West end. Our first two videos raised over £800 for a musicians’ charity, and upon the release of our third video The WeoW became a Community Interest Company, so that any monies raised can go directly to paying our freelance musicians for their time and their talent. We released our fourth  video on Friday 25th September, and it has had over 500k views. Our next video will be released today!!

Having become a CIC, we have divided our work and future plans into two: paid work for which we are employed for specific contracts, and work that we undertake for charitable donations, which will be distributed between the musicians on a share basis at the end of the financial year.

As we grow we are looking to expand our work much further than the work we have already done, and indeed have several projects already in the pipeline, with the intentions of not only enabling ourselves to perform in ways we have been unable to in the last few months, but also to carry out projects which can benefit young Welsh musicians, and indeed the whole community of Wales. We are in early talks with education boards about providing resources for digital training and learning, specifically in the musical theatre elements of the A level Music and Drama syllabi, and with the NYAW as established music professionals who have come through the Music Service and National Youth platforms.

Furthermore The WeoW are working with Ceredigion Music Service this term, delivering remote workshops and sectionals, collecting the pupils’ tracks,and providing them with their own digital performance at the end of term. We have another project booked in for Spring 2021 with them.

This has gained media attention already, and spoke with BBC Wales Today just yesterday about them doing a piece on us, not just as Welsh musicians trying to conquer the adverse situation, but also how Covid-19 has affected music making at every level. Pupils learning have lost all the fun social aspects of music making, and the project with us is trying to overcome that too!   I know that the Friends of Ceredigion Music Service are being very vocal too in trying to get Welsh Media involved. It’s nice to have some positive music making stories at the moment.

Our “virtual orchestra” videos are planned to continue into the Spring and our next batch of solo tracks feature Trystan Llyr Griffiths, Luke McCall, Celyn Cartwright and Aaron Pryce Lewis. We are finding many artists are now approaching us, which is good!

Our social media handle is @theweow on facebook, twitter and instagram where all of our digital “virtual orchestra” material can be found.

We are also on You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLYtF5b3_fE8slZr31r0hGw

Our soundcloud link is: https://soundcloud.com/the-west-end-of-wales