Back Lounge offers resilience workshops
- Details
The three free sessions will cover: Mindfulness for Touring with Craig Ali (Monday 21 June 6pm), Healthy Boundaries with Laura Ferguson (Wednesday 14July), and Sleep & Jet Lag with Matt Kansy (Wednesday 4 August).
The workshops will explore a range of topics from coping strategies for dealing with 'heated' moments in high pressure situations, how to naturally wind down at the end of an intense day, rate negotiation, managing workload and effective communication, maximising the quality of your sleep and techniques to combat jet lag and shift work.
The workshops were made possible through the Culture Recovery Fund and, although open to anyone in the music industry, will benefit the freelance touring community by equipping them with fundamental tools in resilience before returning to tough scheduling.
Brought to the community by The Back Lounge, an online support group for out of work touring professionals which Green created during the height of the pandemic, the wider live music industry is now invited to sign up to the workshops.
A seasoned tour manager herself, whose clients include Placebo, PJ Harvey, Katie Melua and Wolf Alice, Green is passionate about wellbeing on and off the road. Having experienced her own debilitating episode of burnout, she left touring for 10 years. “I thought my touring days were over. The industry simply didn’t work for me.”
Since retraining in various modalities, she later returned to touring with new skills in wellbeing to the benefit of artists and crew.
Green believes training in resilience will help to guide performers and music crews, live events and festival workers - who have suffered collective and prolonged unemployment due to the pandemic - make healthier decisions as they begin to book more regular jobs.
“People now have the opportunity to learn how to develop better coping strategies,” highlights Green. “We will all need to take our health seriously to survive long periods during busy touring schedules in the future.”
The first workshop will take place later this month with Craig Ali, a wellbeing consultant, health coach & mindfulness facilitator.
He says: “Everyone in the music industry is going back into an intense, fast paced environment after having so much time off. Whilst this is exciting for the industry, it will be a shock to the system and may create some tension and anxiety. In these environments it is important to have trained skills to help manage energy, regulate emotions and decompress at the end of the day.
“The Mindfulness for Touring workshop will train people in some of the most effective ways to do this on the go. Breathing and posture techniques will be taught to train the participants on how to stay calm, not be in reactive mode, create space in the moment and wind down the nervous system to promote recovery.”
The courses will take place over Zoom, with booking via Eventbrite.
To book your free place on a course which will take place over Zoom, please visit Eventbrite:
Mindfulness for Touring
Healthy Boundaries
Sleep & Jet Lag
