Again in April, I took a quick break to look at the Nationwide Theatre’s One Man, Two Guvnors on-line.

In the previous couple of weeks it has been laborious to cease occupied with the impression of coronavirus. However for some time on that April night, as James Corden bumbled his means across the stage, my household and numerous others throughout the nation had a pleasant reprieve. That’s the ability of the performing arts.

I do know this pandemic has dealt the humanities a knockout blow. Reside theatre has been significantly laborious hit, and faces a few of the greatest obstacles to its return. As somebody put it to me just lately: sitting and having fun with a efficiency collectively is the artwork. However additionally it is the enterprise. And so long as social distancing guidelines stay in place, it makes it very laborious to make the numbers stack up.

I’m not portray this bleak image out of defeatism although. Quite the opposite: now we have to, and can, discover a method to defend our theatres and performing arts.

The world now appears to the UK’s inventive arts in the identical means it has to our manufacturing beforehand. Made in Britain has develop into Created in Britain – and our international popularity is just too vital to lose.

Theatre is a basis of our cultural ecology – with success on stage spinning out many inventive and financial alternatives. Exhibits like Conflict Horse and Les Mis have gone from the West End to theatres and cinemas globally, creating 1000’s of jobs and billions of kilos alongside the best way. And other people educated within the theatre, from staging to make up, energy the manufacturing of TV, movie and the broader inventive industries.

I’m completely clear-eyed in regards to the large challenges the sector faces and the pressing want for options, which is why my division has been working flat out to search for methods to get our theatres again up and working once more.

We’ve freed up emergency money for Arts Council England’s £160m fund to assist people and organisations take care of the pandemic’s speedy impression. Locations akin to Trinity Arts Centre in Gainsborough and the Tetbury Items Shed have already obtained these funds and are utilizing them to assist survive the approaching months.

Likewise, the humanities world is filled with self-employed individuals and freelancers, inventive entrepreneurs – lots of whom have benefited from the self-employed earnings assist scheme, which may present money grants of as much as £2,500 per thirty days. And we’ve modified the welfare system in order that self-employed individuals can now entry common credit score in full.

However whereas we seek for a long-lasting resolution to coronavirus, we have to discover new and revolutionary methods for the humanities to return in some kind, with out packing venues and risking an increase in infections.

I’ve spoken to numerous individuals about how that could be achieved, from Andrew Lloyd Webber, who obtained Phantom of the Opera again on stage in South Korea with revolutionary use of the most recent expertise, to the English Nationwide Opera, which is exploring drive-in opera, and others who’re broadcasting stay to outside areas.

On Thursday, we’ll take these conversations ahead when our Leisure and Occasions Working Group meets for the primary time. The group is made up of medical advisers like James Calder, a senior clinician at NHS Nightingale Hospital and skilled in dance and musical theatre, in addition to representatives from over 30 completely different organisations, together with the Birmingham Royal Ballet and the Actually Helpful Group. These organisations know the ins and outs of placing on stay performances higher than anybody, and can be capable of advise on what would possibly and won’t work.

They’ll be supported by Neil Mendoza, who I appointed as Commissioner for Cultural Restoration and Renewal final week. A lifelong champion of the humanities, he’ll guarantee they’ve a voice on the coronary heart of presidency.

I’ve made a number of references to theatres, however I do know that all of them is made up of lots of of 1000’s of individuals with unimaginable, extremely specialised expertise. Ballet dancers and set designers; stage arms, costume designers and lighting technicians. I do know they’re itching to get again on stage and do what they love – and I’ll proceed to do every part I can to make {that a} actuality.