Lincoln Performing Arts Centre was lit up red on Friday 20 March for the final time as part of the We Make Events #LightItInRedCampaign, joining 2000 places across 25 countries to raise the plight of the hundreds of thousands of highly skilled professionals serving the events industry.

Having previously lit up the outside of the venue, this time our technical team and students studying on the BA Technical Theatre and Stage Management course at University of Lincoln shone a new light onto our backstage areas, producing some wonderfully evocative images.

Everyone is facing hardship as we collectively deal with the pandemic but the hospitality, events, and cultural industries have been hit particularly hard, with the voices of increasingly vulnerable organisations, small-businesses and freelancers increasingly falling on deaf ears. These normally viable and highly valuable organisations staffed by your friends, relatives, and the person down the street are at risk through no fault of their own and through the #LightItInRed initiative we stand as one with our colleagues across the world to lobby for temporary support until we can stand on our own two feet again.

Certainly, some organisations are in a stronger position than others to weather the storm and we are fortunate at Lincoln Performing Arts Centre that University of Lincoln has stood by us. Nonetheless, with no income coming in our operational budget has necessarily been massively reduced (by over 90%), which means our ability to support local artists and creative practitioners is significantly diminished. However, with support from the Culture Recovery Fund we have been able to invest in some small-scale commissions and investment in the future.