FREELANCERS TO HAVE THEIR SAY IN AV SURVEY

SKILLSET are to launch one of the biggest surveys of freelancers in the audio-visual industries this week.
Skillset are surveying freelancers in the industry in an attempt to discover work patterns and current and future skill needs. The industry will then have the information to help target their training and development investment.
Dinah Caine, Chief Executive of Skillset, said: “Together with the industry consensus, which we carried out this year, the freelance survey should give us the most accurate picture of who works in the industry and what they do. Targeting freelancers with such surveys is hard but we’ve tried to use as many channels as possible to reach everyone. It’s very important that their voice is heard as we rely, as an industry, very heavily on their skills and talent.”
This updates Skillset’s first survey of the freelance sector which took place in 1993/94. Up to 25,000 copies of the survey will be distributed to freelancers via a number of channels. The survey is applicable to those on contracts of less than a year. The findings will contribute towards the Skillset and DCMS Audio-Visual Industries Training Group (AVITG), which will produce its final report next spring.
Roger Laughton, Chair of the AVITG, said: “Research like this is incredibly important for the industry so it can develop training solutions to fill present and future skills gaps. This survey will allow us to see how work patterns are changing in different sectors of the industry, why people become freelance, where they think they lack skills and what the barriers are to training and development. I’d like to urge all freelancers to take part in the survey.”
Freelancers can obtain a copy of the survey from Neil Flintham by calling tel. +44 (0)20 7534 5303 or from the Skillset website at www.skillset.org for the online version.