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Dear friends,

*Help us raise a further £10k to stop our artists leaving the industry*

You’ve already helped us raise a whopping £25K! BUT the arts are nowhere near recovery yet and our artists are in trouble; we need to keep going.

In March we set up a Crisis Fund for actors and artists whose work had disappeared overnight in the pandemic and for whom no government help was yet available.

We launched a GoFundMe campaign, folks were amazingly generous and we raised almost £25k. Since March we’ve given out over 100 grants of £200 to artists in our network and beyond. We’re almost through that pot of money now and, as the arts and live performance are unable to reopen, our support is still needed.  

I’d like to share a story with you about one actor we’ve been able to help - we’ll call her Naomi. Scroll down to read her story.

Everyone is working hard to find other jobs and adapt for next few months, but unlike our government we don’t believe the answer is for our artists to retain and leave the industry. We will be poorer culturally, economically and spiritually without our thriving arts scenes.
We want to do our bit to help artists keep creating.

Can you help us help them?

Thank you so much for anything you can give.

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With love,

The Morphē Team

Cully, Ally, Sarah, Eleanor and Nate.

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Meet Naomi. Naomi spent years building freelance acting and drama role-play work, including working for the NHS. She lost all her work in March and as a freelancer there was no employer who had responsibility to look after her. In May Naomi was told she was ineligible for government self-employed support because of a PAYE job she’d had for one season a couple of years ago. HMRC assessed her finances based on that year and decided she’d made too much money from PAYE work to count as freelance. However as that job ended a year ago the company wasn’t able to support her either. Naomi applied for Universal Credit but with months-long waiting lists she still hasn’t received anything. Naomi lived on some small savings, her mental-health and self-esteem deteriorating as she applied for job after job. September saw her needing to use food banks.

Morphē was put in touch with Naomi recently and we’re delighted to begin helping her with financial and emotional support. She told us we’d ‘restored her faith in humanity.’ We will continue to assist her and others until options become available.

Naomi’s story could have been any of ours. Many have fallen through the gaps of government help, often losing secondary jobs in hospitality at the same time. Our artists and performers have been so thankful for the money given so far, watch our video and see our comments below to read some further comments from them!

“It’s incredible how many people have given to the fund and I am so grateful.

The £200 is definitely a blessing a great help right now."

"This really means the world to me and it will help me so much this month.

Thank you so much, I’m deeply grateful."

"Wow! Thank you so much, this is going to be of great help, really appreciate it!

Such a fantastic initiative, a blessing indeed."

"This will help enormously right now, I honestly cannot thank you enough."

"Your donators have been wonderfully generous!! I feel quite emotional."

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Morphē is a registered arts and faith charity.

Funds are administrated by Morphē directors Alastair Gordon and David McCulloch, contact us for more information or visit our website morphearts.org

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