I finally managed to re-sign up for Equity after almost a 2 years of absence!
Equity is the UK independent trade union for professional performers and creative practitioners (Equity, 2011).
Definitely one of the first management skill for a performer to consider do once entering the professional world.
Among
some of the futures that Equity offers you can have career advices, safeguard
of name and stage name, job advertisements, protection on equity contracts,
public liability, advice on legal support, agent and insurance, pensions, digs
and discounts for members, tax and welfare and council’s reports documents.
References:
Equity, 2011. About Us. [online] Available at: <http://www.equity.org.uk/about-us/> [Accessed 22 December 2011].
Good that you got around to re-joining! I know quite a lot of actors that don't pay their equity subs...but they are the only people looking out for us so it's important.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you are right to consider the protection of your name as a performer, after all, we 'are' our business. Anyone who runs a business would be pretty gutted if they had been running it for years and then had to change the company name. I suppose we can consider it to be the same as building up a brand name...