Journey
Set up a creative arts and entertainment business
Learning path for new creative arts and entertainment businesses — theatre companies, live music venues, dance companies, arts centres and touring productions. Work out which rules apply, put your workplace safety and licensing foundations in place, and verify everything with a compliance checklist.
What this journey is for
Running a creative arts or entertainment business puts you at the intersection of workplace safety and public licensing. You have to keep performers, crew and audiences safe. You have to obtain the right premises or event licences before you open to the public. And you have to meet child performance licensing duties if you engage children in productions. This journey walks you through that path in the order you will live it, from working out which rules apply through to checking you have everything in place.
It does not give you the step-by-step instructions or the figures — those live in the guides it points to. This journey is the map: it tells you where you are, why each stage matters, and which guide to open next.
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Work out which regulations apply to you
Start by getting the picture right. A theatre company staging plays for public audiences carries premises licensing duties that a freelance choreographer teaching private classes may not, though both share the same workplace-safety foundation. Working this out first tells you which licensing regimes apply to what you do. Use the router guide to find your route before you commit.
Which creative arts and entertainment regulations apply to your business
Work out which rules apply to what you do. A reference guide that routes you from the shared workplace-safety foundation to the premises licensing and child performance licensing duties.
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Put your workplace safety and licensing foundations in place
Whatever you stage or produce, this is the universal spine. Risk-assess the work — rigging, stage machinery, temporary structures, electrical equipment, noise and crowd management — keep your fire-safety arrangements current for every premises you use, obtain your premises licence or temporary event notice if you provide regulated entertainment, arrange child performance licences and chaperones where needed, hold employers' liability insurance once you employ anyone, and meet your equality and data protection duties. Build this in from the start rather than retrofitting it.
Set up and run a safe creative arts and entertainment business
The duties every creative arts and entertainment business carries — general health and safety, fire safety, premises licensing, child performance licensing, employers' liability insurance, equality and data protection.
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Verify you have covered everything
Once the moving parts are in motion, take a step back and check the whole picture holds together. A compliance checklist lets you confirm, in one place, that each obligation — workplace safety, fire safety, premises licensing, child performance licensing and your employment duties — is genuinely met rather than assumed. Use it as your readiness review before you open to the public, and come back to it as your programme or venue changes.
Creative arts and entertainment: compliance checklist
Verify you have covered everything before you open to the public — the universal workplace and employment duties, premises licensing and child performance licensing.
You will also need the general business set-up duties
Alongside the sector-specific path above, every business carries general obligations that apply beyond creative arts and entertainment and are just as compulsory. As you build the business you will also need to:
- protect the people who work for you — meet your workplace health and safety duties, including the risk assessments that bite hard around rigging, stage machinery and crowd management.
- hold employers' liability insurance once you take anyone on as an employee.
- handle personal data lawfully — most businesses must complete data protection registration with the ICO.
- meet your fire safety duties for the premises you work from, which matter wherever you bring audiences, performers and crew together.
These general duties run in parallel with the sector path rather than after it, so set them up as you establish the business. The spine guide and the compliance checklist bring the core duties together so you can confirm they are covered.
Where this leaves you
You now have the shape of the whole task: work out which rules apply, put your workplace safety and licensing foundations in place, and verify the lot. Work the guides in order and you will have a clear, defensible position from your first performance onwards.