The Back Office Before the Show: Brighton's Small Arts Groups Need a Compliance Lifeline

The first compliance bill for a small Brighton arts event rarely arrives as an invoice. It arrives as a Tuesday night. You are sitting at a kitchen table in Kemptown with a laptop, a mug of tea going cold, and a spreadsheet tab called ‘insurance?’ You have a venue, a line-up, a poster design and 38 people who say they are coming. What you do not have is a public liability policy, a fire risk assessment, a safeguarding policy, a first-aid plan, a music licence, a Temporary Event Notice, a photography consent form, or a clear answer to whether the teenager helping on the door needs a DBS check. None of these things are glamorous. All of them are real.

This is the hidden producer work of Brighton & Hove’s small cultural scene. It is done by volunteers, artists, community organisers and people who are already doing three jobs. And it is getting heavier. As the city’s 2026 cultural programme takes shape, we should be honest about a simple truth: for the smallest groups, compliance can cost more than the event itself — not just in fees, but in hours, anxiety and abandoned ideas.

The bill that never appears on the flyer

Picture a church hall gig in Hove. Capacity 60. Tickets £6. The promoter wants to pay three acts, cover the hall hire and maybe break even. Before the first chord, they need public liability insurance, a risk assessment, a safeguarding lead, a first-aid kit and someone trained to use it, fire safety arrangements, and a music licence through PRS for Music and PPL if recorded or live music is involved. If alcohol is sold, the licensing picture changes again. If the event is outdoors, there may be street trading or pavement licensing questions. If photographs are taken, consent matters. If young people are involved, safeguarding and DBS checks may be relevant.

Each item is sensible. Together they are a second job.

Now picture a two-week exhibition in a North Laine shopfront. The work is ready. The artists have spent months making it. Then comes the question of insurance for the space, the invigilation rota, the fire exit route, the access statement, the risk assessment for hanging work, the volunteer briefing, and the small matter of whether the shop’s existing insurance covers art on the walls. The show may have a £900 budget. The paperwork can eat a week of unpaid time before anyone walks through the door.

This is what we mean by the compliance bill. It is not one big charge. It is a hundred small ones, plus the cost of not knowing which ones apply.

A cliff edge made of forms

Brighton & Hove is brilliant at tiny culture. It happens in church halls, pub back rooms, community centres, shopfronts, arches, libraries and living rooms. It is where new promoters learn their craft and where established artists try strange things in front of 30 people. But our support infrastructure is still largely built for organisations with a producer, a finance lead and a folder marked ‘governance’. The smallest groups get the same legal responsibilities with none of the back office.

That creates a cliff edge. A group with an £800 budget cannot easily spend £300 on insurance, £200 on a consultant and £150 on training and still pay the artists. A volunteer in Hangleton running a craft workshop cannot take three afternoons off to decode licensing guidance. A disabled artist organising an accessible exhibition in Moulsecoomb may already be spending extra time and money on access; adding a compliance maze on top is not a neutral burden.

This is an access issue. Compliance work rewards people with spare time, confidence with forms, and a friend who knows a solicitor. It punishes everyone else. If we want a cultural scene that is not just the same well-resourced people doing the same well-resourced things, we have to treat paperwork navigation as part of the infrastructure.

What a shared compliance desk would actually do

A council-backed compliance desk would not be a magic liability shield. It would not take legal responsibility away from organisers, and it should not pretend to give legal advice. What it could do is create one trusted front door for the questions that currently bounce between council departments, insurers, Facebook groups and half-remembered advice from a friend.

It could work in three lanes. Before you apply: a short eligibility check that tells you which licences, insurances and policies are likely to apply. Before you announce: a pre-event clinic covering risk assessments, safeguarding, first aid, fire safety and music licensing. After you are funded: template policies, a document library and help with reporting so that a small grant does not turn into a second application.

The desk could offer a monthly insurance brokerage session, a licensing pre-check, a safeguarding lead for signposting, guidance on DBS administration, shared training for volunteers, and drop-in hours in different parts of the city — not just central Brighton. It could publish a simple compliance cost calculator so that people can budget before they fall in love with a programme. It could sit inside Brighton & Hove City Council’s culture team or be hosted by a cultural trust and funded jointly. The point is not the building. The point is a named person, a phone number and a published standard.

The objection worth taking seriously

Some will say that organisers must own their risk. They are right. A compliance desk must not become a way for the council to absorb liability or for artists to skip due diligence. But signposting is not absolution. Templates are not indemnity. A shared desk would simply stop every small group reinventing the same risk assessment at 11pm.

We already fund business support, festival coordination and tourism marketing. Paperwork navigation is no less practical. It is the difference between a cancelled workshop and a safe one, between a stressed volunteer and a supported one, between an idea that never gets proposed and an event that happens.

A pilot, not a pipe dream

This does not need to be a grand new agency. It needs a twelve-month pilot with a small team, clear boundaries and real metrics: hours saved for volunteers, events supported, cancellations avoided, groups reached outside the city centre. Councillors setting 2026 budgets should see it as prevention, not extra bureaucracy. Culture funding should not only pay for the show. It should pay for the conditions that let the show happen.

Brighton’s small arts groups are not asking for the moon. They are asking for someone to answer the phone before the first rehearsal, not after the licensing officer knocks. A shared compliance desk would not make the paperwork disappear. It would make it survivable — and that is how a city keeps its smallest stages open.