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She said the relationship between organisations and freelancers "doesn’t feel
mutually beneficial", and that change must come from leadership.

"Something has to shift about this top-down structure that has an artistic director or
executive producer at the top. We need to put freelancers at the centre of this model
of what our industry is. We need to shift it radically to make a career viable," she
said.

O’Loughlin added: "I’m amazed that so many of our buildings are run by an artistic
director, a theatre director, someone like me, and I think about the possibilities and
opportunities that may arise with a more collective structure – different artists
coming in and taking power."

After seven years running the Traverse, O’Loughlin moved to London’s Guildhall
School of Music and Drama in 2018. She said the training sector must unite to
address issues such as inclusivity.

Drama schools have historically been "bubble cultures", O’Loughlin argued, but must
operate with a more collaborative mindset in future.

"My sense going forward is there is a dawning realisation that if we don’t work
together we are really missing a trick to make real change happen," she said, later
adding: "We are working more and more closely together but there are significant
challenges because institutions operate in such different ways. In order for them all
to align it’s going to take some time, and I think there are some profound differences
of opinion about what the change is that needs to happen."

O’Loughlin was speaking on the panel alongside The Stage’s Ahmet Ahmet, who is
head of Get Into Theatre, Trinity Laban student Becky Sanneh and actor and Open
Door founder David Mumeni.

Mumeni agreed that drama schools had traditionally been "quite isolated in aims and
achievements" and said there was a lot more work to be done.

He said the unconscious bias in drama schools around what an actor might look and
sound like is changing, but cautioned: "Our understanding of diversity and
representation is quite limited at the moment in terms of specific ethnic minority
groups. Nothing really has changed for Middle Eastern and South East Asian
representation."