038 REPORT
ABOVE: A demonstration of how truss can be used in a nightclub environment in Philadelphia. RIGHT: Marc Jacobs fashion show at the 26th Street Armory in New York City.
resented and start to take steps to avoid future accidents. A culture of safety awareness, with an emphasis on training finally began to find it’s way into the industry. The path to greater safety awareness was long and difficult and littered with hurdles. OSHA, the governing body that set the rules for all employees in the USA wasn’t all that helpful. Their agents really had no idea what the rigging business was about and showed little inclination to learn. Finding common ground between the industry’s practices and the OSHA rules was an arduous task that took a considerable amount of time and effort with little reward at the end. Something had to be done, however, or else the industry and OSHA would continue to be at loggerheads with no relief in sight. That something turned out to be Standards, American National Standards, to be exact. At some point in the past, the American legal culture adopted Standards as a means for working with recalcitrant government organisations. Different industries, through their trade associations, began writing documents that identified the proper methods and practices for working within that particular industry. It was soon noted that when documents were written under the auspices of the American National Standards Institute, even though the documents were voluntary in nature, they still carried with them the force of law in a courtroom. This provided the marriage between government and industry that everyone was searching for. In the mid ‘90s, the entertainment industry, under the auspices of it’s trade association, the Entertainment Services and Technology Association (ESTA) formed a technical standards programme for the express purpose of writing ANSI standards for the entertainment industry. Since then the programme has produced over 40 ANSI Standards, Codes of Practice and Application Guides. A discussion about safety in the entertainment industry must include training and certification. As previously mentioned, the level of sophistication and sheer size of modern day performances demands a level of knowledge and skill not heretofore seen in the backstage environment. While some level of training has always been around, it wasn’t until several factors combined that the industry began to embrace the concept that those tasked with running the shows needed proper training. Just learning to pull a rope wasn’t going to get the job done anymore. Humans, it seems are better at learning from their mistakes than they are at
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avoiding them. In the early 2000s a series of serious accidents made it clear that adequate training was sorely lacking. A number of individuals, organisations and companies took up that mantle and began offering classes in seminars in everything from knot tying to digital controls. The culture of safety, no matter the impetus, continued to grow. The advent of certification in the USA and the UK has taken the concept of training and fixed it firmly and, one hopes, permanently into the collective consciousness of the industry. Both certifications exist to identify, in a tangible way, the skill level of those working in the industry. To achieve that skill level requires a significant amount of work experience - coming up through the ranks, as it were - as well as adequate training to combine that real world experience with the empirical knowledge not always available on the job site. Certification provides the means to measure that union of skill and knowledge and authenticate the result not only to prospective employers but also to government agencies, insurance companies and industry experts. In short, having a Certification has grown to become something to aspire to, something desirable to have. The fact that training is a necessary component to reach the Certification goal is a win-win situation for everyone. Along with increased levels of safety awareness and training comes and increase in accountability. You can’t have a discussion about a higher level of training, improving fall arrest procedures or expanded load monitoring without an understanding that everyone is responsible for the safety and well being of everyone working on the performance. If you design or build a device that can injure or kill someone if it’s not operated and maintained properly then it’s understood that you have a responsibility to ensure that the proper training is made available to all who require it. The entertainment industry and especially the rigging portion, has seen incredible changes over the last six decades. Changes that have tested the limits of the equipment and the people responsible for the equipment. The industry has risen, albeit slowly at first, to embrace the responsibilities that these changes have brought. Nobody knows what the future will bring but it’s becoming more clear that there is a willingness to change and to do so safely. www.sapsis-rigging.com