Freelance, but not on furlough payment – the Croydon musician caught in criteria trap

Classical musician Nat Brawn is just one of many freelancers left out of the the self-employed income support scheme. Pic: Nathaniel Brawn.

Over a million people do not qualify for furlough and self-employment payments, including those who have no self-employed income during the qualifying years, due to narrow eligibility criteria. Felice Southwell talks to one of those left out.

Hundreds of thousands of people in the early stages of their self-employed career are likely to be in a precarious financial situation in lockdown due to missing out on the self-employed income support scheme, SEISS. For musician Nathaniel Brawn, this means that he will receive no financial support from the government.

Brawn, who lives in Broad Green, Croydon, left his teaching job as Director of Music at Wetherby Preparatory School, an independent boys school in Marylebone, in August last year to pursue a professional career in classical music performance as a multi-instrumentalist in orchestras, a choral conductor and an accompanist. 

Brawn, 32, told Eastlondonlines: “My past three years of income were [teaching] which was not freelance, so from a freelance point of view I have zero in income. I am ineligible.”

“They cannot even include the tax year which has just passed, that year doesn’t exist for them, but that’s where my freelance income is,” he added.

Now quarantining with his civil partner who has been furloughed from his job as cabin crew with Easy Jet, Brawn has had to return to teaching through private tutoring of piano, violin, viola, singing and flute online.

Brawn said: “The bone of contention here is that my financial year is void and I’m really ridiculously lucky that I had the resource of teaching and being able to top up my income by doing that.”

Not only is teaching keeping his financial position stable, but it also provides a lifeline for his tutees.  He said: “The music is important and that keeps their brain stimulated, but I think on a personal level it’s really important that they can have this interaction.”

“I told one one of the parents that we didn’t do too much piano in this session because we basically just chatted and she said ‘I don’t care what you did in that lesson because for me it’s just nice to know that they have someone that they can talk to,” he added.

Brawn has started to teach online over Zoom during the lockdown. Pic: Nathaniel Brawn.

But at the same time, Brawn has been struggling to keep building his profile as a performer due to a litany of cancelled gigs. He said it was “very depressing” when rehearsals, gigs and tours as an accompanist with the Croydon Male Voice Choir began cancelling in mid-March.

“That was like four months of work that was just gone, and as a freelancer that’s your lifeline.  You go ‘Oh my gosh, what can I do?’” he said.

A concert at the Royal Albert Hall in April with Wandsworth Music vocal project, working with local school children, got cancelled due to the pandemic. Brawn had been teaching songs as part of his freelance activities. 

Brawn told ELL: “We were due to have about 800 primary school kids singing songs together, and they were so good.”

“I feel really gutted for them because a lot of these kids wouldn’t ever have that opportunity to even go to the Royal Albert Hall, let alone perform in it,” he said.

Brawn said the Musician’s Union, who have been helping musicians with grants, have provided support with sustaining a teaching curriculum online. 

Help Musicians opened up financial support after finding that 25% of self-employed musicians believed they would be ineligible for SEISS and would have no other option than going on Universal Credit.  

A Treasury spokesperson told ELL: “Our wide-ranging support package is one of the most comprehensive in the world – with generous income support schemes, billions paid in loans and grants, tax deferrals and more than £6.5bn injected into the welfare safety net.”

“Those who do not qualify for the Self Employed Income Support Scheme or the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme will be able to access a range of other support. These include our strengthened welfare safety net, where we’ve given councils an additional £500m to support the most vulnerable in our society, and introduced mortgage-payment holidays and tax deferrals,” they added.

Brawn said the lack of support would not just affect artists. “I don’t know anyone in an identical situation but they must exist. Think about people who’d just become childminders or contractors or builders. It is really scary to think about what other people might be going through,” he added.

One Response

  1. Jeffree April 13, 2023

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