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No joke: 77% of comedy venues in UK face closure within a year, finds survey

Three-quarters of British comedy venues face closure within a year without financial support, according to a survey of hundreds of people in the industry who say they fear the government is ignoring the sector.

The Live Comedy Association (LCA) survey suggests “an industry in crisis”, with 77% of venues saying they will be forced to permanently close within 12 months and a third saying they will go under in six months.

The LCA, which is a new body set up to represent the sector, said that without help venues would go bankrupt, jobs lost, comics would quit and many would never return. It is calling for comedy not to be overlooked when the £1.57bn emergency arts fund, which was announced by the government on Sunday, is allocated later this year.

Unlike theatre, opera or the visual arts, comedy is not supported by Arts Council England and does not receive funding from the Department for Digital, Culture, Music, and Sport (DCMS).

The standup Fern Brady has estimated that the Covid-19 crisis has cost her £10,000 in lost income, with panel shows and live gigs stopping overnight when lockdown measures were implemented in March. She said comedy had been “invisible” so far in the debate about saving the arts.

“I’m one of the lucky ones because I also do writing work,” Brady said. “I’ve got friends who’ve been comedians for 15 years who have to go back to the job that they did before. Can you imagine writing ‘standup comedian’ on a CV or a job application? A lot of people don’t see this as a legitimate job.”

Brady said she knew comedians who had gone from gigging to working in factories and supermarkets during the lockdown, and 45% of more than 600 people who responded to the LCA survey said they have considered quitting while 60% said they would leave the industry by next February if performances do not return.

The survey also found that 73.5% of respondents said their mental health had been affected because of income security concerns, and more than three-quarters of performers said online performances had earned them less than 5% of their pre-pandemic estimated income.

Owen Donovan, the vice-chair of LCA and the managing director of comedy production company Berk’s Nest, said the situation for venues was “incredibly bad” and that they needed help if they could not reopen for several months.

“It all depends on when we can reopen with a full capacity audiences. But if getting to stage five on the government’s roadmap [for the art sector that allows fuller audiences indoors] is a long way away then that’s disastrous for the industry and everybody that works in it.”

Related: Comedy's coronavirus crisis: 'performers are in deep, deep trouble'

Donovan said the comedy sector wanted to have equal access to the emergency arts fund. “When the government talks about key institutions or organisations being saved, all we’re asking is for an eye to also be cast over what those key institutions and organisations are in the comedy landscape,” he said.

The comedian Mark Watson said: “This is one of the fastest-growing, most egalitarian and fashionable pockets of the arts, and it produces work on a fraction of the budgets enjoyed by theatre, opera, or anything else. Any rescue plan for the performing arts needs to include it.”

Only 17.1% of promoters said they expect all their regular events would return after lockdown measures are eased further. Brady said that could mean comedy may become more elitist and less accessible to acts from working-class and minority ethnic backgrounds.

“There was already a problem. A lot of middle-class people dominate in the comedy world,” she said. “Perhaps now it’s just going to be Cambridge footlight people who can keep doing comedy and those whose parents pay their rent for them.”

A DCMS spokesperson said: “This week we announced the biggest ever one-off investment in UK culture to help the industry through the coronavirus pandemic. This funding will provide targeted support to organisations and venues across a range of sectors and detailed eligibility criteria will be set out in the coming weeks.”

Related: 'I'd love to see their parents' bank accounts': corona and comedy's class divide

In March, two days after lockdown measures were implemented, the comedian Liam Williams told the Guardian if he was still relying on live gigs as a main source of income then the situation would have been “absolutely ruinous”.

Brady said a generation of younger comics, who are reliant on live gigs to make money, could leave the industry and not return. “Established comedians like me are fine, I’m going to do a podcast till the end of the year. But there are brilliant comedians just under me, who were just kind of getting started, and I don’t know what’s gonna happen to them.”