It has been a veritable rollercoaster ride for The Electric Canvas since the effects of the Coronavirus pandemic began taking their toll here in Australia. We thought we’d share our experience in our bid to fight back against this global enemy and what the future holds for our company.

Covid-19 hit The Electric Canvas hard and fast, as it did with all of our industry counterparts. Over the course of just a handful of days, every single event we’d been confirmed to work on until the end of our winter was postponed indefinitely or cancelled. Suddenly the future of The Electric Canvas was on very shaky ground.

We were forced immediately into damage control mode in a bid to preserve the company’s 23-year legacy, working tirelessly to find strategies to keep TEC afloat. Thankfully, we can breathe a sigh of relief, albeit for the time being…

Of prime importance is the preservation of The Electric Canvas’ team, and sustaining their income and entitlements. Unfortunately, the process hasn’t been without its casualties, including a small number of redundancies and the temporary reduction of working hours for remaining staff. We’ve also had to cancel bookings with many of our valued technical and artistic contractors, without whom we wouldn’t be able to deliver our work.

Both our Sydney and Melbourne offices remain “open” and operational, all the while in accordance with government directives. Our focus has shifted to accomplishing tasks we were often too busy to undertake and finding ways to improve our business productively and efficiently.

Our customers are also realising the importance of preserving the teams that hold the knowledge and experience relevant to their projects. Their focus is shifting to assisting their project partners in their bids for survival, which will help us to keep the fires burning and our team engaged.

The Electric Canvas’ team and their families are our extended family and, despite our individual circumstances, we all share the same goal – survival and renewal. Now that the dust has settled somewhat, we can see a light at the end of the Coronavirus tunnel and we are optimistic that the light is neither a freight train, nor indeed a candle.