There has been and continues to be incredible support within the theatre industry for the PIPA campaign. We are delighted to announce that Matthew Warchus, Kate Varah and their brilliant team at The Old Vic are now official PIPA partners. The Royal Court have invited parents with babies under 1 to their relaxed performance of Linda for the first time ever. The Old Vic opened their relaxed performance of The Lorax to children under 18 months whilst the National Theatre have said babies are welcome to all performances of I want my hat back including the relaxed performance.

What is particularly significant about the Royal Court however is that Linda is not a children's show. When pressed the NT said their policy on RP's is determined on a case by case basis. We are now working on clarifying these rules and are meeting with Include Arts next week who advise theatres on RP's to clarify the exact purpose of these performances and see if babies can be officially welcome to RP's across the board.

Union and Political news

Claire Wyatt has been busy on the political circuit on PIPA's behalf. A roundtable discussion at the House of Commons resulted in the Culture Minister Ed Vaizey acknowledging her significant contribution at an Equity/MU/Writers Guild parliamentary reception. His speech underlined that he had been struck at the diversity roundtable by the fact that in the creative industries the issue of diversity is much broader than affecting BAME, Women, Deaf & Disabled and LGBT performers and he specifically mentioned Claire Wyatt's contribution about PIPA, childcare and the career impacts of maternity.

PIPA co-founder Anna Ehnold - Danailov was invited to BBC Radio London breakfast show to speak on the subject. Catch it here at (1:18min).

The Stage also ran a great piece about PIPA this week. Click here to read it.FurthermoreLast week we met with the Arts Council to discuss PIPA's project researching best practice and existing models that support and encourage parents to continue working in the Performing Arts. This will allow us to gather tangible data which will give a sense of the scale and impact of the issues affecting parents. It will provide an opportunity to trial some of the most sustainable ideas with partner organisations, monitoring and evaluating the process as it unfolds.

Director and supporter Stephen Unwin kindly talked us through the process of setting up as a charity and has agreed to facilitate an 'away day' in January with a core group of people to review and re shape our aims and objectives.Actress Polly Kemp generously gave up her time to record a podcast about why support for parents in the performing arts is vital if we want gender equality in our industry. Please click here to listen to the podcast.Anna will be presenting PIPA's work, along with her theatre company Prams in the Hall at the Procreate launch this Tuesday afternoon, alongside Elena Marchevska and Matilda Leyser and others. For more information about the event please visit procreateprojectlaunch./eventbrite.co.uk

Help

So, it's been a busy few weeks and there's more to come but we still need support to be able to continue this work. If possible, please share our crowdfunding campaign with your network as we have only one week left to meet our target. www.indiegogo.com/projects/parents-in-performing-arts/ Our aim is for the organisation to become self sufficient as a charity but there is still a lot of work to get there. We'd be delighted to be included in your newsletter or mentioned in tweets to reach out to more supporters and highlight the importance of this campaign to work towards accessibility and equality in our industry.