Arts in the Oven
An Exploration of Producer Burnout
By Ema Boswood
What happens when the people behind the scenes the producers, organisers, facilitators begin to burn out? What does it mean when the very individuals responsible for holding projects, people, and processes are left without meaningful support?
Arts in the Oven: An Exploration of Producer Burnout is a deeply personal and powerfully reflective research project by producer and artist Ema Boswood. As a neurodivergent producer living with ADHD, Ema brings her lived experience into sharp focus, weaving it together with insights from five other producers to explore the urgent and often invisible crisis of burnout in the arts.
This research doesn’t just describe burnout as a personal failure, but reframes it as a collective and systemic failure embedded in the very structures of the industry. From administrative overload and precarious funding models to the erasure of creativity and absence of structural care, the report unpacks why burnout has become so widespread among producers, particularly those who are disabled or neurodivergent.
Ema’s work offers both individual strategies and systemic proposals for a more sustainable producing culture one grounded in care, honesty, flexibility, and joy. It invites us to reimagine how we work, how we protect our time and energy, and how we collectively shift away from the culture of overwork that has been normalised in the arts.
This is a vital read for anyone working in or alongside the producing sector. It affirms what many know but few say out loud: that producing is a creative, emotional, and human practice—and it deserves to be treated as such. Change is possible, but it requires collective responsibility, imagination, and action.
Ema Boswood is Senior Producer for Transform Festival. Based in Leeds, she is responsible for the delivery of projects and festivals.
Ema began her career in the arts at the Marlborough Theatre in Brighton. Here she coordinated the first New Queers on the Block tour, an LGBTQIA+ artist and community development programme and network working in Blackpool, Bradford, Brighton, Folkestone and Hastings. She delivered several micro-festivals at the Marlborough, including Young, Queer & Skint and Radical Softness, and was responsible for the co-curation and delivery of programmes including Fat Pride and Trans Pride Season.
Following this she relocated to Cambridge, where she worked as Arts Producer at Cambridge Junction from 2019 to 2023. Here she focussed on artist development, commissioning and the co-curation of multiple seasons of performance, presenting contemporary theatre, performance art, dance, circus, spoken word and family work. She is a founding member of Cambridge based collective Club Urania who host performance cabaret/club events to counter the lack of LGBTQIA+ spaces in the city. Ema led on the programming and delivery of contemporary performance festival DISRUPT, showcasing the work of over 15 artists in the course of two days across each of the Cambridge Junction venues.
Ema studied Drama at Queen Mary, University of London and has a practice as an independent artist. In 2019 she performed her Arts Council supported show Ghost Sexxx in Brighton and Leeds.
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