Photo Credit: MITC Pay It Forward
The Music Industry Therapist Collective launches an industry-funded occupational health program for artists and crew on small- and mid-scale tours.
The Music Industry Therapist Collective CIC (MITC) has launched the Pay It Forward Fund, an industry-funded, free-at-source, occupational health program for artists and crew on small- and mid-scale tours. Backers include Radiohead’s Philip Selway, AEG, Live Nation, d&b audiotechnik, Fly By Nite, Live Free 999, Lockton, The Team (formerly Wasserman), and Universal Pixels.
With touring professionals at an elevated risk of stress, anxiety, and burnout, as well as clinical depression and suicidality, a growing number of larger tours now provide welfare or pastoral support as part of the production. On smaller tours, those pressures can be compounded by tighter budgets, leaner teams, and more challenging work and travel conditions. However, these teams rarely have the budget to offer people the same resources or opportunities to talk, reflect, and reset.
Pay It Forward is designed to address a practical gap in touring infrastructure by making specialist mental health support accessible to smaller teams. An initial £272,000 ($370,000) has been raised to support 50 tour teams annually over a three-year pilot period.
Contributors to the fund include leading live entertainment organizations worldwide, including AEG, d&b audiotechnik, Fly By Nite, Live Nation, Lockton, The Team, and Universal Pixels. It has also seen the support of Radiohead’s Philip Selway and Live Free 999, the charitable foundation set up by Carmela Wallace, the mother of the late Juice WRLD.
MITC’s Tour Health packages include Tour Check-Ins—confidential conversations with qualified mental health practitioners who understand the realities of music and touring—which are available online 24/7 in several languages. Tour Check-Ins can be used by any member of the touring team to decompress after a difficult day, think through a decision, talk about work or relationships, deal with tension in the team, reflect upon coping habits, or plan what comes next. No diagnosis, referral, or previous experience of therapy is required.
Also included in each package is a 90-minute occupational health consultation with MITC’s Touring Welfare Officer Sascha Heeney, who supported Dua Lipa’s Radical Optimism tour team; Healthy Touring workshops and other resources to support performance, communication, and collaboration; and access to MITC’s audiobook Touring and Mental Health: The Music Industry Manual.
“People who tour are often highly skilled and resourceful. They’re used to managing lots of moving parts, adapting quickly, and solving problems on the fly. Pressure itself isn’t necessarily the problem; touring is demanding by nature, and that’s part of what can make it rewarding. The difficulty comes when stress becomes chronic, without enough support to buffer its effects or enough opportunity to recover,” said Tamsin Embleton, founder of MITC.
“The Pay It Forward Fund is about making specialist support accessible to tours working within tight budgets, but it’s also about moving beyond the idea that support should only be sought when crisis hits. We want to help forward-thinking teams develop the skills to manage pressure, recognize when something is beginning to take a toll, and intervene effectively before things start to snowball.”
Alongside providing funded access, the campaign’s wider aim is to establish occupational health on tour as part of normal professional practice.
“Just as touring professionals maintain their trucks and buses, equipment, and systems before they fail, the people who keep the show moving should benefit from the same foresight and planning,” added Laura Newton, MITC’s Operations Director. “You wouldn’t send a rigger 50 ft into the air without a harness, and the same applies to health and well-being on tour. We believe that this should be the norm, rather than the exception or perk once tours reach a certain level.”
A first round of applications is now open to eligible tour teams anywhere in the world for tours that begin between October and December 2026, and closes on September 30. MITC’s leadership team will oversee funding allocation, with plans to carry out regular impact assessments to refine and develop the program in response to feedback.