Publication by IETM “Which side are you on? Ideas for Reaching Fair Working Conditions in the Arts”
In 2022, working conditions and fairness were at the top of the IETM agenda.
In their contributions to the publication, “Which side are you on? Ideas for Reaching Fair Working Conditions in the Arts,” Katja Praznik, Bojana Kunst and Hans Abbing challenge some of the belief systems and prevailing mechanisms that keep from reaching fundamental change within the arts sector.
“If lack of funding was the only obstacle in achieving fairness in the arts, our task would be easy. However, in many cases, additional funding does not lead to fairer practices.” Katja Praznik claims that as long as art work is not truly and fundamentally considered to be real labour, artists and their allies will not be able to claim a decent, legitimate income for the work they do (including writing funding applications and reports, doing research, meeting people, reading, procrastinating, answering emails, taking time off, being ill…). The socially dominant attitude remains that what artists do is not labour, but rather creation, as a result of artistic talent or genius.
The Publication includes three sections:
Section 1 by Katja Praznik: “Which side are you on?” On Understanding Arts as Labour and the Potential of Collective Organising of Art Workers.
Section 2 by Bojana Kunst: “Making temporal kinships: Beyond the project.”
Section 3 by Hans Abbing: “An Attractive Low-Income Profession.”
The dissemination of the publication precedes the first online IETM Innovate Cultural Policy Event that will take place on 25 January 2023, where the finding of this publication will be presented.