The situation facing self-employed performing artists in this pandemic demonstrates an ongoing problem with performance work not being seen as ‘real’ work, say Drs Ioannis Tsioulakis and Ali FitzGibbon. Presenting cultural work online risks normalising the widespread idea that artists are performing a free service to which consumers are entitled.
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Performing Artists in the age of COVID-19: A moment of urgent action and potential change (Queen's Policy Engagement)
Working populations across the world are seeing their livelihoods and careers collapse or transform overnight as a result of the global pandemic COVID-19 and the responses of individual governments. Cultural work and the focus of our contribution here – performing arts (music and theatre) – is affected more than many other occupations. This is because performing artists work in extremely precarious conditions, their careers and mental health have been made additionally vulnerable by prolonged austerity, and proposed solutions thus far are inadequate and based on misunderstandings. Both immediate action and a long-term approach are needed to ensure a critical workforce is not abandoned.
Our respective research over many years has studied music and theatre artists in the UK, Ireland and Greece. In close collaboration with these performing practitioners, our work has shown that making a living from the creative industries is precarious and fragile, and those conditions were exacerbated in the last two decades by a series of global and domestic economic crises.
What we know is that the sudden and radical effect of COVID-19 on the lives of freelance performing artists is compounding dangerous levels of precarity in these occupations and, as a result, there are swifter, deeper and more serious consequences to policy inaction in the coming months and years... Keep reading on Queen's Policy Engagement