Making it up: Adaptive approaches to bringing freelance cultural work to a cultural ecologies discourse

Abstract

In this article, a transdisciplinary cultural labour perspective is used to examine the evolving and spontaneous networks and grassroots collective movements of performing arts freelancers in two contexts: Belfast (Northern Ireland) and Athens (Greece) in response to the outbreak of COVID-19. With a principally methodological contribution, the article proposes that evolving cultural ecologies research should mirror the ecologies it studies by adopting more collaborative and improvisational research approaches, drawing on inclusive research methods from disability studies and decolonising approaches within anthropology to reveal deeper knowledge and offer mutual benefit. Furthermore, it proposes that artists, overlooked in cultural ecologies research to date, bring knowledge from their practice beyond lived experience of value to such inquiry. The researchers collaborated with practitioner experts, revealing insights to freelancers’ milieu; their alternate systems for inclusion, representation and radical mutual care; and their increasing vulnerability in the face of ongoing exclusion from cultural recovery strategies and wider political and policy apathy to their concerns. This raises important moral and ethical questions for how cultural ecologies research and researchers engage with practitioner knowledge and the purpose of research in rendering such groups as creative freelancers visible within research and in the implicit and explicit urban and regional recovery planning in different locales. In addition, it proposes the inter- or transdisciplinary nature of cultural ecologies research may be better served by keeping its boundaries fluid, not just in the potential strength of blending research disciplines but also in its boundaries between the formal academy and practice.

Rethinking creative freelancers and structures of care in cultural policy and organisational practice: A case study of Dundee during the Covid-19 pandemic

“…Formal and informal freelancer networks (online and offline) have emerged in recent years to meet challenges of isolation of freelance workers and foster workforce solidarity and knowledge exchange they may miss from being outside an organisational context (Scott et al, 2023). Mutual aid networks, collective movements and activism also emerged directly England in response to the pandemic and increased CCW precarity (FitzGibbon and Tsioulakis, 2022;Tanghetti et al, 2022).…”

“…In the UK, significant connections have been made between the pandemic context and pre-existing literature critiquing the precarious nature of creative work (Comunian and England, 2020) and inequalities (Brook et al, 2020) which preceded the pandemic. However, in CCI policies and cultural strategies (including Covid recovery plans), the voices and knowledge of CCWs often go unheard (Comunian and England, 2020; England et al, 2022; FitzGibbon and Tsioulakis, 2022). Sargent (2022: 9) notes that ‘the sector can no longer evade the professional and moral responsibility to embrace those essential workers in more supportive and engaged ways’.…”

“…There remains, however, limited understanding of how such networks are formed and sustained, and how/whether they actually influence policy or stimulate growth (FitzGibbon and Tsioulakis, 2022). Notably, the review of the Scottish cultural workforce highlighted the need for sector-supporting organisations and networks to be incentivised, through additional funding, to support the implementation of a Fair Work strategy and collaborations to maximise resources and impact (Scott, 2022: 10).…”

“…This article reflects on challenges at the foundation of UK cultural policy making, that the people – specifically freelance creative and cultural workers (CCWs) 1 – and relationships that produce culture and drive the creative economy are often under-considered, under-valued and under-protected. It seeks to identify how freelancer CCWs, as the most precarious CCWs, can be better included in cultural policy (FitzGibbon and Tsioulakis, 2022), and how care (Alacovska and Bissonnette, 2021; Belfiore, 2021; Dent et al, 2023) can be better embedded in institutional practices, cultural leadership and employment relationships in a move towards more sustainable and just principles for creative work (Banks, 2017).…”

“…The article also speaks to the need for a critical renewal of cultural policy studies (Belfiore, 2021), reflects on the value of researchers collaborating more with the cultural and creative communities they study (FitzGibbon and Tsioulakis, 2022) and notes challenges to overcome in communicating with policy makers in order to develop meaningful, even caring, research practices and impacts.…”