Artists as Workers, A New Report
Submitted by Carmen Graciela Díaz on November 29, 2021
Autonomy, an independent think tank, published recently a report about ‘artist as-worker’ in the UK, emphasizing notions of "artistic labour, and highlighting the sector’s interaction with wider trends, such as the gig economy and marketization in education."
Covid did not produce precarity, exploitation and inequality in the art world out of thin air. Rather, it exposed, amplified and accentuated a set of pervasive trends that have long characterized the labour conditions of artistic workers in the UK. All too often, these have gone under appreciated, under-explored – insufficiently criticized - by those both within and outside the industry. Artistic labour seems to be easily forgotten.