The Freelance: Futures consortium is the Arts Council-commissioned forum looking at freelancers' conditions in the cultural sector.
Research has shown that independent practitioners make up nearly half the workforce of the cultural sector, and the pandemic worsened and revealed the extent of the raw deal they faced, with many onlookers left asking how had organisations let it get so bad.
Issues have surfaced around working conditions, pay rates, insecurity, and other entrenched inequalities which have led to many freelancers leaving the sector.
Arts Council England, which developed a £160 million Emergency Response Package (largely from the National Lottery) and administered the Government’s Culture Recovery Funds, has now commissioned a consortium specifically to address the issue of freelancers' working conditions.
The purpose of the Freelance: Futures’ consortium is to share learning and take action to improve working arrangements for non-salaried professionals.
From 16 May to 15 July a series of online events will support organisations, unions, funders and policymakers as well as freelancers as they look at how changes can be effected. The events will focus on:
- organising for equitable freelancing conditions,
- understanding freelancer rights and resources,
- transforming organisations to create equitable freelancer conditions and
- policy making to support equitable freelancer conditions.
Although the events are free to attend since freelancers, by the nature of their employment, may incur loss in attending, £250 bursaries are being made available, although application details have not yet been released.
Notwithstanding, the consortium has thrown down the gauntlet, asking organisations to nominate and pay for at least two freelancers from their networks to attend the programme as well as attending themselves.
The Freelance: Futures consortium is made up of a number of organisations including Freelancers Make Theatre Work, Inc Arts, Migrants In Culture, MAX Musician and Artist Exchange, people make it work, Something To Aim For and What Next?.
The consortium partners said, “the work of Freelance: Futures aims to address inequalities existing in the arts and culture sector, prior to and exacerbated by the pandemic. Experiences we, our friends and colleagues, as freelancers have all experienced in working and surviving in the arts.
“We are coming together, to gather different perspectives, across artforms and communities, to create a sector-wide space to learn, resource and build more equitable conditions for freelancing. As working in isolation will not bring the scale of change we seek, this programme is a call for us all to work better together to change the conditions in which we work, create and support arts and culture.”