How to Live and Work Today? In the Arts and Beyond.
Online presentation and public debate on the improvement of social security for artists, organised by State of the Arts (SOTA)
27/02/2021
More information to follow shortly
How can we work differently and better in the arts sector and beyond, today and in the future? As part of the How to Live and Work Now Platform, Kaaitheater invited six artists, collectives and researchers to start up self-organized working groups. A reflection group within the State of the Arts (SOTA) platform is working on a proposal for improving the social security of artists.
During a summer camp in 2019 SOTA set up a series of encounters with artists which resulted in the publication of the first Fair Arts Almanac. The next edition of the Fair Arts Almanac is planned for 2022. It will be produced based on 10 monthly thematic events in the course of 2021, the first of which will be hosted online by Kaaitheater.
The corona crisis has made it painfully clear that a great many artists in Belgium do not qualify for the protection offered by the social security system. That’s why the new federal government has inscribed the search for a sustainable solution for the social security for artists in its coalition agreement. It would seem that there is a momentum for a proper reconsideration of the social position of the artist.
One of State of the Arts’ (SOTA) working groups has focused on this issue in the past few months, resulting in a document – a work in progress – that starts from concrete working experiences and artist’s practices. The document makes reference to a number of crucial questions that are equally relevant for society at large: What is ‘work’? Who is entitled to social protection? Which mechanisms of solidarity already exist?
After presenting it to a number of organisations from both the French and Flemish communities, the document was also presented to and discussed with different researchers and legal experts. As a final step before finalizing the text, the working document will be presented online for public debate during SOTA’s online Fair Arts Almanac event on social security for artists.
The SOTA event is one of the six working groups within a pilot project at Kaaitheater testing more sustainable artistic formats and working models.
Read more here (Dutch)