Arts Workers: Survival and Resistance
Bad pay and conditions have become normal for workers in the arts. And after the mass redundancies in arts institutions over the last year, the promises of building back better seem farther away than ever: with threats of further redundancies, relentless precarity, lack of transparency and workers set against each other to endlessly compete for scraps. How can the sector’s workforce - divided in terms of pay and position from front-of-house, administrators, technicians, and artists - organise together against exploitation, racism, and sexism? How can we collaborate with activist groups protesting oil sponsorship, imperialism, and the display of looted artefacts? In a time of cuts and jobs losses, how can arts workers remake the sector on a more equitable basis?
Sonali Bhattacharyya is an activist and award-winning playwright. She's National Secretary and London Regional Rep for Momentum
Samir Eskanda is a Palestinian musician and anti-apartheid activist
Kristen is the Publishing Manager at Tilted Axis Press. A writer and organizer, she led labor and anti-racist organizing at the Barbican. Writing and interviews have appeared in Logic, The Moving Image, Triple Canopy and n+1.
General Secretary at Equity Union.
Bayryam Mustafa Bayryamali is a visual researcher and an art activist based in London. As a member of the protest group BP or not BP?, he campaigns for reparations of looted objects and end of oil sponsorships in cultural institutions.
Member of Bectu Art Technicians and the Art Workers Forum
Equity is the trade union for actors, singers, models, performers, directors, choreographers, designers, stage managers, and other creative workers in the United Kingdom.
Representing PCS members in Tate galleries.
The AWF is a group of trade unionists in the arts, aiming to collaborate on actions (protests, strikes, etc) & develop workers' power in the sector.
