Crisis Relief for Arts and Culture

Many countries have responded to Covid-19 lockdowns by offering crisis relief to the arts and culture sector. However, the information about existing support measures is quite fragmented and sometimes hard to understand without knowing the local context. This conversation aims to map and analyse different models of crisis relief based on examples originating from Austria, Estonia, Hungary and Poland. We feel that transnational exchange is needed now, as we are standing at the beginning of an economic recession.

What have been responses to crisis relief? What options of support are available for artists and cultural workers in the current situation? What are the blind spots and exclusions of these relief measures? Who does not have access to support? Where do we need to direct our attention in the future? What are necessary intervention points and/or spaces of agency?

Jannik Franzen (Vienna) works for IG Bildende Kunst, an advocacy group for visual artists in Austria that intervenes in policymaking, organizes cultural political debates, and advises artists on social security and legal issues. https://www.igbildendekunst.at

Kinga Lendeczki (Budapest) is an aesthete and project manager at the Studio of Young Artists’ Association in Hungary, a professional organisation with around 500 members (artists, art historians and critics) that dynamically responds to current art and social issues. http://studio.c3.hu

Igor Stokfiszewski (Warsaw) is a researcher, activist, journalist, and artist. He is a member of the Krytyka Polityczna organization team. http://politicalcritique.org/

Airi Triisberg (Tallinn) has been involved in art workers organising since 2010. She co-authored the book Art Workers – Material Conditions and Labour Struggles in Contemporary Art Practice. www.art-workers.org

The conversation is organised by Katalin Erdődi and Airi Triisberg.

The event is hosted by Precarity Office Vienna, an informal space for mutual advice and self-organisation. Share practical and legal knowledge. Support each other. https://precarityoffice.wordpress.com

 

Image © #SupportArtWorkers campaign and public action.
On May 7th 2020 over 200 people working in the Arts and Cultural sector in Athens, Greece, gathered under the Parthenon, on Dionisiou Areopagitou street to transcribe with their bodies a message that is both particular to the current moment in Greece and universal to creative workers globally, namely the demand to #SupportArtWorkers. #SupportArtWorkers on facebook