New Economies of Artistic Labour – from Entrepreneurship to Sustainable Collectives is inviting artists to write about their experiences on work and everyday life in Finland. The project aims at discovering how artists make a living, how the artistic labour overlaps with other types of labour and the everyday life, and how artistic expertise is accumulated.
New Economies of Artistic Labour – from Entrepreneurship to Sustainable Collectives is a multidisciplinary research project that maps and analyses the changing forms of artists’ work in contemporary Finland. Research is conducted on the often unusual role of artists in the labour market, artistic entrepreneurship, and the various collective ways of working and living as an artist. The project also studies the different forms of artistic labour, the relation of artists’ income to unemployment and social benefits as well as combining creative work with other activities in the artists’ everyday life.
Survey Provides Insight into the Reality of Artists’ Professional Life
The project is now collecting data on the work and everyday life of artists. The researchers want to give artistic workers a chance to tell about their personal experiences in their own words. The researchers are interested in the lived experiences and the employment of artists and how these relate to the norms of working life, entrepreneurship, and grant funding, and the way unemployment and social benefits connect to artistic labour and such other jobs that artists may do alongside making art.
They are also interested in the ways different types of labour, projects, and life situations overlap; the education and hobbies of artists; and the way they maintain and develop their professional skills and expertise. The aim is to produce new research on the practicalities of artistic labour, artists’ forms of income and everyday life, and the ways these are connected to the larger societal structures and practices related to working life.
The survey is open until 15 March 2022.
The project is hosted by the University of Turku and funded by the Kone Foundation (2020–2024). The project is led by Katve-Kaisa Kontturi and Milla Tiainen from the University of Turku. The data collection is led by Mikko Jakonen from the University of Jyväskylä.
The project’s website: https://sites.utu.fi/artlabour/en
More information:
Mikko Jakonen
mikko.p.jakonen@jyu.fi
(data collection)
Katve-Kaisa Kontturi
katkon@utu.fi
(research project)
Milla Tiainen
miltia@utu.fi
(research project)
