Artistic Entrepreneurship and Artistic Freedom?

The research project ArtR invites you to take part in a webinar where we highlight ideas, tensions, challenges and strategies for artists to have a sustainable working life as free artists or as cultural entrepreneurs.

Today artists are expected to develop an entrepreneurial mindset and become entrepreneurs: self-employed freelancers in the cultural labor market. This could put a pressure on artists to commercialize their creative works to secure their economic survival. But many artists are not driven by a market logic, they do not want to start and grow businesses, neither do they seek to contribute to general economic growth. Framing artists as entrepreneurs is also expecting them to have a wide range of skills beyond their artistic abilities, such as marketing, networking, and business management. While this may give them opportunities to have agency over work life. It can also, put a pressure to develop these skills and challenge artists’ autonomy and their opportunities to concentrate on their artistic expressions.

The research project ArtR (ArtR ) invites you to take part in a webinar where we want to highlight ideas, tensions, challenges and strategies for artists to have a sustainable working life as free artists or as cultural entrepreneurs. We invite researchers, decision-makers, politicians, artists and students to take part in discussions from different perspectives on the above topics. The webinar will start with four introductory keynotes on the topics: artistic freedom, cultural entrepreneurship and artistic work and will continue with discussions in breakout rooms and a concluding summary.

Keynote presentations
1. Freedom of art in the neoliberalized welfare state, Kaisa Murtoniemi, PhD, Tampere University
2. Which space for the arts? Artists between public and private in society, Katja Lindqvist, Associate Professor, Lund university
3. Sustaining Non-Urban Creative Communities: A Place-Based Approach to Innovation, Silvia Silva and Paola di Nunzio, Coimbra University, INSITU project (Horizon EU)
4. Artistic work and organizing, Monika Kostera, Professor, Warsaw University, Södertörn University

For registration and to get the zoomlink for the webinar see below. No later than the 11th of September.

If you have questions about the webinar, please contact: ann.sofie.koping@sh.se, Södertörn University.
Artrepreneneurs on the Edge Between Artistic Autonomy and Marketization: Organizing Creative Practice in the Baltic Sea Region (ArtR), Researchers: Ann-Sofie Köping Olsson, Södertörn University; Egle Rindzevikiute, Kingston University; Ulrike Rohn and Heie Treier, Tallinn University; Miikka Pyykkönen and Katri Talaskivi, University of Jyväskylä.

The project is funded by the Baltic and East European Research Foundation at Södertörn University.