Why ‘minimum practice’ isn’t best practice – and isn’t good enough

It’s no secret that the cultural sector relies heavily on freelancers to make significant personal and financial sacrifices. The challenges are well known: lengthy, inaccessible, and disingenuous application processes; a lack of contracts, low fees; late fees; poor briefs; and PAYE (in-disguise) briefs to save money on National Insurance, holiday and sick pay. These examples barely scratch the surface of a multitude of other problems.

Even if freelancers manage to secure a contract and get it in writing, organisations are failing to meet their wider access needs, training, progression routes, mental health and wellbeing, to name a few. In the long term, this simply isn’t sustainable and there’s a growing number of freelancers calling out bad practice and refusing to accept unfair agreements.

Best practice or minimum practice?

Creative & Cultural Skills’ recent article Supporting Freelancers through this crisis called upon organisations to get a grip on the difference between being a freelancer and an employee. With the mission to help employers understand employment best practice, they published a simple guide for businesses.

Separately, Independent Producer and Captain of Artistic Mutiny, Sarah Shead, has been advocating for stakeholders, organisations, and sector bodies to address the current injustices for freelancers and better support the crew they so heavily rely on. Artistic Mutiny UK is a self-organised online network of over 950 arts and cultural workers. Committed to challenging establishments and throwing out old order to create change for the betterment of arts and culture. They ask, ‘is this guide best practice or minimum practice?’

Both Creative & Cultural Skills and Artistic Mutiny believe it is imperative the sector increases its understanding of, not only the legal, but also the social and moral case for providing better working conditions for freelancers, including inclusive and equitable practices.

Why organisations need to get a grip

Organisations are set up to fail. Often underfunded, they breed competition and not collaboration. They need to have more honest conversations with their funders about what is realistic to deliver with the resources they are given. The competitive nature of organisations forces freelancers to work in a competitive and under-resourced market, and because competition is so high, the sector has got away with offering illegal and unfair working conditions.

Even in the middle of a global pandemic, a business’s biggest risk is being called out for not looking after ‘its people’ or ‘its community’. This stretches above and beyond their legal obligation.

The sector is watching. Poor handling of this crisis could leave businesses without the workforce or public subsidy they rely on.

The self-employed are ‘othered’

If the majority of our workforce is employed and the minority (38%) are self-employed, then immediately we are faced with a diversity problem, with self-employed people being considered a ‘minority’ or ‘other’.

As a sector we have taken steps to understand the benefits of equality and having a diverse workforce when considering protected characteristics, but there’s still a long way to go when valuing alternative viewpoints and structures that are often found within the freelance workforce.

The self-employed are our colleagues, our equals, and they need to be treated that way. If this is continued to be ignored, then it will be at our peril.

The social and moral case

It’s easy to think that the social and moral case for supporting freelancers to have more equitable working conditions is a luxury or a benefit that only some organisations can afford. But ultimately, organisations can choose to prioritise this. If they don’t, the sector will pay an even higher price at a later date.

Freelancers are an incredible group of multiskilled, resourceful, creative, passionate, adaptable, and dynamic individuals. They offer expertise and alternative, unbiased perspectives to ensure our sector is thriving through collaboration. They spread their skills, experience, and knowledge across multiple contracts, in turn taking that learning to multiple organisations and projects, thereby offering excellent payback by cross-pollinating often siloed organisations.

As we move through even more uncertain times, stakeholders will expect more from organisations. Some are running the risk of being left behind and part of a generation that did not survive because they didn’t respond or prioritise their community’s needs.

If we have learnt anything from this ongoing pandemic, it has to be the value in ‘shared care’ over ‘self-care’; ‘collaboration’ over ‘competition’.

Address the inequalities

Some organisations are taking steps to address the inequalities. Recently, an open letter to theatre and performance makers was published by a group of organisations coming together to respond to the urgent and acute situation facing freelancers right now.

This is a start, but more needs to be done. This problem is not going away any time soon.

In response to the environmental disaster, we have seen individuals and organisations join together to start affecting change on a personal, local, national, and international scale. Their problem also hasn’t gone away, but there is no disputing that they are making progress.

Similarly, freelancers are starting to make waves with their collective voice and influence. They will hold organisations and stakeholders accountable.

The solution to this problem is collective conversations about the workforce and communal action. The key word here is action!

Artistic Mutiny, and those we represent, are glad to be standing alongside Creative & Cultural Skills to shine a light on the importance of solving this problem. Failing to respond is short-sighted and will have long-term devastating impacts for us all.

Sarah Shead is the Director and Creative Producer of Spin Arts, an independent producing company. She is also the Captain of Artistic Mutiny, a group of people working in the arts who are fighting for a fairer arts for all.