Cultural Freelancers Study 2024

By Arts Council England

SUMMARY

A wide-ranging study of creative and cultural freelance workers in England carried out by independent researchers at the University of Essex on behalf of Arts Council England. The report highlights several significant challenges and concerns that the sector's freelance workforce currently faces. It concludes with proposed action across eight key areas to support a more equitable, sustainable and accessible freelance workforce.

Foreword

The cultural sector is strongest when the individuals who work in it are able to do what they do best: create. We celebrate the work of creative and cultural practitioners in Let’s Create, Arts Council England’s ten-year strategy, and outline our commitment to support practitioners across the sector to learn, take risks, fail where necessary, and finally to flourish in pursuit of making new work. The great artists, performers, writers, and curators of 2040 and 2050 need to be nurtured now: our investment in them is, at heart, an investment in a future that we believe can be brighter and better with creativity and culture at its core.

We want to be confident that the Arts Council has a comprehensive understanding of freelancers’ experiences of working in the sector. In summer 2023, we therefore commissioned the University of Essex to conduct our first Freelancers Study.

This report, which quantifies the anecdotal stories we have been hearing for a number of years, makes for sobering reading. The challenges to the freelance community – of burnout, of leaving, or for the next generation, of not joining the cultural sector at all - are clear. I hope this report compels those of us with agency to take action – and to take action fast.

We appreciate that this study could not have happened without the practitioners who have completed the survey and taken part in the focus groups and interviews it is based on, providing valuable insights about the lives and experiences of creative and cultural practitioners in England. The findings will inform our own thinking and, we hope, that of other policymakers, employers, freelancers, freelancer networks and other bodies that support them. It will also form a baseline from which we can track how things are changing in the sector over time, with the next survey taking place in three years’ time.

It is important to acknowledge that this study is not the first of its kind, and that other networks and organisations have led the way in surveying freelancers to understand their experiences, particularly as we emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic. This latest study into the freelance workforce is our most wide-ranging study of this part of our ecology. It is intended to build upon existing findings and to provide a consistent level of insight into all our supported artforms and disciplines: combined arts, dance, libraries, literature, museums, music, theatre, and visual arts. This is the first study to allow for direct comparison and contrast between disciplines. It will help us to understand where issues and experiences are shared, and where they are unique to a particular discipline.

The data from the 5000+ survey responses is rich and deep. While this report covers the key trends and findings, the data allows readers to explore and examine findings in detailed and specific ways. We have produced an anonymised data set in a dashboard that can be interrogated on Arts Council England’s website. Users are able to filter the data to explore responses from particular groups or to see how different groups answered the same question. We hope that this will be a valuable resource for individuals, cultural organisations, funders, and policy makers to make evidence-based decisions to improve support for freelancers. We welcome you to share your thoughts, ideas and responses to the survey data and its findings with us at individuals@artscouncil.org.uk

Alongside this report, we are publishing a literature review on Arts Council England’s website of existing research into freelance conditions. Producing this literature review was the first phase of the study, intended to enable us to add to – rather than duplicate – the available research on creative and cultural practitioners. We encourage you to also read the literature review to understand the work that has come before.

It is clear that while there are many positive aspects of working freelance in the culture sector, practitioners across all our supported disciplines are facing major challenges. The twin impacts of the pandemic and rising cost-of-living have affected the whole sector but are often felt most acutely by freelancers, who are navigating the same issues with less security, and often lower incomes, than their employed counterparts. In particular, the study has highlighted that practitioners from under-represented backgrounds are finding it harder to maintain a career in the sector, and that there is still much more progress required to achieve a fully inclusive sector.

It is also clear that we still have work to do to make sure that the Arts Council’s processes and communications are simpler, and transparent, and that there is a desire for us to play a role in setting and enforcing standards across the sector. We also acknowledge the desire from freelancers for us to play a role in improving standards such as pay rates. While some of this is beyond our remit, we hear this ask and are committed to playing our part in creating a better future in where freelancers can flourish.

‘Increasing our support for Individuals’ was one of five themes in our 2021–2024 Delivery Plan, recognising the need for more dedicated support and the particular impact of the Covid-19 pandemic upon practitioners. Work under this theme included:

refreshing National Lottery Project Grants to make it easier for individuals to apply for funding;
increasing the annual budget and individual maximum grant awards for Developing your Creative Practice;
setting out good practice for organisations working with freelancers and encouraging National Portfolio Organisations to adopt it;
research into the training and development needs of freelancers, and signposting to relevant opportunities;
commissioning Freelance: Futures, a programme of learning and events focused on creating equitable working conditions for freelancers;
developing and publishing the Arts Council’s ‘Consulting with Creative and Cultural Practitioners’ policy.

We will use the findings of this study to help us develop interventions to improve the working lives of creative and cultural practitioners and will introduce these over the next few years. However, this is not work we can do alone. We must build a shared ambition across the sector – supported by all those who work within it and who fund and support it – to improve the experience and conditions for the freelancers upon whom the sector so clearly relies.

We will share the study and its findings with national and local government, other funders, unions and trade bodies, networks, funded organisations, and Arts Council staff, using our convening powers and existing relationships to bring together those needed to make change. We will work with the relevant organisations, groups and networks who are already making progress in improving conditions for freelancers.

And we will, of course, include freelance practitioners in those conversations, to ensure that interventions are developed with and for freelancers.

Darren Henley, Chief Executive, Arts Council England