tHE SYSTEM
STARVES THE ARTIST

AN ANALYSIS OF THE EU CREATIVE SECTOR AND HOW IT LED TO JUKE

KRITI JOSHI | APRIL 2025

The productivity of the European creative sector and the success of the artist is compromised by three critical structural issues:

HIGHLY FRAGMENTED ECOSYSTEM

The creative sector is divided into numerous small, uncoordinated entities: 94.1% of cultural institutions in the EU are classified as micro-enterprises employing fewer than 9 people [1]. Self employment of cultural workers is at 31.7%, more than double the 13.8% rate of the overall EU economy. This fragmentation creates a complex and disjointed landscape, with each stage from creation to consumption relying on the cooperation of numerous organisations and professionals of varying sizes and employment statuses. These difficulties are compounded in cross-disciplinary collaboration as each discipline has its own siloed networks.

“Artists” [2], in particular the 46% who are self employed, struggle to emerge in this environment. Reputation and networks of influence are proven to play a key role in determining artists access to resources and rewards [3], yet navigating this scattered landscape is time consuming, and scaling creative practices is challenging. Showcasing institutions must also invest considerable effort in identifying talent. The drain on limited resources in identifying and establishing the right connections ultimately leads to fewer opportunities being realised, and can slow the pace of creative development.

Moreover, artists’ careers are strongly shaped by their starting position within cultural networks; those who begin in high-prestige institutions benefit from lower dropout rates and sustained status, while those from financially disadvantaged backgrounds or regions with limited access to top-tier institutions face steeper barriers to recognition [3]. The fragmented nature of the sector compounds these challenges, making it disproportionately difficult for emerging artists without financial privilege or proximity to established networks to break through.

EXCESSIVE BUREAUCRATIC HURDLES

Of the 7.8M individuals employed in the EU creative sector, only 1.7M are classified as artists [4], indicating that the majority (77%) of the labour in the sector is directed towards infrastructure rather than artistic creation itself. Yet, rather than facilitating artistic creation, this infrastructure is weighed down by excessive bureaucracy, lack of clear information, and expensive administrative procedures that prevent artists from accessing opportunities and funding.

Artists bear a disproportionate share of this administrative burden, as seen by their higher self-employment rate (46%), compared to non-artist cultural workers (27.7%) [5]. Unlike salaried professionals with institutional support, independent artists must navigate complex systems of grants, contracts, taxation, and self-promotion on their own. Instead of focusing on their practice, they are forced to act as administrators, accountants, and negotiators.

Public funding and cross-border mobility are highlighted as particularly challenging [6]; success in these critical areas are significantly influenced by an artist’s effectiveness in overcoming bureaucratic hurdles. This discourages emerging artists, makes career progression needlessly difficult even for established professionals and biases success away from the creative excellence that should define the sector.

PRECARIOUS WORKING CONDITIONS

Precariousness is recognised by the European Union as a feature of work in the creative sector [7]: creative professionals are highly likely to work part-time and/or combine multiple jobs, with 26.7% of artists lacking permanent contracts [8]. The work itself is characterised by instability, unpredictable income, weak or no social security coverage, lack of access to unemployment support and other negative working conditions [9]. Research indicates that creative professionals regularly do not receive financial compensation on activities tangentially necessary to producing creative works, including networking, writing proposals, and administrative burdens aforementioned [10]. Moreover, only 27% of artists and cultural sector professionals report having sufficient access to social protection [11].

Unsurprisingly, many creative professionals are incapable in making ends meet, especially when relying solely on sector-related income. Such financial instability undermines the sustainability of creative careers, understandably discouraging some prospective entrants and pushing many in the existing workforce to seek employment in other sectors, relegating their artistic work to a secondary job or voluntary pursuit [12]. The sector’s inability to provide stable working conditions not only weakens talent retention but also its role as a driver of cultural and economic innovation. When artists are forced to prioritise financial survival over creative risk-taking, their ability to push artistic and cultural boundaries is stifled, which in turn undermines the sector’s role in advancing representative societal narratives and stimulating innovation.

The COVID‑19 pandemic exposed the vulnerability of the creative sector and deepened the precarious conditions of artists and cultural workers. Increased income loss coupled with inadequate social protection have forced more freelancers/non-standard workers out of the industry, with artists under 30 now facing higher risk of unemployment, unpaid work, and exploitative conditions [13]. This accelerating talent drain impacts the diversity and composition of Europe’s cultural landscape, ultimately weakening the creative vitality of the EU economy.

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In 2024, the German government announced a 13% reduction in cultural funding [14], triggering cascading effects throughout the creative ecosystem, with the main casualties appearing to be independent groups, freelancers and fringe theatres [15]. Major institutions, facing reduced budgets, are scaling back their support for emerging artists and experimental programs, which particularly impacts early-career creators who rely on institutional platforms for visibility and growth. Smaller venues and projects have been forced to close or significantly reduce their programming [16], limiting opportunities for emerging artists to present their work.

The vulnerability of the European creative sector to the politics of the present exposes a deeper failure: a disconnected infrastructure, a lack of organisational clarity, an absence of mechanisms that give artists genuine agency. These challenges are intensifying with scaled back public investment, but while cash injections may delay further collapse, they do not solve the underlying dysfunction.

WHAT CAN BE DONE? (OPINION)

Here we devolve away from analysis to simply this author’s humble opinion on the steps that can be taken towards strengthening the collective organisation and resilience of the cultural workforce.

• Consolidate the scattered ecosystem into a professional networking platform; a widely accepted location where relevant opportunities, knowledge and collaborators can be discovered and matched across disciplines and borders rather than siloed within gate-kept networks or diluted to a broad audience largely irrelevant for professional development (currently Instagram and WhatsApp are the default channels).

• Streamlining, standardising and automating recurring administrative workload would reduce the proportion of unpaid labour, and is increasingly technologically feasible as demonstrated within other industries.

• It would be also mutually beneficial to increase the commercial visibility of independent artists towards consumers seeking more niche and affordable artworks, rather than confining the market to the prohibitively expensive works of centuries deceased artists or the big-budget productions that dominate cultural distribution.

The unique position of the artist as the origin of the cultural value chain, yet the last to be supported, raises an interesting question on ownership of such solutions. Many artists, entrepreneurial at heart, are already developing resources similar or adjacent to the above. However, the fragmented nature of the cultural sector reduces the visibility on these efforts and without a threshold level of engagement, cost of maintenance can become unfeasible. At the same time, a single external actor cannot solve all these problems, and there is limited incentive for conventional capital to take up this pursuit; supporting a customer base of precarious, low-margin emerging artists through the unpredictable nature of cultural work makes for a challenging business case (or diversion from original intentions).

A cooperative is certainly a logical form here, because the sector’s own structure invites it. A large number of people solving the same problems in isolation is precisely the condition in which pooling resources into a collectively owned entity, developed and sustained by those who depend on it, is a practical and durable arrangement. To contribute is to support living sustainably as an artist, and as automation reshapes the rest of the economy, that is a goal that a widening circle of people may have reason to share. And the more we share, the more we benefit.

This is the wager JUKE was founded on. Let’s see how it plays out.

Sources:

1. “Main indicators for selected cultural activities, by enterprise size class, EU, 2021”, Eurostat (2023)
2. “Artists” henceforth refers to individuals under ISCO-08 classification, groups 264 and 265: creative and performing artists (including visual artists, musicians, dancers, actors, film directors, etc.) and authors, journalists and linguists
3. “Quantifying reputation and success in art”, Fraiberger S et al. (2018), Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.aau7224
4. "Persons working as creative and performing artists by individual and employment characteristics”, Eurostat (2024)
5. “Employment Characteristics and undeclared work in the cultural and creative sectors”, European Labour Authority (2024)
6. Statements AD, AE: European Parliament resolution of 20 October 2021 on the situation of artists and the cultural recovery in the EU
7. “Status and Working Conditions of Artists & Cultural & Creative Professionals”, Update Report from the OMC working group (2023)
8. “Status and Working Conditions of Artists & Cultural & Creative Professionals”, EENCA (2020)
9. “Status of the artist: improve working conditions of artists and cultural workers”, European Parliament (2023)
10. “Erwerbssituation und soziale Absicherung in den darstellenden Künsten.”, Bundesverbands Freie Darstellende Künste (2023)
11. “A survey on the status and working conditions of artists and CCS professionals in Europe” Culture Action Europe (2024)
12. “Employment Characteristics and undeclared work in the cultural and creative sectors”, European Labour Authority (2024)
13. Culture Action Europe & Dâmaso, M. 2021, Research for CULT Committee – The situation of artists and cultural workers and the post-COVID-19 Cultural Recovery in the European Union, European Parliament, Policy Department for Structural and Cohesion Policies, Brussels
14. “Berlin Announces Huge €130 Million Cuts to Culture Budget.” Euronews, 27 November 2024
15. “Berlin cries Kulturkrise as cuts hit arts scene” Financial Times, 25 December 2024
16. "Plan to cut Berlin arts budget will ‘destroy’ city’s culture, directors warn” | Germany | The Guardian (2024)