We are currently mapping the status of the different unemployment measures issued for culture: temporary unemployment for employees, temporary access to regular unemployment for freelance/interim workers, “overbruggingsrecht” for the self-employed and unemployment via the artist’s statute. We have noticed that there are still many problems with the implementation of these measures.
Therefore, keep on sending us input and testimonies. They deepen our knowledge and help us negotiate. Tom Kestens and Els Silvrants-Barclay can be reached here.
We also follow up the measures taken at the Flemish level by the Ministry of Culture, such as the new Flemish cultural activities grant that is currently on hold.
On 22 October, SOTA, the Artists’ Coalition and the Culture Crisis Cell pleaded at a hearing in the Culture Committee of the Flemish Parliament to work on an integrated and cross-policy crisis culture policy in the long term: medical experts tell us that the situation will not normalise before March 2022.
We are calling for a coordinated package of measures that are better coordinated, even if they are at different policy levels or with different ministries. We call for an evolution from one-off and generic measures to more focused and sustainable policies, with a clear vision and taking into account at least another year and a half of crisis.
As part of such a crisis culture policy, we put forward the model of the pilot projects: these make use of the relative standstill in our field to work on some of the big challenges we face: fair practice & good governance, sustainable artistic careers, new models of cooperation within and outside the cultural domain, internationalisation versus localisation in distribution, to name but a few. At the same time, these projects offer employment and support. Here you can find our full speech (in Dutch).
Questions about support in times of Corona? You can find all information at the website of Cultuurloket. They also have a Corona line where you can ask questions in English. Be sure to check what your rights are, because we have noticed that many individual artists and artworkers do not know that they are entitled to certain benefits, such as temporary access to ordinary unemployment, a measure that is relatively accessible.