Creative/cultural sectors are often dominated by working arrangements, learning practises and access mechanisms to professions that do not conform to typical notions of professionalisation and formal dependent work. Conditions in the cultural/creative sectors often reinforce the image of fluid occupational categories and volatile work/professional identities. These include the lack of a regulatory framework for access to the professions, the existence of informal learning pathways, the -simultaneous or successive- multiple job holding with very different working arrangements and the significantly high rates of invisible/unpaid labour. These are compounded by the blurring line between professionals and amateurs, or even between those who practise a profession systematically and those who come from other professions and only practise it sporadically. The challenges are exacerbated by the importance of the working arrangements that lie in the ‘grey zone’ between paid dependent work and self-employment/freelancing, in which workers operate as entrepreneurs who are, strictly speaking, neither ‘traditional’ employees nor entrepreneurs nor truly self-employed. With this in mind, the aim of this session, which focuses on the performing arts professions (artists/creative professionals), is to highlight the methodological issues raised by qualitative and quantitative research, both in relation to the criteria for understanding professionalism/professionalisation and the construction of professional identities, and in relation to the study of work arrangements and regimes that lie in the ‘grey zone’.

Lectures

0:00:00 Achilleas Piliousis, Alexandros Baltzis: Quantitative methods in the study of artistic and creative labour

0:26:27 Antigoni Papageorgiou: “No pain, no gain”: immaterial work, management, and education issues in performing arts

0:49:04 Sissie Theodosiou, Ioannis Tsioulakis: Music is my life: ‘do-it-yourself’ careers and professional musicians’ life stories

1:16:17 Christina Karakioulafi, Chara Kokkinou, Thodoris Koutros: Employment regimes and professionalisation in theatre: working ‘on stage’ and ‘backstage’

For more information about the special session here, about the Conference here.