This report focuses on current knowledge and data in relation to the European Creative and Cultural workforce (CCW). As discussed in previous outputs from the DISCE project (Crociata, 2019; Wilson et al., 2020), there has been extensive debate in relation to defining the creative and cultural industries (CCIs). The position of the workforce within the broader concept of a ‘creative economy’, therefore, presents tensions in how and to what extent the various iterations of ‘work’ are incorporated within a creative/cultural context. Since the late 1990s, policy has been driven towards an economic celebration of creative and cultural value especially as it intersects with industrial competitive growth as well as with forms of spatial regeneration. As this part of the report argues, there is a dualistic celebration and criticism of CCI labour markets from both top-down and bottom-up perspectives that presents a crucial tension for DISCE – there is a general lack of understanding of both the stability and the sustainability of creative work within the creative economy. Understanding creative labour markets as precarious and also as representative of the wider economy illuminates a problematic instability which sits at the heart of our modern economic model.

https://disce.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/DISCE-Report-D3.2.b.pdf