Freelancers are the backbone of the UK’s world-renowned performing arts sector. Yet many earn below minimum wage, in an industry in which overwork and underpayment are endemic. This seminar is based on a forthcoming book, Making Freelance Work (Bristol University Press, 2026) that brings together insights from over 13,000 freelance artists, technicians, managers, directors, producers and craftspeople, documented over a five-year period, to provide a detailed picture of the realities of freelancers’ working lives, telling the stories of their day-to-day experiences.
The seminar will focus on how the chronic precarity and inequality that is characteristic of freelance work in the eponymous ‘gig economy’ mean that, for many, starting or sustaining a career can all too easily become financially impossible, with the theatre sector in particular losing skills, expertise, and experience as a result. Drawing on sociological theories of precarity, the discussion will focus on the ‘overwork-underpayment’ bind that shapes freelancing in the arts.
It also highlights how, as well as inequality, overwork and underpayment, the industry is full of hope and solidarity, and the seminar will also discuss some of the book’s recommendations for positive change, drawing on examples of good practice and the aspirations of freelancers and the professional bodies that advocate on their behalf to show what is possible, and what is needed, to secure a future for the UK arts sector that is underpinned by fair freelancing.
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