APPLAUSE DOESN’T PAY THE RENT: WORKSHOPS ON WORKERS’ RIGHTS FOR YOUNG ARTISTS AND CULTURAL WORKERS
EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM
November / December 2024
ZAGREB
APPLICATION DEADLINE: October 22
Are you about to complete your academic studies, or working in arts and culture, and are under the impression that you’re trapped in a vicious circle of low-paying temporary jobs? Do you write, do photography, dance, or design for free, in order to ''gain experience'', and you don’t see the end of it? Have you had enough of playing for tepid beer and travel allowance? Do you often hear that you are in the arts field because pursuing your ''passion'', and therefore it is not that important if you are poorly paid? Are you uncomfortable when you have to ask how much or when you will be paid? Are you interested in how artists and cultural workers can organize and fight for better working conditions?
Sign up for a free education on workers’ rights intended for young people who work in arts and culture!
The education is designed for persons who have just started working in arts and culture (any discipline), or who are about to finish their studies at one of the art academies or departments related to arts and culture. The goal of the education is to offer knowledge on the relationship between art and work, past and present workers’ struggles, specificities of jobs in the field, and existing tools of worker protection in arts and culture field. Furthermore, the education aims to directly empower participants for negotiating better working conditions and organizing. The education will include lectures, joint discussions, and four workshops in which participants will practice and exchange ways of organizing and empowerment in the field of culture.
Applause doesn’t pay the rent is organized by curatorial collective BLOK and SPID - Croatian Screenwriters and Playwrights Guild, and this is the third edition of the program. The previous edition included a campaign that took place on co-organizer’s social network, and it consisted of informative visual and text suggestions and reminders informing us of our rights, tools, and mechanisms we can use to protect ourselves and reduce exploitation. In addition, the campaign ended with two podcast episodes tackling the topic of professional and trade union organizing in the field of culture.
This year’s program will be held in various spaces in the Zagreb city center area, in November in December. We will inform participants on the locations in time.
Please, send your applications to blok@blok.hr by October 22, with the subject 'Application for Applause'. The applications should contain: name and last name, date of birth, area in which you are active, and a few sentences explaining your motivation for participating in the program. Previous knowledge on these topics is not a precondition or an advantage, but information will help us prepare the content. The basic participant selection criterion will be motivation, regular attendance capacity, and readiness to actively participate in joint work.
*PROGRAM*
Monday, November 11 | 4 - 8 PM | LECTURE AND DISCUSSION
Nina Gojić (SPID) and Dunja Kučinac (BLOK): Introduction to the program
Ana Kutleša: Art and work
Tuesday, November 12 | 4 - 8 PM | LECTURES AND DISCUSSIONS
Jaka Primorac: Work and employment in culture: Field overview
Jakov Kolak: Where did we get our workers’ rights?
Wednesday – Friday, November 13 – 15 | one of the mentioned days 4 - 7 PM, group work | WORKSHOP
Lana Hosni: Conversations on assumptions, beliefs, and habits that linger around in the context of work in art and culture
Dance artist Lana Hosni invites you to participate in conversations on assumptions, prejudice, beliefs, habits, unspoken rules, and expectations present in the field of arts and culture, which, more or less transparently, affect the way in which we perceive/experience it. The workshop will be held in small groups in form of structured dialogue using associative cards. We will work on raising awareness and checking-in to see our position today, in relation to tendencies we have experienced up until now while working in the field of arts and culture, regardless of whether they are desired or not. We have exercised the conversation practice since 2022 as part of the artistic research The Events of the Usual on the contemporary dance scene, and on this occasion, it is being opened to other fields.
Monday, November 25 | 4 - 8 PM | OCCUPATIONAL STRUGGLES: PRESENTATIONS AND DISCUSSIONS
Participants: Karla Crnčević (film), Nina Gojić (performance arts), Marta Krešić (contemporary dance), Katarina Penđer (literary translation), Ivana Perić (media), Lucija Pilić (gaming industry)
Thursday, November 28 | 4 - 8 PM | WORKSHOP
Josipa Lulić (Center for the Theater of the Oppressed POKAZ): Working conditions in the field of culture through the Theater of the Oppressed (TO)
In this workshop we will use exercises from the arsenal of the TO (political theater whose methodology was developed in Brazil in the ‘60s, in order to examine obstacles, both internal and external, preventing good working conditions in the field of culture. We will analyze power relations in the field of culture, and messages that we soaked growing up and being exposed to the media on how exactly work in culture should look like. Furthermore, we will create short scenes that will present collective experience of working conditions in culture, and we will look for possibilities of their change.
Tuesday, December 3 | 4 - 8 PM | WORKSHOP
Jasna Žmak: The artist may be assertive
In this workshop we will examine processes that happen within us when we are in the position of negotiating our own rights, and we will be looking for ways to empower ourselves in these situations. In addition, we will look into obstacles that prevent us from having courage during negotiating processes, and explore how to eliminate these obstacles. By getting to know roles of different aspects of that process, we will get acquainted with various nuances affecting our decisions, which will, perhaps, help us become more assertive in the future, when it comes to protection of our rights.
Thursday, December 5 | 4 - 8 PM | WORKSHOP
Jakov Kolak (Regional Industrial Trade Union): Trade unions in Croatia and how to organize
The workshop will consist of a short introduction to the trade union field in Croatia – getting acquainted with the legal framework and the practice of trade union activity through concrete examples. After that, participants will attend workshops in which they will become familiar with basic methods of trade union work at the lowest level (enterprises, institutions, groups), and practice having conversations on trade union organizing in simulated conversations. Workshops will have the character and content of a trade union education that is typically carried out for trade union members, while taking into account the specific context of the field of culture.
Organized by: SPID and BLOK
Design by: Lana Grahek
The program is financed by the City Office for Education, Sport, and Youth. BLOK’s annual program for 2024 is supported by the Kultura Nova Foundation.
