A Comparative Analysis of the Economic Sustainability of Cultural Work in the UK since the COVID-19 Pandemic and Examination of Universal Basic Income as a Solution for Cultural Workers

Cécile Doustaly and Vishalakshi Roy
Additional contact information
Cécile Doustaly: UMR Héritages: Culture/s, Patrimoine/s, Création/s, CY Cergy Paris Université, 95000 Cergy-Pontoise, France
Vishalakshi Roy: Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK

JRFM, 2022, vol. 15, issue 5, 1-17

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns across the world have greatly affected an already vulnerable cultural economy and the structural precarity of many cultural workers. After documenting the impacts of the pandemic in the cultural sector and the effectiveness of governmental responses in the UK and in Europe, the article focuses on the visual arts and explores calls for reforms of the cultural economy. While the UK government’s recovery plan went against the country’s cultural policy tradition due to the plan’s interventionist and financially generous nature, it disproportionally benefitted organisations rather than individuals working in the sector, especially in England. The study, conducted on visual arts workers in the UK, shows that many were unable to access these financial recovery schemes and fell through the cracks of the complex criteria set for these funds. This article informs the current debate on measures that are potentially more economically sustainable and wellbeing protective than those currently in place for cultural workers, such as Universal Basic Income. Its applicability is explored with reference to the historic French and recent Irish examples.

Keywords: cultural and creative industries policy; cultural workers’ precarity; COVID-19 pandemic recovery plan; visual arts; UK; Ireland; France; Europe; economic sustainability; Universal Basic Income (UBI) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C E F2 F3 G (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/15/5/196/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/15/5/196/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jjrfmx:v:15:y:2022:i:5:p:196-:d:799016

Access Statistics for this article

JRFM is currently edited by Ms. Chelthy Cheng

More articles in JRFM from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().