Artists Are Workers - Why Scotland Must Act Now on Fair Work in Culture

Please sign the petition: https://www.megaphone.org.uk/petitions/no-more-creative-standards-cement-fair-work-in-the-art-of-scotland


The Scottish Artists Union has been working alongside artists, cultural workers and trade unions across the sector to challenge the conditions that have allowed insecurity and exploitation to become part of everyday working life for many artists and cultural workers. Through our work in the STUC Creative Industries Trade Unions Group, we helped shape the Freelance and Forgotten report and contributed as members of the Independent Culture Fair Work Task Force, in developing 18 recommendations that set out concrete steps for change including stronger enforcement of Fair Work in arts, clear accountability for publicly funded organisations, mechanisms for dispute resolution, and fairer funding structures that support not only institutions, but the workers whose labour sustains the sector.

For those of us working in the sector, the findings of STUC Freelance and Forgotten report  were not surprising - but they were stark. The report provided evidence of widespread exploitation : late and non-payment for undertaken work, the absence of basic contracts, and the normalisation of harassment and abuse. The report  found that 69% of workers had experienced late payment, 33% had not been paid at all for freelance work undertaken, and 53% had experienced or witnessed bullying, harassment or sexual harassment, and many had no safe way to report concerns, while 32% had to sign a non-disclosure agreement or similar clause restricting them from talking about their work. For freelancers in particular, speaking up at their workplace can mean risking future work, relationships and reputation. For disabled, working-class, Global Majority, migrant, LGBTQ+ and other marginalised artists, those risks are often intensified by discrimination and unequal access to power, networks and resources. In practice, the current system perpetuates precarity: reliance on unpaid labour of the workforce and a culture of quiet tolerance around bad practice inevitably reproduces the very inequalities that our claims to challenge.
 

And yet, what is equally clear is that we are not lacking solutions.

Years of collaborative efforts among trade unions, artists and stakeholders have produced a robust framework for Fair Work in Scotland’s arts sector – a framework that draws on best practices from around the world yet remains deeply rooted in the lived experiences of Scottish artists. The Independent Culture Fair Work Task Force report proposes a Fair Work Charter and a Fair Work Delivery Group to support implementation. It calls for the creation of a Disputes Resolution Board to provide a space for resolving conflicts and to feed lessons back into policy. It recommends an awareness‑raising campaign and a Fair Work Resource Hub; a Fair Work Fund to help employers adopt Fair Work practices; and stronger oversight by Creative Scotland to ensure that public funding translates into fair conditions for the people whose labour underpins the sector. It also advocates for better data collection and accountability mechanisms to identify and address gaps.

The Independent Review of Creative Scotland has raised questions about remit, governance and the distribution of public funds. It highlights that Creative Scotland’s current legislative remit, set out in the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010, is vague and does not explicitly reference professional artists and cultural workers. The review calls for clarity on whether Creative Scotland’s roles as advocate, development agency, funder and influencer are compatible; how its board represents different regions and communities; and whether its funding processes are proportionate and transparent.

For SAU, this must include recognising that the current framework fails to properly recognise professional artists and cultural workers or to support Fair Work in practice. Legislative reform is essential; SAU Vice President B.D. Owens’s recent blog post on the UNESCO “Status of the Artist” recommendations explains why Scotland should embed these international standards into the public remit of Creative Scotland, ensuring that individual artists are central to funding policy.
 

At STUC Congress 2026, SAU presented a motion, Composite Motion N -Fair Work for Freelancers,  composited with motions from Prospect, the Musicians’ Union and the National Union of Journalists. The motion called for full adoption and implementation of the Independent Culture Fair Work Task Force report recommendations. We urged the STUC General Council to continue lobbying the Scottish Government to make Fair Work compliance a mandatory and enforceable condition of all public funding for arts and culture, with effective oversight and routes to redress. It also called for legislative change recognising freelance artists and cultural workers as workers with full Fair Work rights and protections. The motion received broad support at Congress, reflecting the depth of concern across the creative industries.

Public funding should always come with public responsibility. The culture is publicly supported not simply because it generates economic value (though it does as creative industries contribute over £5 billion to our economy each year), but because it sustains our collective life, supporting communities, education, well‑being, imagination and democratic expression. Public investment cannot be separated from the conditions under which culture is produced. If public money is distributed without enforceable Fair Work standards, without transparency and accountability, and without the involvement of trade unions and workers, it risks sustaining the very insecurity these reports have exposed.

We call on all parties contesting the 2026 election to commit to the full, funded implementation of these reports in the first 100 days of the new Parliament and to commit to a clear timeline for legislation and delivery.
 

Please sign the petition: No More Creative Standards – Cement Fair Work in the Arts of Scotland
https://www.megaphone.org.uk/petitions/no-more-creative-standards-cement-fair-work-in-the-art-of-scotland

Blog post by Tamara Rogovic