Research

State of emergency and resilience in the cultural economy organizations -project aims to develop patterns and activities for surviving over the state caused by the pandemic. Since the cancellation of an event has multiplicative effects on regions, the cultural economy and services, the project aims to involve those different levels in the study by using an action-research approach.

Background

The impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on the cultural economy have been profound for most festivals. Also, other cultural activities have been cancelled. The cultural economy consists not only of content provision, management and producing activities, but also services, including catering and tourism. Damages to the regional cultural economy are substantial in many ways.

First, the damage to the economy of regions is substantial, for the cancellation has negative economic impacts also on local services. Second, festivals promote the image of regions, which has positive impacts on industries, quality of life and population. To conclude, the cancellation has multiplicative effects on regions, cultural economy and services.

Cultural festivals and other activities are organized as networks consisting of institutionalised and fixed-term organisations, the self-employed (such as freelancers and other professionals and artists without employment contracts) and regional and nationwide authorities. This kind of loose network organizations are typical for festivals and cultural activities, but they are becoming common also in other industries. Also, the employment of professionals and artists is based increasingly on self-employment and this trend takes place also in other industries. Instead of isolated organizations, these network organizations have a special dynamic, for the interrelated nature is flexible but also potentially vulnerable.

Goal

The aim is to be realised as follows: research, involvement-based activities for co-creating the patterns and practices for surviving the state of emergency and producing a guidebook for disseminating the survival patterns and practices for the festival organizations and related service producers.

The project focuses on three case studies (festivals), but, also, stakeholders (associations, regional and nation-level authorities) are involved in the project. The project reveals the vulnerabilities of different social groups in this exceptional situation, such as gender, ethnicity and insecure employment, and proposes taking them into account when organizing development work around resilience.

Execution

The development work is informed by research to collect information on the economic and social state of the organizations and individual professionals/artists during the pandemic. The methods are group and individual interviews, data of written narratives by professionals in the culture industry and a survey for varied festival organizations.

Co-creation is, firstly, based on two kinds of action research workshops: i. open to all the organizations and individuals in the industry and ii. function-specific workshops (leadership and management; production; content providing; services of tourism and catering). Secondly, the co-creation includes a guidebook, which is based on the results of the workshops and related expert statements. The results of the workshops are produced in texts (reports) and comments are asked from the participants and stakeholders. The reports are revised based on the comments and further utilized in the next workshops.

Funding

The project is funded by

European Social Fund
and
The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health