Our Creative Reset

Our Creative Reset is a research project led by Sepp Eckenhaussen that tackles the pressing issue of economic insecurity faced by freelance art workers. It aims to explore and analyze innovative models and approaches for achieving economic sustainability in the arts, with a focus on political and organizational innovations. These efforts seek to alleviate the precarious conditions many artists experience by proposing strategies that can offer more stability while safeguarding artistic freedom.

Our Creative Reset explicitly confronts a set of uncomfortable but unavoidable questions. How can artists make a living without selling their souls? What is the role of art in a world wrought by innumerable crises? Can we work towards a just and sustainable art economy? How would this change the circulation of art, the curriculum of art and design academies, the exhibition programs of museums, and the organization of collectives and unions? The concrete focus of the research is a curious but critical examination of six models: fair practice, artist cooperatives, unions, universal basic income, infrastructural critique, and philanthropy.

The project consists of a wide range of research activities, including contributions to conferences, lectures, book reviews, and the podcast Art in Permacrisis, for which Sepp interviews people who combine radical thinking about the arts economy with practices of art workers’ organizing. Our Creative Reset is also closely aligned to the Creative Europe-project Shared Visions, which explores cooperativism as a pathway to economically sustainable art production on a European scale. The findings of Our Creative Reset, will also feed into a multi-annual research project on cooperative infrastructure in the Dutch cultural sector. The results of Our Creative Reset will be shared with the broader public in the forthcoming book Art Beyond Precarity, to be published with HumDrumPress (Rotterdam & Berlin) in 2025.

The impact of this research is twofold. Firstly, it aims to contribute to the growing discourse around economic sustainability in the arts by providing fresh insights and solutions. Secondly, it seeks to influence policy and organizational practices, advocating for fairer remuneration and support systems that reduce the financial instability many artists face. Through the development of new models and strategies, this research will play a crucial role in offering artists practical pathways toward achieving greater economic stability, while also contributing to broader structural changes within and beyond the arts.

Our Creative Reset is a collaboration between CARADT and the Institute of Network Cultures.

Ongoing research project (starting date January 2024)