 Thank you for being on time and apologize for us being a little bit late. There might be some people joining me later, so I hope we are all open to a bit of a flux in case people are having their breakfast and coffee a bit late. Just to introduce myself, my name is Colina Bucca. My role today is to facilitate and animate hopefully this discussion, which I think it's a great opportunity for us also to reflect on the big topic that is proposed today, the state of the arts. I'm a cultural manager. I work in Cluj. I've been working in the last ten years in the independent cultural sector. And I would invite Raghita and Galuka to say a few words about themselves also. And I would also mention that our third guest, Yulia Popovic, unfortunately couldn't make it for various reasons. So Raghita and Galuka, maybe since you are the guest. Well, actually I will include my presentation in my input. But shortly I'm a cultural manager and facilitator. I'm based in Bucharest. And I've been working in the cultural sector mainly in Romania for 11 years now, mainly with NGOs, but also with the public administration. I also was the councillor of the Ministry of Culture in 2016. Yeah, and I have studies in cultural policy. So I'm a cultural policy specialist, let's say. But my main profile, I think, is in between the practices and the institutions. So I see myself as bridging the distance between these two in various ways. And I will talk about it as I will also give my input for the discussion. So I'm Raghita, I think most of you know me. I will just say these few words about me besides being, especially in this framework of reshape, co-founder of Altar Foundation. In this panel I'm mostly representing a different head of mine, which is that of working for the Cruz Cultural Center, which is an organization that has as members the local administration, the universities, the local cultural organizations. And what we did was, we worked for about seven years to prepare the bid of the city of Cruz for the European Capital of Culture title. We didn't get the title, but we carry on with implementing the program. So the center's role is to implement this program that has been developed during those years of consultations and involvement with the local cultural sector. And yes, my intention in this precise panel is to present the results of work, which is not completely finished, but of research that we've done on the status of cultural workers in the main. So Julia joined us also. I'm sorry, Julia, we weren't sure if you were going to make it or not. Can I invite you to present yourself very shortly? So my name is Julia Pocovic, I'm a cultural journalist. Okay, very shortly, thank you. That's a good example for very shortly. Okay, so just a question, since we are so few, I don't know if it's maybe easier for also for you, if we have a quick round or do you have one? Yes. I was one of the advisers for the V-shape. I don't know. Now you get to know each other. Hi, I'm Christina, just working for our TARP and hoping to make this meeting good for all of you. Hello, my name is Claudia. I am interested in cultural research. I'm working now in Kluge Cultural Center and I'm here to learn more about this environment. My name is Mariana. I come from Zagreb from the organization called Pogo, which is the Zagreb Center for Independent Culture and Youth. We are also a partner in the V-shape project and I work in V-shape as a communication manager. I'm Maria Blanco, based in Portugal and working for Access Culture, which is an association of cultural professionals working on barriers to cultural participation, physical, social and intellectual. There are some people coming in. They have to present themselves immediately. All of them. She must. Hi, my name is George. I'm a visual artist from Scotland, from Macedonia. I work a lot on the independent arts. Soon I will start working in one new established institution, which was created under the same model of Pogo Center. The other one will be the name. I'm Vessa from one of the partner organizations, an art association for independent theatre in Sofia. And we are dealing with maybe all of the independent performance in dance and theatre in Bulgaria. Hi, I'm Ekmel Lartan. I'm from Istanbul now with Izmir. Ah, that's how it's called now? No. Now you say it. Yeah, now you say it. Izmir. Yeah, that's how it's called now. No? No, no, no. That's true. Do you want me to bring your coffee? Yeah. I vote for Istanbul now. I'm going to Izmir. I'm a curator educator and art manager. We just like all girls and plus dancers. I run a platform in Istanbul, now in Izmir. I used to run a festival of digital arts in Istanbul between 2007 and 2015. Hi, my name is Wefebri Gessem and I'm the founder of Culture Funding Watch in the Culture and Creative Enterprises Index. I'm a fundraiser for the last 15 years of my career but specialize it now. My company works on intelligence gathering, research and support and resource mobilization for the arts and culture. Hi, my name is Lupe and I'm coming from Barcelona working for the Getty Institute, Barcelona, a partner of Reshape and organizing both workshops in Reshape. One important year. But it was, it has been. And we are now in four weeks time and we will be in Barcelona. Hello everybody. I'm Nikkei Jonah. I'm best in London. I work for an organization called Counterpoint Arts that seeks to mainstream the contributions that migrants have made to sort of like the arts and cultural scene in the UK but also they seek to mainstream migration period. We do a lot of it through the arts. With my other hat on, I also run a showcase in South Africa called the Pan-African Great Rich Change and it's about really addressing the mobility issues that artists on the continent have by bringing the arts world to them on the continent in two years. I'm Alex. Okay, so I have two hats today. I have more hats but I will talk about two hats today. One of the hats is I am part of the Cluj Cultural Center and the other hat is I am part of the ACASA collective that some of you will visit in the next part of the week so we will get to talk about that more then. That's all. Hello, I'm Rana. I'm also a researcher focused on cultural policy and cultural manager right now based in Germany and I'm also one of the advisors of RISHIP on another hat. I'm a board member in Etija hat which is one of the partners also of the program but I'm not officially representing them. Sorry. Give it to the right. Advertising. So we have some new followers here you also introduce yourself. Veseline from Bulgaria, Sofia. I'm Marina from Bilbao working at the Community Cultural Center called Carc Sarean and we work through collaboration and participation in a neighborhood in Bilbao. And I'm taking part in Trajectory 3 the very overarching social fabric. My name is Oscar de Carmen so I'm part of the research group. I've been working with Marina and I think I will recall so we are artists who are 14 years now. Our practice is more like collaborative practice, community practice and sometimes we extend our practice more like we are greater so we organize some kind of project so we create some kind of institution to confront the big institution and this system. Why? You have the last chance to present yourself because you won't stop as you go in directly. I'm Anastasia Kizilovar I'm from Sanctifical Crusher so I'm directly finding a projector for shapers. Thank you, sorry and welcome. Okay, cool. So we have a well first of all let me say we have a very impressive attendance today I'm really impressed by all your backgrounds and all the experience and the different perspectives that you bring to this meeting I think it's great to be in such a such a great company but we also have a pretty ambitious let's say objective for the meeting today because I'm sure some of you are curious about a bit of context on the cultural sector in Romania I'm sure not all of you are very familiar and I'm sure all of us are also curious of bringing out out of this discussion maybe some inspiration for the topic of your meeting which one thing that I'm very sure about is that we have the right people here to talk about that and also because I think this topic of where the arts and the cultural sector is today can be seen from two perspectives one is the policies perspective and one is the practice perspective they don't always meet unfortunately but fortunately I think both Galuka, Gavita and also Julia can bring on some input from these two perspectives from what we are doing and what is the state of the arts policies in terms of structures in terms of all this context more political context that we have to deal with somehow and what is happening on the practical side what kind of structures are actually being experimented what models of working how are we working together and how do we work individually in this sector what can we learn from that at home or what we can each learn from each other so from one point of view just to start with I would invite both Galuka and Gavita and Julia to reflect a bit on these two sides in the discussion today and I'm sure each of them have prepared something for these two perspectives and also we like the structure of the meeting is that I would invite each speaker to present a bit more information about their perspective on the subject Julia do you want to join us please please don't leave me alone I need someone on my right side and also one distinction that I would make talking about practice and policies on this maybe on one side of the story and I would say this this is the policies perspective and when we are talking about structures and about the political side of our work I think this is mainly terrain a field of lamentation I would say not in the very primitive sense that you can imagine but there are a lot of things that we can actually bring to the discussion of what actually doesn't work and why things don't work as they should somehow which is also something that I think we can learn from on the other side on the practice side I would say that this is more the field or the perspective where we can relate more to experiment to how we can reshape the current conditions and what we can learn from them which is also of course related to what the cultural sector in Romania is mainly let's say identified or defined by which I'm sure there are terms with which you are using your work precarity versus solidarity it's something that we are it's the words that we use mostly I think in the culture sector today, in the art sector today what we can do with that and what kind of field of experimentation and rethinking this offers it's something that I would like to somehow reflect on today in the meeting so first of all I would invite Raluca to tell us a bit her story or her side of the story and tell us a bit what it is that she is and has been involved in in the last years and what we can learn from that I will actually focus on what can be of value to you the people in front of me as I said that position myself and I have done so since the beginning of my work in 2007 as a bridger between practices and policy and I will start my short intervention now with the story of how I actually got hired in the first place at the cultural contact point which as you might some of you might know is the former structure that now is called the Creative Europe Creative Europe so it is a basically a structure based usually in the ministries of culture or in some sort of agencies which helps cultural operators understand how they can get the funding for cooperation projects and other types of funding in the European Union so I remember my interview I went to the person that was to be my next boss and he asked me why do you want to do this and I said look I think that people who are doing projects together are actually like writers they are writing some sort of literature which actually has the chance to come through and I mean I was 23 then and I was of course partly naive and very much very enthusiastic of being in 2007 and Romania had just joined the European Union and for young people like myself middle class with coming from families that were able to support them during university there was this wave of enthusiasm that now we are part of the big European family and they saw this horizon opening up which will eventually also lead to a lot of improvement in our own countries and all cultures here and I won't say that none of this came true but for sure the wave of enthusiasm and this idea that we are now going to write beautiful stories together where art will be the core and people will have a better life through the arts was not all fulfilled I would say but one thing I think stayed true to my own core as a professional I think it's also important to this idea to this perspective linking policy and practice I think that if we focused on projects and on artistic interventions at European level, national level, local level as stories we actually are able to ask ourselves really relevant questions about what stories are missing who are the characters in the stories what characters are missing in the stories how can we make the stories better, more interesting, more relevant do we have a natural end to the story or is the story cut short when it's not supposed to end and going back now to a more practical part of what I did in 2012 I founded together with two other colleagues an organization called Metruku which was meant to act exactly as this bridge between practice and policy and we were founded with this idea to have this arena where public administration can meet with cultural operators with artists and improve policymaking and improve cultural management practices and we did studies we did reports, we did advocacy as members of the coalition of the independent cultural sector for about three years we focused on capacity building and about transparency we focused a lot on good governance there were some small wins but I would say that all in all the effort was too much for the results that we got I myself went to study cultural policymaking I did my thesis on advocacy for cultural policy in transition countries in Romania I really made a really theoretical analysis of pluralistic democracy or this deliberative democracy I won't bother you with all these things but I mean I think that there are quite a few people that put a lot of effort in taking this very conservative, very neat and very I don't know what's the name in English this very very wise and very you know well behaved stands on how change, structural change can be can happen in Romania and I've come to this point where after also I've been as I said councillor to the minister of culture I was in charge of drafting the national strategy for culture I coordinated the local strategy of Timisoara the long term strategy Timisoara is the city that eventually won becoming the European capital of culture and I must say that of course I wouldn't be so arrogant as to say that I put all the efforts I've done everything as best as I could but I think that at this point there is really a question of how much well behaved actions can we take in order to actually get to the answer that this is not the role to be taken in order to improve and to determine the structural change that we all want and there are some other things that I would like to say but maybe I will say it afterwards because I don't want to take too much time I only want to stress this that I think that the classic public policy model and the classic view of looking at cultural planning and looking at advocacy and looking at improving cultural management and it does not work that for me my answer now is to look at us, the cultural actors and to see how we can rediscover ourselves and through that hope that maybe also the structural change will come now I would just launch one more question to you because a lot of the initiatives in which you have been involved are very well informed by research and a very deep understanding of the sector that we are addressing and working in somehow so I would ask you just from all this research and understanding what is in your point of view the defining point somehow the defining traits of the cultural sector today it's a big question but maybe it's a very big question three main characteristics that you would draw I think the cultural sector has evolved even the public institutions have evolved in the sense of the vision that many of them have I think that the actor that is lacking behind greatly is the public administration so in that sense it's not even a question of sabotaging the creativity and the drives and the cultural practices through intentional action it's about neglect and it's about different priorities I think that this comes mostly from my advocacy activity I think that when you don't have a partner of dialogue you can be as smart as you can you can have a lot of capacity but you really need the people inside the administration or the parliament all levels of administration in order to drive that structural change I didn't think like that before I just saw that there is a way in which we can get to them for sure there is a way we only need to have more intelligent papers drafted we only need to have more meetings with them truth of the matter this is the level of understanding that I have now that you also need to have the luck to have smart people as partners of dialogue I mean there is so much that we can do coming from the cultural sector and that's why I actually focus now more on practices and because you asked me about some key traits I will only refer maybe to one from my experience with working on building this committee of practice between artists and schools which is a big program on the scale of what we can do as NGOs of course for four years there is there is still there is a lot of enthusiasm of working across borders when I mean borders I mean artistic borders in the arts and other sectors I think this is a terrain that really needs to be more looked at because I think this is also a chance for the arts to communicate to other people from the educational sector to the social sector to the environment, to the industry how they can be relevant it's not about instrumentalizing the arts it's just about talking to different people from different types of communities about what you can deliver and what is your value and I think more and more people are starting to understand that not necessarily artists but cultural managers for sure and if cultural managers are able to provide that space of freedom for the artists also to create at the same time communicating the value of the arts to the others I think that's perfectly fine I don't know maybe I was too abstract I can be more concrete to the practical side I would pass the ball to Julia and before I would just say just mention that her short and even her long introduction doesn't do justice to her experience so Julia besides being a journalist she's I think she uses a lot her investigative and detective capabilities also in the cultural sector more broad in terms of advocacy and also organizing one thing that I would mention about recent activities the involvement in the Trans-Hitogical Association for the Independent Cultural Workers is that the correct term in English? I have no idea I just know that a lot of members of the parliament just have a conclusion between trans-cultural and trans-sexual no at least I said trans-hitogian right? I did say that it was not a slip of tongue okay and I think also from I think your experience and your activity also bridges these two parts the practice and the policies so I would invite you also to take this challenge of trying to make a portrait of the arts sector today taking in consideration these two perspectives in Romania well among other things that I believe in my capacity as a cultural journalist I'm now I'm doing a research for a coalition between FIM, PIAA the births union organizations for localizers in life performing arts and employers organizations in the same field in regards to the the private sector of the it's going to be a little longer of the story it deals with the private sector in life performing arts and it involves the social dialogue and the first time I was proposed to do this research it's very simple there's no the commercial the commercial sector but it's very simple there's nothing commercial in any part of the life performing arts sector in Romania and there's no social dialogue because nothing an artist does in Romania which pretty much solved the problems and basically it's meant that it involves actually the project involves several countries Poland Hungary, Bulgaria and no Poland, Czechia Serbia Bulgaria and Romania and because the problems were similar the sector had to be reinvented as the non-public private sector with the organization commissioning the research saying well at least they had some money from the pickets it's not all public grants the next level was to research the field and the result is that during the last 20 years there were the number of graduates in arts in general in peace while the number of the revenue in the field in the non-public sector remain the same in terms of Euro and some also it proves that Romania has the lowest rate of employment in culture which is 1.6% to our great delight Turkey has head in 2015 3.45 and our neighbors the Bulgarians had over 2% and then I had this research interview with a guy who is the manager of a very important and famous Romanian hip hop group VUG Mafia who is an absolutely great guy and he told me well we are still the whole musical field is in the still in the era of bars and restaurants and well his version his formulation in Romania was okay that's a big difference so you know musicians playing in bars and restaurants because even when they perform on large stages that's the mentality and that's the economy behind it and and I asked well you see in 2015 we had a government falling because of an accident a fire that killed all the pretty much well the members of a bank nobody well had a problem with the fact that they didn't have insurance for instance it wasn't considered a work accident it was like if they were amateurs like in their own dorm performing well you know people here do what they do because they love it and everybody loves it so much that everybody is okay with the thing that there were there are in the in the live performing sector 5000 graduates so graduates in the last 15 years but 2600 people employed which also includes those that graduated before it's not like only half of the graduates got employed from everybody who was an artist in 2017 out of which 5000 graduated in the last 15 years only half of those who graduated in the last 15 years are officially employed we love it, we do it for hobby and we love it so much that for instance in music everybody plays in Romanian because they pretty much depend on certain gigs paid by bars and city halls where the requirement is for them to be accessible to the audience and to play in Romanian which means that they have little chances to go broaden to explore themselves we love it so much that here the four of us are women and there's in parallel another panel where everybody is a woman too because there is a phenomenon called the generalization of poverty when in a field or in a panel you only see women that's the first time and it's not framed in a feminist thing that's the first the conclusion that you have to draw is that that field is very poor that's a reason why for instance 99% of film producers in Romania are women and directors are men because that's a pain job here most of the men are artists women are also organizers producers, administrators, managers the artisans in general cultural managers tend to be women and artists tend to be men do you want me to continue with the shape? you just got to see it and this transsexual the transsectoral association of cultural workers was born in the beginning of last year when the text code was reshuffled in a dramatic manner first in a way that was very damaging to the artist then in a way that was very favorable to artists but nobody could understand it in the culture field so everybody was panicked first because the version of the text code proposed at the beginning of last year had to be changed because otherwise it would be death for everybody because the system proposed the ministry proposed to text everybody in the cultural field so everybody having a form of revenue based on author's rights and neighbouring rights based on the revenue of last year and it was extremely complicated to explain to them that well if an actor made a film last year that actor definitely won't make a film this year because there are not enough movies produced in Romania to use the same actors so it was re-changed in a very favorable way and we had to organise a conversation because a couple of us were offering non-stop consulting in text and the concept of copyrights and then this glorious idea appeared let's make a union great which of who of you who among you is employed I'm not employed but I have I have an LLC good so you're an employer you can make an employer's association and then they started asking well I want to get employed in a public institution because only public institutions employ what do you call it? experience experience no the work experience that you have as an employee like the numbers of years that are going to relate and then the formal the time that you were involved in a labour relationship so they start asking am I going to the text department to ask for papers to prove this nobody can prove it because it only applies for those involved in the labour relationship and nobody is working in the culture field in Romania sorry to interrupt I was thinking that no I'm done I was just beating about the bushes because you said you told me to continue I can go like that for the equivalent of the two years I was thinking everything in the political context on two topics what changes in terms of legislation are relevant in the last ten years in terms of this kind of actions where people feel like we need to get organized and we need to humanize or well this was a reaction the word of the association was a reaction or it was the maybe secondary effect of the fiscal law of the change in the fiscal law and just the second point is also because you brought up the very important topic of unions and we do have a history which we won't go into but we do have unions of artists and I think maybe it would be helpful to understand how they work why they don't work how they work in different fields just to get a bit of a picture and how do contemporary artists and independent artists fit in this picture well first to start with the end there is no union of artists there are unions of employees in public institutions and they work extremely well for their members who are employees of the state and are subject to all the legislation protecting every employee of the state the labor code in Romania defines work labor work is being the form of dependent hierarchical relationship formalized in a labor contract and since this year it also applies for daily laborers contracts daily laborers contracts are only for unqualified people but it gives let's say a little hope for technicians with no formal education in the independent sector but usually our technicians are very qualified and doing unqualified work otherwise there is no change no relevant change at all the only thing that happened is the constant raising of the personal not personal but the the tax allowance for authors rights contracts and neighboring rights contracts which for the time being is the biggest in the whole world it's 40% of the gross income and this very very high allowance is one of the reasons why there is no pressure from among the artists for them to have labor contracts because because they having 40% of their income not taxed and not entering the yearly revenue that is subject to mandatory contributions they have the very otherwise fake impression that they gain more money so when they have to choose between having 40% of the revenue not taxed but no protection whatsoever no health insurance no social security no medical leave no no accident insurance anything or paying 45% in Texas for labor contract and having all these that they are not very aware how that serves them everybody prefers this kind of non labor contract otherwise our association is pretty much administratively dead because nobody's it needs a lot of voluntary work that nobody's willing to do for the time being and since there's no urgency and everybody hasn't solved the tax problems for the time being this voluntary work doesn't exist well it was from the very beginning not a union there was the tendency to form the will the desire to have a union has been a long one largely based on the fact that people are not quite aware about the limitations of the right to a union to a union what the right to unionize mean that is only available because it's very definition only applies to labor relationship so if you search the register of associations and foundations you will see several things that are giving a hint towards being a union not to mention that the independent sector had at least three attempts in the last five years to let's meet and make a union and this is a recurrent question with let's form a union and so on then but the situation is as it is and it's very difficult to ask artists to understand some very complicated legal issues because we have a local national issue with how work is defined in the labor code but generally this collective bargaining is limited through a European directive on competition and it's a very narrow path to navigate in order to have the main right that unionizing could ensure the field which is collective bargaining collective bargaining on one hand minimal fees and on the other hand working conditions I will pick up on this subject of how do we define work and how what kind of evidence and what kind of data and what kind of state arguments we actually have in order to make this definition and also to argue it in front of all the structures the authorities, the relevant stakeholders which can have an effect or can make an impact on how it can be improved in order to make some statements and in order to bring improvements in how work in the cultural sector is functioning today we need to at least make sure that we have a common terminology that we know what we are talking about and of course that we have some evidence to support it and we have a bit of knowledge which is evidence based in order to make sure that we again we all know what we are talking about so I will pick up on that because she has been working also on this part of research and also more political maybe more political statements on how we can define and how can we understand and what kind of data do we have in support of this understanding of work in the cultural sector and I think, well, first of all the results are pretty mind opening and they can tell us more consistently so they can give us some information of what is this portrait of the cultural worker today yeah, thanks a lot I mean I think there's a lot of things to add to the picture that has been already drawn so maybe I would just first add some pillars to the conversation first to say that the Romanian cultural sector has not been reformed since socialism which is probably different from country through country but here in Romania there was no attempt to have reform and so we have we have a budget for culture I mean we have cultural institutions and there was this research done by a group including part of us led by Raruka a few years ago when we had an action about advocating for the living culture when where the numbers there stated that more than 90% of the money spent on culture in Romania are going to the public sector and very little from that 1% that is left is distributed through open calls to independent structures and this is never through structural for structural purposes so there is no mechanism for an independent structure to have their sustainability or at least their survival is short so that means that you always work from project grant to project grant also because of the fiscal years most of the organizations will only have access to money from more or less from June to mid-November and this is when you are going to do your work and then if we are looking on what that means for the artist themselves that they are not even so NGOs they can apply for this but private individuals if they are not having a company or if they are not organized in a legal way they cannot apply directly so that means they are only the beneficiaries of the intermediation of these grants by organizations and institutions and I think that there is a lot on how artists actually have very little space to define their own artistic agenda and also to understand how to navigate this entire universe so this is why there is a limited number of people again part of them in this room that are even bothering with understanding these issues and trying to work around them as Raluca mentioned for a long time we try to advocate to really believe that we could be well behaved and do something we also protested so I mean that was also we had protest throughout the years whenever there were situations like the one that Julia mentioned when the fiscal law changed and brought major challenges for the artists or when the main sources for finance for the national culture fund have been cut but beside being very creative on how to protest we also tried to show that we meet with all the ministers but you get tired after this time because it's 30 years 89 and we had 32 ministers of culture meanwhile so it's I think the shortest time we had 2 weeks the minister of culture it's almost impossible to even maintain the hope of so again I'm coming to your introduction sorry it is a lot about lamentation the sort of of presentation just to see what they wrote there I will post it will you help me? but then I will have to read so this is why I'm not understanding so I would like to share some data about some research part of it is data from Eurostat they had a report on culture work I mean the report is from 2017 the data is from 2016 and survey we did in Kursk culture center last year and this year and but then we didn't we have more or less around 300 replies so it's not statistically valid but it simply confirms what we intuitively can say about the cultural sector so Julia mentioned already we have the smallest percentage of people working in the cultural sector but you can see also that from what Eurostat reports as people working in the cultural sector which is 8.5 million out of those only 2 million are actually like artists or art practitioners the others are also people that do not work artists but work in the field of culture so technicians and administrators or anything or you know financial managers or people that have in their working contract a job that is related to creative professions but work in other sectors like a designer in industry so yes if we go further this research has only has been only looking at the main job of the respondents which I think is little relevant in sector of culture which I think everywhere in Europe anyway involves people having multiple jobs and as you can see self-employment of artists and writers in EU is 48% which is compared to 15% in the rest of the economy sells by itself so we can go further in Romania we don't have a specific law that regulates the status of for the artists or the cultural workers despite various attempts of having one it's true it's a very complicated issue so actually people mainly try to make a living from combining if they are lucky permanent contracts with temporary contracts are these copyright based on this copyright law or services but like temporary services contracts which as Julia just mentioned how labor is defined by law which implies this dependent relationship these contracts explicitly by the law are defined as independent it means that all the risk has to be taken by the worker themselves so that's the condition of that type of contract and the duration of such contract is a month so that's how you and a lot of people are going to live from that so in the percentage I think that's in yes of women working in the cultural sector in Romania is 50% and but this again reflects a lot what happens in the public sector so most of the people that are employed and have a working contract in culture they work in the public institutions we can go to the next slide so in Romania and this is kind of interesting data so if you look at the Eurostat information what they will tell you is that 90% of the people that work in the cultural sector have a full-time job and even more than the total employment which tells a lot that the data that they aggregate in this Eurostat studies are just coming from the public sector and they do not represent what happens on the field and 99% have a permanent contract so which is totally not the case so going beyond that this is more or less about the methodology of the research that we did but we didn't have an amazing response rate so it's not it's a convenience sampling we had a questionnaire and we had also a series of interviews and well if generally speaking I think in the Eurostat research Romania showed in the Romanian culture workers had something like 50% or 60% tertiary education in our sample you see that almost everybody has a university degree a high number of PhDs and I think what's also interesting is to see how arts goes in the family that almost 40% are in the arts having had someone in the family that comes from the arts and you see that 53% of them we also looked in our research on the relationship between artists and culture workers and we wanted to see if there are specificities for these two so more than half they have incomes from other fields than their main artistic practice again that tells about how you need to navigate in order to survive and half of the artists do not have an employment contract and also when half of them have an employment contract most of them are those that work in the public sector and others are simply using this employment contract on a minimum average salary sometimes they are employed in the companies of their parents or their relatives or something similar just to benefit from security you know paying the minimum taxes having this contract to ensure that you are at least having this health coverage so but according to from our sample 34% explicitly said they do not benefit of any sort of health insurance and when you look at the working hours 31% work kind of less of part time but what you can see is almost half of them work more than 40 hours a week and that more is much more is 58 hours per week so that means that at least half of the people working in this sector they work one and a half time more than you're supposed to and then this leads to a lot of consequences of being burned out and exhausted income I think it's self explanatory the numbers there are the annual average numbers so that means that it's under 500 euro a month for most of the people is it gross physical net or net? it's gross sorry not to mention that it's gross so it's actually much worse in terms of what you survive from so that is less than the average for 57% is less than the average income in the year of 2006 just a little bit and 40% they also say that in the past four years their income did not increase so it was stagnant or did not increase while prices have increased dramatically in this year so cost of living has increased and 44% report that their incomes do not cover their basic daily needs and when asking them what are their means of support to compensate mostly rely on partners second family and the next research should be about the partner why do they get the money? hopefully they are not artists anyway only 59% have partners that's also one thing it may partners our parents until you 40% I really hope not so only 24% of artists report that they had access to grants in the last year and that most likely refers to mobility grants they report that most frequently what they do is commissions for organizations they do not it's the organization that defines the topic or the type of work they are interested in and when they want to carry on their own project almost half of the time is on their own money and only 17% when they do their own artistic work on their own artistic agenda they wait for that work and if we you can see 64% had no opportunity for international mobility and of those that did I mean out of the total there were people that did have mobility but only 11% had been paid for these traveling times and if we go to you don't see much of this kind of cultural production cycle as defined by UNESCO but the thing is just to say that out of all these stages that are necessary for cultural production people find opportunities to produce their work and they find opportunities to show their work in festivals in venues more likely to be paid for this but I'm very unlikely to be paid for their creation for their research so that type of work is almost unaccounted for and again then a lot of them are complimenting their revenues by working in the cultural sector but doing other work like being managers for other artists technicians for other artists again leaving lectures doing cultural training or courses so I think this is the last slide they still and especially because we didn't really have debates on these issues people are still happy to work in the culture so there's you see this 60-70% people are still happy to do this work most of the satisfaction comes from the artistic sides of the work the creativity from doing what you like from being in contact with public and the audience appreciating your work and having this peer-to-peer inspiring connections but on the other side they do express their dissatisfaction with access to funding to collaboration with the organizations and institutions and mainly with them job security with their security on living on art and 60% have considered changing career meaning that some of them think about it around 40 something percent they have thought about changing career and something like over 12% I can't remember exactly the number they said that they have repeatedly considered the idea of giving up working in the art so and I think yeah, that's it I got Lucas sorry, sorry, I haven't mentioned because I'm pretty sure that one is interested because it should be left to remain in law but anyway the examples you gave copyrights licensing and so on they are by nature temporary because they are commercial they don't call themselves temporary because they are commercial contracts and all commercial contracts are temporary because otherwise they are bogus employment I agree with you the point is simply that that's the form that is mostly used to employ artists and it gives the false impression that they are compared in any way with working with labor contracts or and using this terminology gives really the actually it gives the impression that the artists have and one and I think in my discussions with them this impression is one of the reasons why they are not totally outraged about how they are exploited these are not temporary contracts they are treated as commercial actors the copyright the copyright licensing is a royalties contract so it's like you either sell Madonna songs or Tudor Kirila performs on a stage by the city hall it's the same or you have your self-employed which is a commercial activity and in Romania you also self-employment the legal form of self-employment allows you to employ other people that's why you cannot unionize as self-employed because actually you are also an employer of other people which makes the self-employed the same with the big oil company because in terms of the type of legally the type of activity they are doing is the same it's commercial activity and they have equal the state doesn't give you any kind of protection when making a contract because they consider that you as an artist has the same power of negotiation because both you both are doing commercial activities and so on a lot of the people especially those that are not artists they open up their one person company and you can see the dynamics of text optimization using the how do you say the company register the company register on where you see how the number of the registrations of self-employed persons and the number of LLCs registrations vary depending on how the text loss changes because actually there's this kind of doing your activity in a less costy manner which basically forces everybody in a force in types of commercial relations that are treated by the state the same either you speak about a one person LLC in the cultural field all the big OMV oil company we can compare our muscles I look at you I mean I just I noticed that I'm from a different picture than both of you are you were talking about the state of the arts focusing on work relations and contracts and and I now realize that my input in the beginning maybe seems like giving up on the hope that anything of this sort matters and if we do that what is left and I would not think that this is lamentation of being tired I personally I think that in a way it's just maybe this is more intelligent not saying that it's not worthwhile to put the energy in such research but I would really question the purpose of this research if at the other end of the dialogue there is no one to listen to it and I'm saying this focusing on my experience as a counselor of the minister of culture international strategy where a lot of information a lot of data has been processed doing several research which I have not mentioned because I'm at that point in which I think that research only is valuable if there is someone asking for it I know this is a bit radical because research in itself has the value of making us more aware of what is happening but I think that if our purpose is actually to change the world and not just be smart which is a relevant point in itself I think that the tactics need to be different and now I'm going to just talk a bit about the type of research I've done recently and which tries to incorporate that idea I've been fascinated by the concept of ecology culture for a couple of years now basically I found out about it reading a report written by John Holden who is a UK based researcher he published this report in 2015 commissioned by the arts and humanities research counsellor I think of the UK and the concept of ecology of culture that he presents it's not new he did not invent this concept of course he proposes certain models of how we can look at the cultural sector and understand how it functions by thinking about he has different models but the one that really drew my attention is the one about the interacting roles so basically he says that it's not so relevant anymore if we look at ourselves as actors, as NGOs public institutions independent artists it's actually more valuable to look at what we do and what is the role of what we do in the bigger picture and he has this this model of where he divided these roles as being guardians connectors, nomads and platforms I mean the titles are quite intuitive I would not take the time to present them but he says that these roles are interconnected and by figuring out better how what your role is and trying to see how that depends on what the other ones are doing, you can actually start a more meaningful conversation than the ones that you can have by focusing only on the type of organization that you are and maybe your formal mission and I tried to adapt that, I did that together with Stefania Fercedo who is also an independent researcher and cultural manager we did a study commission by the Gabriel Atudor Foundation which is a foundation working in the contemporary dance sector for a while now in Romania focusing on cultural management competencies and we applied that to the contemporary dancing and we tried to see how those profiles can be used in order to develop a questionnaire that would actually make also people aware of their role in the ecosystem and we adapted those profiles because we saw that they are not they are not enough for the sector so we actually also included the trainer, the mediator the promoter so in the end we had six such roles and why and we did this research in a way that at the end of it we also got an image of the roles covered by the actors in the sector but at the end each of the people that responded also got back their own profile so even if the thing was that even if the recommendations we will have the recommendations at the end of the study conclusions for everyone to read recommendations by types of actors to the national cultural fund this well behaved type of research but we actually thought it's important for each of the respondent to also get something back from this research something that will make it useful for him or her I think that this way of thinking about research which immediately gets back also to the respondent doesn't stay somewhere objectively where people can make use or not make use of the objective type of conclusion I think it's a more proper way to think about the role of research in a context as the context of Romania and I would just like to read just the three main conclusions that we got because I think it's too specific to actually talk about this particular study in this context but the conclusions I think are relevant more than the contemporary dancing what we found out is that everything is important for people so also I need to mention this the way we made the questionnaire is that we asked about each role split into four dimensions the competence dimension so we asked about the priority that that role has for the person or the organization the action whether or not they are doing it the attitude in general whether or not they consider it important and the knowledge that they have or do not have so we kind of we transformed the role we used the competence model of the role so we found out that most of the people and the organizations are taking on multiple roles there is no clear specialization but still the profile that went on the first was the first choice both of people and organizations is the nomad the nomad being defined as that role which means it means the circulation of the work of art it means the the action of looking for resources if you don't have them and moving around so in order to get those resources I think it's interesting that both the people and the organizations are assuming this role to be of priority while in fact you would think that organizations should because they have more capacity you have an organization because you mean to have a stronger role in the sector maybe to give the floor to nomads to perform while no we discovered that also organizations seek this type of role again the answer could be in the precarity of the system there is also this information that 53% of the organizations which replied have less than 80,000 lei which means like 15 18,000 euros annual budget for contemporary dance projects and other 20% have between 18 and 30,000 euros which is quite low I mean even compared to Romanian expenses to the 500 euros per month what again what is really interesting this comes back to the nice comment that you made about about people still feeling that they get something out of being the culture sector they have a good motivation for thinking which basically relates to their culture work it's the fact that many of them have in mind an ideal profile while in fact their actual profile is very different so we found out that many take on necessity roles not necessarily the roles that they would like to have in the cultural ecosystem but the ones that they need to have in order to survive so for instance to find also a lot of mediators people who take on training amateurs making sometimes more superficial sometimes more consistent projects to educate the public but in fact if you look at the priority that they are giving to this in their own head or in their own organization it's not so important to them they are doing it their role in the ecosystem is that of the mediator but in fact they would still want to be nomads they would still want to be promoters or connectors so is this difference between the necessity role and the ideal role that each of us has and if this applies more to the individuals I think that in the case of organizations I think the director of the National Dance Center put it quite nicely in the interview we had with her she said that because of the precarity of the field she is only able to formulate circumstantial strategies so the whole idea of cultural planning the whole idea of proficient cultural management with annual meetings in which we develop long term plans for the future in which maybe we redefine our mission our vision our goals we do all those smart exercises maybe what we have learned in school or in trainings or universities none of this actually matters that much just because the actual context is so much fluctuating that you are only able to develop circumstantial strategies and necessity roles and I think you know all this discussion when we come back to research and to the state of the arts I think it actually comes down to the idea what can we actually do as researchers what can be our role in this context are we more to be focusing still on this structural type of research sure it is important it's very hard for me because I was trained to believe that this type of research is important but is it really relevant now to the moment in which we are in or should we give up the status of being intelligent because personally of course it's very nice to show look I've been working for two years now and I have all these figures the question is what kind of what kind of abilities do we need besides being intelligent and do we have to be witty do we have to be cunning maybe pretty happy and who are we to talk about the state of the arts that's a big question who are we to talk about the state of the arts what is the position from which we communicate this research who are we actually I mean what is our role in the big ecosystem I think what you mentioned about the roles is in my point of view it's also what I relate to greatly is exactly on this perspective of how do we define ourselves and this is like for me it's important to know in what kind of picture do I fit in as a cultural worker when I start being worried about the 500 euros that I earn per month and when I have moments when I'm thinking am I the only one in this world who is just wondering how do I survive and then I realize no actually there are others actually the statistics say that actually there are you know like it's it's it helps me and I think and I hope it helps others define their role and just understand it or accept it somehow there is even research that says that if you do not have enough specialization and capacity building in organizations there is not even a question of talking about organizations anymore so what is an organization it's not a legal it's not a legal thing that you declare that okay that's a perspective it's a gypsy caravan by the distinction for instance between local networks networks and organizations only make sense if you have organizations which have a certain type of capacity if not it's a completely different picture and I think we should actually look more at a social hierarchy perspective to look about organizations in that way I think it's a very good time to really shake a bit this well-behaved type of research and advocacy and looking at what our work sorry I think this is exactly why the Richard project is there and what are the questions that we are trying to answer in this project like we all figure out it's not working this this type of approach is not working anymore I mean in this case I'm not necessarily defensive but I feel like I need all this is that the research that we did include cultural centers that we as an organization we define ourselves as an intermediary organization that took on this responsibility that at least includes we try we have we have this willingness and we put effort in it in supporting the cultural sector and we thought that the first step we need to take is to understand better beyond our intuition what happens and also we have some ways to in mind to use this in the fact we plan to offer a few grants for experimentation on new models on how you can go about and then try to learn something from that it's a way of doing things and understand the value of the type of approach you mentioned in the research I just took a rhetorical an agonism perspective for the rhetorical points not necessarily and I see that also one point where is needed is there exactly that it's only us talking about these things and when there is no information that you know we all quote on Facebook some UK researchers on everything nowadays like from nutrition to the moon we also need to quote some research to say to put into the context where we are as cultural practitioners in this country I would open a bit the conversation with you because yeah this is something that this meeting is supposed to or it aims of bringing, of stirring up a little bit and I'm curious to see what shakes you yes please I just want to go back on the question about what that research and should I agree very advocacy related structure of purposes rather than understanding I disagree a little bit with you because it's joining what you're saying about it's about knowledge nowadays I mean if you want to have a healthy ecosystem for that cultural art and culture the art and culture ecosystem in space the knowledge the accumulation and treatment of knowledge it's one of the first pillar will build a healthy and knowledgeable ecosystem and still when you're talking about ecosystem just like take the the first one an ecosystem a bee doesn't think about where she's taken that pollen from another because you never know what that grain the pollen you know you never know what would happen with that because you can never ever have a full picture of what are the dynamics motivating the different player in that ecosystem what are the needs of every single player in that ecosystem so I think and the first when we're on the stage of building that ecosystem you cannot never know what directions take and I think we should work on data generating no matter not necessarily related to a specific targeted action or specific targeted objective that's one thing I want also to build on also to comment on where you when you said about the by necessity the positioning of different institutional player that what they are doing now what they're positioning activities now does not reflect what they wish to do but actually the necessity they have to do I read it from another perspective and I read it from the resource mobilization angle and there is a word for that in the fundraising like resource mobilization it's called a donor driven and then most and that's one of the biggest danger that an institutional organization could fall when they are more their strategy and their project directed to where the money is to survive rather than what they really want to do and if we look from the ecosystem combined with the funding and resource mobilization the reality there is a really very strong correlation between them one of the main issues for example we're studying now in Tunisia what are the mechanisms financial mechanism put at disposal of the art and culture scene and players and we figured out that there is at least from the policymaker side there is a very narrow understanding of what is the use of the financial or the resources they have they could put at disposal of the actor for them it's only grant the only thing that Ministry of Culture in Tunisia could do is give grant grant grant which is wrong because the grant is one tool to channel support to the actors and their role should be wider than even grant it should be financial guarantee should be empowering bringing more investors in the wider sense of investor, player and the sector and that's that impacts how those organizations in the ecosystem in Tunisia they function and how they strategize and during this study for example we were really quite surprised at that even the well established organization and institution in Tunisia don't really have strategies like beyond the fact that they have by necessity to do to expand their activities to a phase that they don't really want to be in they don't have the time and they're not given the means to sit and say okay this is the situation where I want to go in the next two years it was really hard for them to sit to talk to them and say yes I would like to do that I can't do it first because there is no skills, second there is no literature about how to strategize at least the Tunisian context third I don't have the means and fourth I need to do this and that because it's the only way to get some cash to fund other activity that I really want to do what like from our context our ministry of culture what can you relate to I can totally relate to what you're saying in the sense that I'm a defendant of knowledge without any consideration of the advocacy use but I'm saying that myself I will not be engaged in such an effort anymore because I personally feel it useless in the Romanian context that's what I'm saying I think universities are perfect and should do that more I think that there was a lot of effort put already in Romania in gathering this type of research as I said I was in the ministry of culture there is an annex of more than 50 pages of processing data about the cultural sector which we then you know interpreted for the purpose of the strategy I've done that I've done as Arisa said we've done that for the living culture a charter that we sent to the parliament where we actually said that there is a need for the diversification of tools and funding instruments not only grants but also subsidies and bringing in maybe also private investors and doing mobility grants for artists and you know we are smiling because this has been said not only by us but by Iulia, by Corina, by many other people since the 90s so far my conclusion is at the end of so many efforts that have looked at things as you are looking at them and I'm not saying that this is not a correct perspective standing on firm grounds I'm saying that maybe we also need to take an alternative route and be less well behaved I think I will actually use this more and more because in our context it is not working in the close context and I actually wanted also to answer back to Arisa because I think that where you do have a partner of dialogue in the public authority where you do have at least some hope you see some grants some signals that there is someone there listening to you then the relevance of such studies as you did it has firmer grounds what I mean in the end as a conclusion is that I connect the relevance of this type of research about the state of the arts to the existence of a partner of dialogue which might listen and please party to what you are saying when there is no such partner of dialogue I think we should not insist in this type of attitude that's all Iulia I'm curious if you trust if you think we can trust any institutions or institutional processes today in Romania where is there some hope you know that the Ministry of Culture and other institutions their authorities they have this as opposed to institutions they have this prerogative of public power so if you ask me about institutions yes of course look at the National Dance Center there you go why do you trust it I mean what can we learn from that what kind of positive example do you think there is I'm sorry what's the purpose of this question to bring a bit of positive and good practice example from everything that goes wrong or can be improved if there is anything that we can bring up well put your clock on because it's going to take a while it's not that simple to answer and I have to know how many minutes do I have I will try to keep it under 13 minutes because 13 is not a good number well the National Dance Center started as an institution forcefully extracted from the public authority under the extremely public pressure of artists so it was for many years after its founding an artist run institution something that even if it belong to an ecosystem of institutions that are not are not tolerable with artist run structures that's what after the first during the first five years of its existence brought this accusation of being actually an independent organization not a public institution because the way it acted as an artist run thing was totally contrary to the way performing arts institutions were devised and according to the type of work they were supposed to do you would say that is a positive thing to be as a public institution did I say I finished I'm sorry what happened afterwards was a crisis and actually this crisis forced it to get out of the artist run organization structure into something based on the decision making processes that are transparent and predictable and in the same time remaining totally flexible in the face of totally under financing and under support that it got from the public authority and I think at this moment I think it starts to look as a new model of institution even if I don't think that there's any other possible institution that would follow that model but it depends on what happens with it after Vivaldi's and what happened with it after if and after it gets the new venue that was given to it and everybody forgot about it did anyone know about it? yes I have to leave a bit of science to interpret it but it's good ok please reactions, questions, yes maybe I can say something about this research and also relation artists and organizations so I know of a research project in Belton that has been carried on by artists together with legal advisors and some experts and they took the contract as a research tool how contract is often they call it a transactional contract in the arts as an artist you give something a gift or a presentation or your promise to produce new work and you negotiate about how much will be paid what is the timing and it's relational but also the risk is not shared it's often the artist who is responsible to deliver and the artist will sometimes say I will ask for a grant but the grant didn't come and it's up to the artist to solve why can't we change the contract more into the tool to negotiate and to talk about what are the resources what can we do for each other not only in terms of one gig or one exhibition and so the research project was also a bit artistic in a way that the artists created a new tool for which is also legal in the end it was supposed to be also something that can be used to change this the relations which are often hierarchical between organizations and artists it's also a way to do other types of research to involve artists to change with the artists their situation of working it's a smile I think it's a positive example of research also from your side but also from the room you can come we talked about research advocacy a little bit maybe we can dive a bit deeper actually on that field because there are interesting practices also in Romania in terms of advocacy or sometimes some creative ways in terms of how we do advocacy for the cultural sector but I'm curious to make a bit of a brainstorming also on other types of mechanisms or methods or just simple tools that you think are in hand about how we define the work in the cultural sector and not just data and not just research based but also I don't know you were talking about stories I have a story to share about advocacy and how I was this close to becoming a founding founder of the constitution of the Romanian constitution so I think it was 2015 and there was this initiative coming from the big think tanks big NGOs that wanted to change the constitution and it was made also by the parliament so I don't remember exactly the setting but I remember at one point I received an email from some of the people working in these big think tanks and it was not only addressed to me but I was one of the people receiving the emails and they said look we have this word file and you have all the articles of the constitution and next week please add your own preference of how you think the articles related to your field of work should look like and I was of course invited to make a proposal for the access to culture and they said you have until morning please give us just your preference and you know it was I think 10 o'clock in the evening I was at my computer I said okay let me give a try remember that at this point I was already working in advocacy for the administration of the cultural fund with the coalition of the independent cultural sector for 5 years now and I think we were our biggest success was just changing small articles in the guide for funding culture projects so okay going back to the story of the constitution I sent this proposal and I forgot about it you know but after a while I found out in the news that the new form of the Romanian constitution which is going to be discussed in the parliament and I just took a look at it to see how my access to culture article finally looks like and I was completely shocked to see that it had the exact form that I was giving I gave it in that evening at 10 o'clock in the evening one day after the other and I was completely shocked and I said but how could this be possible because I did not give it so much thought I mean I just said they just want the proposal and then some experts will come and see what the legal you know implication would be of doing that I included something with intercultural dialogue some birds I had in my head I mean the conclusion to this in terms of advocacy is that it really depends where you are in which circle you are mingling so compared to the work I have been doing with others for the ministration of the cultural with petitions, with protests with meetings, with the minister and we only were able to change one small article in the guide and if you look comparatively at this email where I was just included because I think someone in this big thing that knew about me and said we need to ask Raluca about it I was completely in shock because I just realized then that for advocacy purposes it really matters who you know and in one evening you can get this close to being a new founding father or mother of the Romanian constitution which is shocking which was shocking in the end it did not happen but sometimes when I there is a new emergency we have to do a new petition and do a new protest in front of the ministry whatever ministry there is I just remember this where am I placed to do advocacy and the reality is that I'm in a very small NGO we don't even have an office anymore and my ideas can be superb but if I'm not present in the right circle they will just go unnoticed and that's one story sometimes that's a good thing so I was this close to being a founding mother of the Romanian constitution yes, of course you have more effect if you keep going that way but I mean we expect the world independent sector to be represented some day by one person and have an answer to this really well we are a continuous series of crises so we have a very dynamic kind of inner cultural life this year there was a change in the account the accountancy of the state budget basically and 7 million lei which means 1.7 million euros from the national culture fund for the culture disappeared it was an accountancy thing so they were just kept by the Ministry of Finances but they were kept from being used in the middle of a granting session and actually by the end of the movement those representatives of the independent sector who wanted to come were able to come to a session of the cultural committee of the Chamber of Deputies which is the deciding chamber of the parliament in terms of cultural law and have a discussion with the lady from the Ministry of Finances who was in charge of this there are many, many ways to do it we changed twice the independent sector changed twice the tax code in 2018 through two different meetings with the ministry with two different ministries that's what I'm saying it's not important where you are as a person but as a sector is the I mean but it's not that the sector is not important it's 1.6% when they see the figures because everybody else you know is put together with big companies you know and with the direct licensing the actual statistics figure is 1.6% that lame thing that you saw everything else is a certain kind of knowledge the thing that a small group of people can get the knowledge about the importance of certain stuff and can mobilize up to a point for me it's important for me personally to just build this knowledge to a level where it can function institutionally let's say at every time but not with this you know Christ over Christ over Christ dynamics so if you can make an institution out of this crisis management you know the legalese system from which our life depends well I'm happy it's mean work but that's how it is it matters where you are the kind of connection you can make with the press the kind of access that you can because of a younger end in the ministry of culture in the parliament there are people that have two defects they don't give a damn because 1.6% they don't understand anything because it's so specific my question is I use a different word it's the maturity because it's not about what you are saying in the ecosystem it's not up to every one of each of us to do it but we need to reach that level of maturity to understand the importance of it and to assign a specific player with that ecosystem and support them to properly take it to the professional level because advocacy is not only towards changing the law an advocacy effort could be to bring other players to influence decision maker in other spheres and that's a full time job it's a skill actually in the world of development there are professional they call it influencing officer or influencing manager or advocacy professional and there are strategies there are research in support of that there are different ways like you mentioned it's useless to do an advocacy campaign doing someone to listen to you and part of the advocacy strategy for example is to identify their jargon have a champion within this is how you strategize also to influence within the group that you want to influence you have to identify entry points we call them champions or entry points so you don't have to do it yourself but you have to be mature enough to say I will support the merchants and the growth and the skills and the technicality and expertise of a group within my ecosystem to lead on that effort I will back them up whether it could be money, could be information could be connections but that person in that group will be doing that in my environment and that it has as you said it has to be efficient we need to take every single player in the ecosystem to the professional level otherwise we are not efficient I think this if you put it in a mirror with what Naluca said and what I think all of us feel about this merge of roles that each person has in cultural organizations you are not never just a producer or just a curator or just a dancer or just an advocacy influencer or an Instagram influencer whatever you are all of these roles together that is the big challenge if you put that face to face with the realities that brings up some challenges in terms of how we can professionalize actually how can we focus on the things that really matter and the things that are priorities in our work and I think all of us here are I have a comment on the same sphere but also a little bit it is a little bit problematic for me because what we are talking about here it's kind of power dynamics and in countries and I'm shocked how how much similarities we have unfortunately for you in the cultural sector where there is no artist status so he is most of the time on the margin of the formal economy in the society and in the cultural production cycle so if we are not very critical to the power dynamics that we have and we practice in the sector as independence we might fall in the real unfair system and the artist will be marginalized by the sector itself the art sector itself and I think it's happening now because we say the influentials have their knowledge, know the right people na na na na and I think we need this a little bit critical approach to this because and I'll go back to the region and when we look at what's happening in Lebanon and Algeria now where I see cultural actors and artists more involved in the popular movement that are taking place in these countries we can see that we need to be careful because we are as a sector on the margin of the economy of our countries and we are putting our key players on the margin of our sector and we're creating this hierarchy again within so we're off-Broadway but we're becoming Broadway and there is an off-Broadway now so I don't I don't know if I'm clear because I'm thinking with you but the power dynamics we're talking here for me are to be very much criticized and they are criticized in many areas in the world so unions are becoming against the independent sector itself not against the authorities that you've been talking about I think it's a big challenge when you just like in real life when you realize you are introducing your parents patterns how do you like how do we make sure that we don't introduce the patterns that they're actually in the big deal authority of knowledge is scary authority of knowledge not only authority of economy or policymaking or political decision authority of knowledge should be challenged I actually hope you'll find the answers I don't even share them with you just to add one thing I mean thank you for clarifying what I was trying to tell about the issue and instead of distributing the power you are becoming one of the powerful so this this ideologically doesn't reflect to me the bells have rang if you want to make any closing that thing it sounds very formal but just like I would just like to close from my point of view with a comment on your last comments because I did my my MA CCs in cultural policy particularly on looking at advocacy in transition countries with a focus on Romania taking these dual stance of looking it through the lens of pluralistic democracy or deliberative democracy pluralistic meaning representational so you kind of you designate the people who represent you in the advocacy game you as an artist as a cultural management versus deliberative kind of create this context in which everyone has the authority is giving the authority to have their own saying and through that you kind of reach a conclusion and I looked at it how did change actually come about in Romania because there were some changes before after the 1990s I mean there were some reforms there were some pieces of legislation that really changed a lot how we found culture how cultural managers are being put in place and taken down a lot of things and what my conclusion was that in the end the type of advocacy that was put into place was definitely the one formulated by the pluralistic democracy model advocacy was equated with lobbying you actually find the term lobbying in the policies for culture project articles about lobbying for culture and somehow with the best of intentions so it wasn't that someone was attempting to grab the power it was just this model of expertise that was put in place with the best of intentions while neglecting somehow to also develop this democratic spirit in the sense of deliberative democracy and creating forums, creating algorithms, creating spaces where more people could have been included and somehow I feel that we should work we should work to to provide another model in doing that yeah some final thoughts well for me it's always final it's emotions in the end you know and one question that always lingers with me is how does it work when you feel that individually it doesn't work for you that emotionally emotionally and physically you're exhausted you can't find a way to position in that system and find a solution that could structure and work that would but could that you don't find that type of hope and personally I am in that space Julia some thoughts for tomorrow symbolic symbolical tomorrow for later 99 okay thank you all for joining the talk, the conversation thank you for being here and have a great time in the next days I guess is that the thing, can I say?