Artists and Cultural & Creative Professionals at the Centre: Rethinking Work, Policy, and Cultural Ecosystems

Artists and cultural and creative professionals are at the center of rapidly changing cultural ecosystems. Technological innovation, digitalization, globalization and shifting policy and funding environments are reshaping how artistic and creative work is performed, valued, organized and sustained. At the same time, persistent statistical blind spots, diverse employment arrangements and unequal access to resources and recognition continue to limit the visibility and protection of many cultural workers. Freelancing, project-based and unpaid work, collective practices, informal networks and hybrid professional roles challenge conventional definitions of the artist and the cultural professional.

The Special Issue builds on the themes of the ENCATC 2026 Congress, held in Nice, France, and invites research that contributes to rethinking the status of artists and cultural workers, their working conditions and careers, and the policy and organizational ecosystems that can support more equitable, resilient and sustainable cultural and creative sectors.

This Special Issue welcomes contributions that improve our understanding about artists and cultural and creative professionals, their changing working conditions, careers, organizational practices and policy ecosystems. Potential areas of interest may include, but are not limited to:

• Reframing the status of the artist, including rights, protections, recognition, classifications and statistical evidence
• Fair working conditions, social protection, wellbeing, resilience and sustainable careers across diverse cultural contexts
• Careers in transformation, including digitalization, AI, new skills, education and training, mobility and changing professional profiles
• Collective practices and new organising models, including cooperatives, artist-run spaces, community initiatives and social and solidarity economy approaches
• Diversity, equity and inclusion in cultural work, and unequal access to opportunities, resources and visibility
• Policy, funding and institutional frameworks that can support more equitable, resilient and future-oriented cultural ecosystems

Overall, this Special Issue welcomes contributions that improve our understanding of how artistic and cultural work is changing and how policies, institutions and collective practices can respond to these transformations. It seeks to connect research, policy and practice and to foreground diverse experiences and forms of organization across cultural contexts.

Authors are welcome to submit articles presenting original studies or literature review work. Please consult the journal's information regarding Article Types, Author Guidelines, and Publishing Fees. Please contact the Editorial Office at ejcmp@frontierspartnerships.org for any query concerning this initiative.

Even though not mandatory, we encourage all interested researchers to submit a “manuscript summary” (max 1000 words) before submitting their manuscript. This summary should clearly outline the study’s objectives, main research questions, and findings or arguments. It should be grounded in a theoretical framework that draws on established scholarships in the field and situates the analysis within key debates and conceptual approaches. The methodology should provide sufficient detail on data collection and analytical procedures to ensure transparency and rigor.

Finally, it should emphasize the study’s contribution and originality, explaining how the work advances current knowledge, opens new perspectives, or challenges existing assumptions within the discipline. Manuscript summaries do not have to coincide with the final abstract of the submitted manuscript.

Keywords: artist status, cultural labour, working conditions, cultural policy, cultural ecosystems