FREELANCE WORKING AGREEMENT AND FREELANCE DIRECTORY
Freelance workers are very vulnerable to poor working practice; 2020 has highlighted and exacerbated this existing problem, particularly in the art sector.
As a result of the pandemic we know lots of organisations started to look at the way they were working with freelancers and reforming these practices. We’ve seen organisations keen to ensure that their rescue funding reaches the freelancers they depend on, but this has been difficult.
We wanted to facilitate a way to standardise and coordinate these efforts and ensure that organisations are checking back to freelancers.
We decided to start with a written agreement that can be signed by organisations and workers alike, which holds both parties to ideals of best practice - ideals to be decided by our community.
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We think the Working Agreement should be a summation of best working practice, including hiring, advertising of job roles, fair pay, prompt payment of invoices, strategies to remove nepotism, commitments to induction and training practices, contracts, promotion of diversity etc. These are best practice aims, to be met as far as possible depending on the size and scope of an organisation.
The Working Agreement will not be a binding set of conditions, but a mark of excellence and formal starting point for communication between employer and employee.
We are asking everyone from the creative community in the Liverpool City Region to get involved and have their say with the Freelance Working Agreement. Whether you're a freelancer, a casual worker, full time employed, or you run an organisation. We want to hear from you! Find out how to get involved and have your say.
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We are so pleased to announce that we will receive ACE funding to facilitate this project to benefit art sector workers in Liverpool City Region.
The Freelance Working Agreement will be devised over 10 weeks by a weekly committee made up of representatives from organisations and individual freelancers.
Sitting on the committee will be an opportunity to get around the table with a diversity of players from your industry and to shape the way freelancers are treated and valued for the future.
If you can’t be there to actually write the agreement, there will still be plenty of opportunities to help shape it - we will be reaching out for your experiences, expertise, thoughts and feelings throughout the process and feeding these back to the committee who will consider information, problem solve and make decisions.
We’ve already seen support from cultural organisations and freelancers who are keen to use the agreement when they are arranging work, including Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse theatres, Collective Encounters, Bluecoat, unity theatre, Liverpool's Royal Court, Homotopia Arts, Writing on the Wall, National Museums Liverpool, Culture Liverpool, Open Culture and many more.
With the help of some of these partners, we’ve also been able to secure extra funding to ensure every individual freelancer giving up their time to sit on the committee will be paid for it.
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The Committee
The Agreement is also part of a wider project of outreach that will include the formation of a new, FREE to use, Freelance Directory for your profiles, helping us all honour the Agreement by making hiring and job seeking a much more practical, accessible and open process.
We want to ensure that a wide range of people and disciplines from the art industry are represented, from technicians, to fine artists, musicians, writers, performers, designers, producers and project managers. We will also work hard to ensure the committee is inclusive and encourage participation by under represented groups.
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If you work in any creative industry in a freelance, self employed, short term, project based or similar capacity, please get in touch with us to speak up for your community!
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We'll post information about outreach and community contributions here and on our social media channels.
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