Creative Workforce Pledge campaign
Partners
Excluded UK
Equity
Musicians Union
Writers Guild of Greater Britain
BECTU
National Performing Unions
Arts Council England
Paul Hamlyn Foundation
Delivery Year
2021 - Present
Culture Commons initiated and led a national campaign alongside trade unions to garner support from mayors across England for better working terms and conditions for freelancers working in the creative economy.
The campaign saw over 12,000 people from across the UK using an in-house digital campaign tool to ask their Metro Mayoral candidates to sign up to a 10-point pledge.
Generating hundreds of thousands of impressions on social media, featuring on primetime media slots including BBC, Sky Arts, Sky News, and supported by a series of household names, the Creative Workforce Pledge campaign managed to get candidates from all major political parties signed up to the key principles.
Six elected Metro Mayors across England have now made the Creative Workforce Pledge. They are: Andy Burnham (Greater Manchester), Steve Rotherham (Liverpool), Tracy Brabin (West Yorkshire), Nik Johnson (Cambridgeshire & Peterborough), Dan Norris (West of England) and Oliver Coppard (South Yorkshire).
Culture Commons is now working with metro mayors and their teams to implement the Pledge commitments. We are also in dialogue with Creative UK who are building on this work to develop a national 'Freelance Charter' with Combined Authorities across England - one of the 10 commitments we proposed.
“I look forward to working with other metro mayors and Culture Commons to ensure that our creative industries are even more accessible, rich and vibrant after the pandemic than it was before.”