Professional practice

Nature of the work

First of all, flexibility, mobility, project-based work, short and flexible contracts, and voluntary or poorly paid activities are characteristic of cultural work (Ellmeier 2003). Also, many people work on a freelance/self-employed basis and work long hours, and there is a lack of collective labor agreements (CLAs) and sector-wide employment conditions (Platform ACCT; Haynes & Marshall 2018; Vinken et al. 2023; Vos 2024). In this context, there is also increasing talk of the portfolio career – that is, workers hold their own by demonstrating that they can adapt, have broad competencies and have diverse portfolios that cross borders and disciplines (Stokes 2021). In general, workers in the cultural sector are more likely to have multiple work environments than the rest of the working population (Loots et al 2022). Instead of one specialization, makers would be more widely employable – but having multiple roles in different sectors can also lead to uncertainty. For example, Been (2025) showed that the lowest incomes of workers in the cultural sector are found among the self-employed and those who hold multiple jobs.

Operation of the cultural sector

In the cultural sector, it is often uncertain which performances, exhibitions or other products will be successful. Makers and organisations know that some projects attract large audiences, but they cannot predict in advance exactly which ones (Alexander 2021). This creates the risk that too many, too few or the wrong products will be made. This makes working in the sector uncertain. Moreover, this problem will not apply to every domain to the same extent or in the same way, depending on subsidies and trade-offs between commercial and artistic interests. We discuss how each domain is organised separately on individual domain pages.

Social and policy developments

Finally, societal changes have a great impact on how art and culture are created and disseminated, and thus contribute to precarious working conditions. Consider, for example, the great impact of digitalization on work practices (see also: Digital transformation). Generative AI is playing an increasingly important role in this, and it seems that some professional groups are hit harder by this than others. For example, a recent study of literary translators shows that machine translations are not (yet) suitable for literary work (van Andel 2025). At the same time, generative AI raises broader questions about revenue models and the position of creative makers (see: Position Paper – Kunstenbond). However, it remains unclear what the effects on employment will be: how many jobs or assignments will disappear, change or continue to exist? 

Changes in policy also have an impact. For example, strengthening the position of cultural and creative professionals was one of the four main topics in the Multi-year letter for the years 2023-2025 by former State Secretary Uslu (2022). In addition, the Raad voor Cultuur (2024) an advice on the renewal of the Cultural System in 2029, with proposed changes that would have a major impact on professional practice in the sector. In 2024 and 2025, there will also be many questions about bogus self-employment - especially because the Tax Authorities will start enforcing the rules again from 2025 false self-employment.

Business

In the last quarter of 2023, there were 2,2 million companies in the Netherlands in total – of which more than 277 thousand belong to the cultural and creative sector. The vast majority were in the subsector 'Arts', with 124 thousand companies. After that the subsector creative business services the largest with 94 thousand companies, followed by media and entertainment with 58 thousand companies. In all subsectors, the number of companies has been growing steadily since 2010. The Creative Industry Monitor pointed out the special development in creative business services, where the number of establishments grew more strongly between 2019 and 2022 than in other subsectors. This is mainly due to the increase in the number of self-employed jobs in the design sector, which is part of creative business services (Rutten et al. 2024). The number of sole proprietorships is high in all three subsectors - although there are also somewhat more larger companies in creative and business services than in the other subsectors.

Employee jobs

After a dip in 2020, which can be explained by the effects of the corona pandemic, the number of jobs will increase from 2022 to beyond the pre-pandemic level for most subsectors. Only for the subsector Media & Entertainment is there no increase visible in 2023 compared to 2019, but the number of jobs is almost back to the 2019 level. Especially in the subsector 'Arts', where the decrease in the number of jobs was significant, the increase is also the strongest. It is important to note that the size of the jobs in this subsector is consistently the lowest, namely 0,69 FTE. While in both 'Media and entertainment' and 'Creative business services' there is an average of around 2023 FTE available in 0,83 (CBS 2023). Not all effects of the pandemic are clearly visible in the figures. For example, it is not clear how many employees decided to stop in 2020 due to corona measures. We do know that the majority of subsidized organizations have not made cuts to permanent contracts and that in 2020 the costs for temporary contracts were reduced by 29 percent (Goudriaan et al. 2021).

Research by Been & Keune (2022) shows that the composition of the cultural labour market changed substantially between 2010 and 2018. While the share of people with a permanent contract was the largest in 2010 (37 percent of workers), working as a self-employed person without employees was the largest in 2018 (37 percent of workers). There are also more people with multiple jobs in 2018: while this share was 2010 percent in 17, it rose to 2018 percent in 22. This is confirmed by recent figures from Statistics Netherlands (2025): artists appeared to have more than one paid job relatively often. These developments also differ for subsectors. Firstly, there are subsectors where permanent and temporary contracts have been replaced by working as a self-employed person without employees and multiple jobs at the same time. This applies, for example, to producers of performing arts. Secondly, there are subsectors that are declining as a result of a decline in permanent contracts, which are not being replaced by more flexible contracts, such as for architects. Third, there are subsectors that have remained stable, such as heritage. Finally, there are sectors that are growing due to an increase in the number of self-employed and multi-job holders, such as industrial design, film, video and television production, sound recording, music publishing, photography, performing arts, artistic design and support of the performing arts (Been et al. 2022).

Of all workers in creative professions, approximately half did so on a full-time basis in 2019 (Loots et al. 2022). The CBS Artists Monitor (2025) confirms that more than half of artists worked full-time in 2021/2023. Vinken et al. (2023) showed that people working in cultural and creative professions collectively worked between 112.000 and 120.000 full-time equivalents (FTE) in 2020. Although part-time jobs are more common in the Netherlands than in other countries, this is particularly high for the cultural sector (Eurostat 2023). Previous research has also shown that there are visible gender differences in this: where women are overrepresented in larger part-time jobs, men are in full-time jobs (CBS 2021).

Self-employment

In recent decades, the number of self-employed people in the Dutch labour market as a whole has continued to increase: from 960.000 self-employed people in 2010 to 1,3 million self-employed people in 2022 (a growth of 42 percent). For the cultural and creative sector (CCS), there is an even stronger increase in the number of self-employed people of 67 percent. Where in 2010 there were still 92.820 self-employed people in the CCS, this number has increased to 2022 in 154.830. This increase is largely determined by the subsector 'Arts', where the increase is 80 percent and moreover the largest share of self-employed people can be found in the entire cultural and creative sector (CBS 2023). From the monitor Artists and workers in other creative professions found that the majority of artists working in the Netherlands were self-employed in the period 2021/2023 (59 percent). Compared to other European countries, the Netherlands has the highest percentage of self-employed people in the cultural sector (Eurostat 2023). Been (2025) showed that the growth in the number of self-employed people in the cultural and creative sector in the Netherlands is not due to employees in the sector continuing as self-employed, but because newcomers to the sector are more likely to start as self-employed. Self-employed people also appeared to remain working in the sector more often than other workers (Been 2025).

In 2019, Statistics Netherlands (2022) conducted additional research to gain insight into the income position of self-employed persons in the cultural sector, a new edition of which will be published in the autumn of 2025. This includes data describing the income of self-employed persons, personal income and household income. It is striking that the average income that self-employed entrepreneurs earn in the arts sector is the lowest, while this subsector employs the largest number of self-employed entrepreneurs of the entire cultural and creative sector.

Vinken, Broers and Mariën (2023) brought together information from a variety of different studies, monitors and reports, to provide insight into what we already know and what we do not yet know about the labour market position of self-employed people in the cultural sector. This reveals several important challenges with regard to research, including the lack of a clear demarcation of the labour market and self-employment (Vinken et al. 2023). False self-employment has also not yet been sufficiently mapped out to indicate the nature of the problem in the cultural sector – for example, we do not know how many false self-employed people there are in the cultural sector and what their working conditions are like (Vinken et al. 2023).

Bosma et al. (2025) conducted research into the personal characteristics of workers in the cultural and creative sector, including self-employed workers. In 2023, there were 113.901 self-employed workers in the cultural and creative sector. The vast majority of self-employed workers are of Dutch origin (75 percent in 2023), male (54 percent in 2023) and are often between 35 and 65 years old (62 percent in 2023). A number of developments are notable. Compared to other sectors, there are fewer people of non-European origin working as self-employed workers in the cultural sector in 2023 – this was not the case in 2017 and 2020. More than half of the self-employed working in the cultural and creative sector are men (54 percent in 2023), but the share of women has increased by five percent since 2017. Although most self-employed people are between 35 and 65 years old, the share of people aged 65 and over has been increasing steadily since 2017.

Income

On the page Money flows we describe the income of the cultural sector as a whole and per domain, divided into the own income of cultural organizations, government expenditure and private contributions. On the page Professional practice we go into more detail about available figures on the income of workers in the cultural sector. Mapping the income of artists is complicated by three factors: 1) the question about income is done in different ways within different studies, 2) different definitions of the artist population are used in these studies and 3) sources of income are subject to change (think for example of income from copyrights in Music) (Vinken et al. 2023, Loots et al. 2022). Also, workers with permanent contracts are often overshadowed in the discussion about incomes in the cultural and creative sector, while almost half of these workers also have lower incomes (Been 2025).

A number of conclusions can be drawn from available research about the incomes of artists. First of all, the Monitor Artists and other workers with a creative profession shows that CBS that the median personal gross annual income of artists is below that of all workers in the Netherlands and far below that of others who – in the CBS definition – have very complex specialized professions that require a higher professional or university education. To the extent that the various artistic professions can be broken down in these data, it can be seen that the visual professions have the lowest income and the design professions the highest (CBS 2025). Research by Been and Keune (2022) shows that marginal incomes are more common in some sectors than in others. In particular, industrial design (58 percent), photography (68 percent), performing arts (63 percent), producers of performing arts (46 percent), supporters of performing arts (53 percent) and artistic creation (67 percent) show high shares of workers who earn less than two-thirds of the national average in November 2018. For other subsectors, such as heritage (30 percent) and architecture (29 percent), this share is much lower. Secondly, various studies have shown that income from artistic work accounts for half of total income on average – artists therefore generally hold multiple jobs (Loots et al. 2022). It is also the case that in large parts of the sector, a small group of workers generates the majority of income, also known as the 'superstar economy' (Loots et al. 2022, Jong et al. 2021). Finally, there are differences in income based on personal characteristics, and this also varies by sector. Research by Been et al. (2023), based on CBS data from 2018, showed that gender inequality in income was less pronounced in sectors such as literature, music and visual arts, but was stronger in the film and photography sectors.

Despite the available data, much is still unknown about artists' income, making income differences between sectors difficult to compare. Updating, supplementing and using the Handbook on Income Research (Handreiking inkomensonderzoek) can be helpful in gathering this knowledge (Vinken et al. 2023).

Personal characteristics

There has been much research into social inequalities and demographics of the cultural and creative sector (Brook et al. 2021; Saha 2018). Research shows that it can mainly be described as male, white and from middle to upper class backgrounds. Recent studies show that this image mainly applies to higher positions – for example management – ​​in the cultural sector (De Wit et al. 2023). The limited accessibility of work in the cultural sector for people from different backgrounds is partly related to the generally insecure working conditions. The general insecurity has consequences for the composition of the sector: Been (2025) showed that in 2019 almost 60 percent of those who were still working in the cultural sector in 2010 had left the sector (of which only 12 percent because they reached retirement age). In addition, getting a job or a project in the cultural sector is highly dependent on your financial circumstances and social network, but also on the extent to which you ‘fit’ within the sector in other ways (think of factors linked to cultural capital such as taste, language and clothing Randle et al. 2015). Promoting yourself and having an assertive personality can also contribute to getting work in the cultural sector (Martin et al. 2017).

Several studies have recently been published that provide insight into the personal characteristics of workers in the cultural and creative sector. For example, the Monitor artists and other workers with a creative profession (CBS 2025) looked at the background characteristics of artists and Bosma et al. looked at the diversity of staff, self-employed persons, supervisors and advisors in the cultural and creative sector (see also the page Diversity, equity and inclusion). In addition, Been (2025) investigated the influence of personal characteristics on work trajectories. Who stays working in the sector longer and who leaves the sector?

The Monitor Artists and other workers with a creative profession shows that most working artists are between 25 and 35 years old, male and more often part of a couple and not a parent (CBS 2025). In 2025, Bosma et al. conducted research into the diversity of staff, self-employed persons, supervisors and advisors in the cultural and creative sector in 2023, commissioned by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. Based on micro-data from CBS, they examine personal characteristics of employees by origin, gender and age. A combination of these characteristics is also tested, the distribution within different disciplines and differences in hourly wage by background characteristics (this research and the issues surrounding monitoring are described in more detail on the page Diversity, equity and inclusion). Although the cultural and creative sector is becoming more diverse, it will still lag slightly behind the total number of employees in the Netherlands in 2023. However, it does appear that the subsidized part of the sector is more diverse than the total number of employees in the Netherlands when we look at migration background. Women are overrepresented in both the subsidized and non-subsidized parts of the sector, but this overrepresentation is strong in the subsidized part. Previous research showed that women believe they are overrepresented in the sector, but that higher positions are held by men (De Wit et al. 2023; Swartjes et al. 2023). In general, employees born outside Europe and women earn less. There has also been little progress in this since 2017 (Bosma et al. 2024). Younger people (under 35) are overrepresented in the non-subsidized part of the sector, but underrepresented in the subsidized part.

Based on register data from Statistics Netherlands, Been (2025) investigated what work trajectories in the cultural and creative sector in the Netherlands looked like between 2010 and 2019 and which personal characteristics influence these work trajectories. This resulted in a number of important findings: 1) men and people without a migration background are more often employers, 2) people who have multiple jobs are more often women and more often have a lower level of education, 3) younger workers, people with a lower level of education, women, and people with a migration background leave the sector more often and 4) people with a higher level of education often continue to work in the sector longer. These findings are important because they show that, although the entire sector is characterised by uncertainty, this uncertainty is experienced more by some than by others – depending on the work trajectories they are in. It also influences the composition of the labour market, because some leave the sector earlier than others.

Volunteers

Volunteers are also of great importance to keep the cultural sector running (Van der Leden 2024). In May 2024, a Boekman Extra was published about volunteers in the cultural sector. This describes important developments for the cultural sector and domains within it. In 2023, 6 percent of the Dutch population did volunteer work for cultural associations or organizations, such as music or theater associations, public libraries, museums, pop venues or movie theaters (CBS 2023).

From the Leisure Omnibus (see also: Culture and participation) shows that older people and HBO/WO educated people do more volunteer work, but that income is not related to volunteer work. According to Bosma et al., who looked at volunteers at 141 subsidized cultural institutions, the share of volunteers aged 65 or older has even increased compared to 2017. Young people mainly do volunteer work at pop venues and pop festivals, while older people mainly support museums and antique rooms (van den Broek 2021). Bosma et al. further showed that volunteers are representative in terms of migration background compared to all working people in the Netherlands. However, no conclusions can be drawn from the data about differences between volunteers in the subsidized and non-subsidized part of the sector, or between different domains. Volunteers who are women or non-binary are more common at the included cultural institutions than the average for other sectors (Bosma et al. 2024).

Interns

According to research by Bosma et al., 2023 interns were employed in the cultural and creative sector in 3964 – of which 704 were employed in the subsidised part of the cultural and creative sector. As in the entire cultural sector, the share of women among interns is relatively large. There is a difference between subsidised and non-subsidised institutions. In subsidised institutions, the share of men is much smaller (27 percent in 2023) than in non-subsidised institutions (45 percent in 2023). And while interns with a non-European migration background are underrepresented in the non-subsidised part, they are overrepresented in the subsidised part of the cultural and creative sector.

Fair Practice

The vulnerable labour market position of workers in the cultural sector requires a sector-wide approach. A number of themes are in the spotlight throughout the cultural sector that should reduce uncertainty, which fall under the broader heading of 'Fair Practice'. The Fair Practice Code has offered a framework since 2017 to enable sustainable, fair and transparent entrepreneurship and work for everyone in this sector (van der Leden 2022). The code is based on five core values ​​– solidarity, sustainability, diversity, trust and transparency – which have been translated into concrete guidelines and agreements. The European Commission has also paid attention to the professional practice of artists: experts have made various recommendations to improve the working conditions of artists at European level, such as European legislation for artists and a framework for equal employment conditions (Meissnitzer et al. 2023).

However, its implementation still has some hurdles to overcome. Although the sector indicates that it largely agrees with the ambitions of the Fair Practice Code, there are critical voices about, among other things, the financial pressure that compliance with the code entails, especially for small organisations. The sector therefore makes an emphatic call to politicians to make a substantial contribution to making compliance with the code (financially) possible (van der Leden 2022). Although they support individual initiatives that are part of the Fair Practice Code, Loots and Witteloostuijn (2022) also share their concerns about the combination of initiatives: “Each of these initiatives has value in itself. But implementing them, especially at the same time, comes at a cost. If that cannot be met, a number of consequences are conceivable: a more pronounced distinction between professional, fairly paid creative workers and low-paid people who do it more as a hobby, higher barriers to entry, and possibly less innovation.”This could have major consequences for the cultural labour market and who can work in the cultural sector.

Platform ACCT is the program together with partners fairPACCT started to translate the Fair Practice Code for the entire sector into concrete tools for application in practice. They organize, among other things chain tables in which stakeholders per subsector enter into discussions to make collective agreements. Phase 1 ended in December 2024 and resulted, among other things, in advice on rates for self-employed persons and/or salaries of employees (see: Tables of recommended rates – fairPACCT). In addition, other instruments have also been created by the various chain tables, such as a standard scheme for secondary employment conditions, guidelines for physical and social safety and recommendations for contracts (see: Practical tools – fairPACCT). In phase 2, which runs from 2025 to 2028, a maximum of 9 new chain tables will be launched and the current 12 chain tables will continue with further development and implementation/safeguarding of developed instruments.

Fair Pay

Fair Pay is high on the agenda within Fair Practice. Former State Secretary Uslu has in Principles for Cultural Subsidies 2025-2028 indicated that Fair Pay 'has a high priority' and should be the starting point for all workers in the cultural sector. Fair Pay is now no longer always optional: collective labour agreements for a number of subsectors have made Fair Pay mandatory for a number of organisations and Fair Pay has been included in the subsidy conditions for the BIS (basic infrastructure) and multi-year subsidies via government funds (Richter 2024).
 
Fair Pay asks for additional financial support. Research shows that the additional costs of Fair Pay in the cultural sector are 29,2 million euros (Geukema et al. 2023). Of this, 17,8 million euros relates to multi-year subsidized organizations and 11,3 million to project-subsidized organizations. Slightly less than half of these additional costs consist of inadequate remuneration, more than half of unpaid structural overtime (Ibid.). If more self-employed persons are hired, the additional costs of fair pay are particularly high. In other words: self-employed persons in particular receive less than Fair Pay (Vinken et al. 2023).
 
In absolute terms, the total additional costs of Fair Pay are by far the highest for festivals, music, and visual arts and creative industries. These three subsectors have relatively many (medium) small organizations that largely rely on self-employed persons, which generally leads to high additional costs for fair remuneration. The additional costs are largely concentrated in small organizations. This is because they often have less financial security, have a tight budget and therefore work with (underpaid) self-employed persons (Geukema et al. 2023). Early 2025, research into the financial feasibility of fair pay in pop music was published, read more about this on the page Music (Berkers et al. 2025).
 
Based on research by Geukema et al. (2023), former State Secretary Uslu released an additional 36,4 million euros for Fair Pay. In addition to the aforementioned additional costs, 149 million euros are needed for indexation to make Fair Pay possible by 2025 - which does not seem to have been achieved to date (Geukema et al. 2023). Concerns therefore continue to arise about the lagging municipal indexation (Richter 2024). Concerns were also expressed about the costs of Fair Pay at the Platform ACCT event of 7 November 2024. In particular, the bottleneck of 'supply versus finances' was highlighted: many organisations cannot independently cover the costs of Fair Pay. The consequences this could have for the quantity and nature of the supply are a particular concern (Richter 2024).
 
The coming years will therefore continue to focus on how the sector can achieve Fair Pay in a sustainable manner. For example, extra money has been made available for BIS institutions, but fair remuneration is still not feasible for many small organisations. This weakens the labour market position of the entire cultural sector (Geukema et al. 2023). Moreover, not all parts of the cultural sector have a collective labour agreement or remuneration guidelines. Platform ACCT is developing practical tools for the subsectors in which these guidelines are lacking (Platform ACCT 2023).

basic income

In addition to more broadly shared measures around fair practice, there are also initiatives, both domestically and internationally, that focus on basic income. In 2023, the first results of an Irish pilot were released in which artists received a basic income of 325 euros per week. Artists reported investing more time and resources in their art, reporting a decrease in depression and anxiety, and working fewer hours in other sectors. In the Netherlands, research has also been conducted into the 'No Strings Attached' initiative, in which seven artists received a basic income for six months (Wijngaarden et al. 2024). The research showed that artists used the money in three ways: 1) 'buying' time to improve the quality of their work, 2) 'buying' time to improve their quality of life, and 3) direct investments in careers, such as purchasing materials or outsourcing certain tasks. For the time being, these initiatives do not seem to have found broader implementation in the cultural sector.

Collective working methods

The profession of makers is often seen as an individual – perhaps lonely – practice. This image has been further reinforced in recent decades by the increase in the number of self-employed people in the cultural sector, as we have already shown above under the heading 'Cultural labour market in figures'. However, there is also a lot of collaboration within the cultural sector, and there are also forms of work that focus on the collective, solidarity and care. In Bookman #137: Working together we paid attention to collective working methods.

Research points to the importance of collective working methods as a counterbalance to individual thinking (Alacovska 2019; Butcher 2023). Solidarity, shared responsibility and risk spreading are central to this (Wijngaarden 2023). In the Netherlands, partnerships, cooperatives and Broodfondsen are increasingly being created to share risks and increase earning capacity. These forms of cooperation help to reduce uncertainty in the sector.

Interest groups and trade unions are also important in the collectivisation of workers in the cultural sector. In the period 74/73, 2019 percent of self-employed artists and 2023 percent of others with a creative profession were not members of a sector organisation, ZZP organisation (independent or within a trade union) or a professional organisation. This is less often than the average among self-employed entrepreneurs in the Netherlands (also outside the cultural sector), of whom 61 percent were members of such an organisation. The most frequently mentioned reason for not being a member of an interest group for both self-employed artists and others with a creative profession was that they had never seriously considered it (61 and 72 percent respectively). Among employees, artists and others with a creative profession are less often trade union members than the average in the Netherlands, also with the main reason that they had never seriously considered it. This percentage has decreased in recent years, especially among artists. In addition to the fact that artists and other employees are less likely to be union members, they are also less likely to be satisfied with the representation of interests by unions than the total number of employees in the Netherlands (CBS 2025b)