There’s a conference on the horizon just for us, fellow Canadian freelancers. Will Work For Exposure: Culture Work in Precarious Times is a one-day event organized by Ryerson’s Centre for Labour Management Relations along with members of the Canadian Media Guild and ACTRA.
The event, scheduled for October 19 at Ryerson’s Ted Rogers School of Management, will explore a variety of issues related to work in the cultural industries. Panelists include freelance journalists, actors and visual artists as well as labour advocates and researchers.
Nicole Cohen, a researcher of cultural work and media labour, is on the conference’s organizing committee. She says that work in cultural fields has been growing increasingly precarious for a long time.
“There are people researching this issue, unions strategizing on how to address precarious work, but there hasn’t really been a conversation where we share information about what’s going on,” she says.
The panel on unpaid internships, she says, is perhaps the first public debate on the subject in Canada.
“The goal is to share information, to start the conversation, to connect people,” says Cohen. “Anybody who works in cultural industries or media industries or is interested in how these industries work is welcome to come.”
The conference is free to attend, but make sure to pre-register on the conference’s event site. The event will be livestreamed for those of us who don’t live in Toronto and video will be posted afterwards.
Stay tuned to Story Board for livestreaming details as the conference date approaches.
