event series: work it out | employment relations in the cultural sector
background & motivation
As a network, produktionsbande has a looks at work structures and opportunities for change and shifts with a specific focus on the roles, perspectives and responsibilities of producers within them.
Producers take on different roles and perspectives throughout their working lives: they are self-employed as clients and contracters or employers and employees in a fixed employment relationship. Many work sometimes hybrid, sometimes fully self-employed, sometimes up to 100% employed and have great mobility between these roles. In addition, they oftentimes also take on a kind of proxy role, i.e. an intermediary client or employer role, for example when they award contracts for the actual funding recipients, conduct negotiations, conclude contracts or advertise and fill positions, put together and support teams and thus also take on areas of personnel responsibility.
At the same time, many do not find it easy to navigate their own position as a contractor/employee. In addition, there is often no in-depth examination of the importance of the proxy role or more comprehensive knowledge with regard to permanent employment.
The work it out series attempts to address all of these issues and structure the complex questions surrounding employment relationships in our cultural sector and answer them from a practical perspective.
In the spirit of the skills & discourse series, which connects all our workshops and discourse formats, we would like to use this series to empower and educate producers and always focus on both the contracter/employee and the client/employer perspective in order to make it easier for producers to navigate between the various forms of employment, their possible combinations and the associated decisions, and to enable them or us to support other collaborators and colleagues in this navigation and to shape various employment models well with and for others.
Because: With their interface position, producers are everywhere where labour relations are shaped. In other words, wherever all the necessary transformation processes need to be translated into practice with a stance.
The insights gained during the series will then be openly shared in the resources section of the produktionsbande website.
addressees
The series is aimed in particular at producers and interested cultural workers with a focus on the performing arts. The series assumes a certain amount of work experience, as we do not start from the basics, but want to share the many existing basic resources and try to respond to gaps in this series, sharpen generally available information for the cultural sector, educate ourselves further together and deepen focus topics.
aims
On the one hand, the series of events aims to strengthen the perspective of the contracter and employee and, on the other hand, to impart knowledge and raise awareness of the (proxy) client and employer side.
If producers are well orientated in the spectrum of different forms of employment - we hope - work opportunities could also expand; for example, in the sense of scaling up to larger projects and positions with more (personnel) responsibility as well as to areas in which the majority of work is done on a salaried basis (e.g. film, institutions, etc.) or also to international contexts of the performing arts in which other models are also more common (e.g. Austria, Switzerland, etc.).
event series
18.06.2025, 10:00 - 14:00
Speakers: Sepide Freitag (lawyer, producer) & Béla Bisom (dance & theatre management with a focus on administration)
This first part of the series is dedicated to a juxtaposition or comparison of forms of employment in order to gain an overview of the spectrum of employment models. Sepide Freitag and Béla Bisom will combine their respective expertise and experience for this purpose. Together with the participants, they will work out the differences between various models, from employment to self-employment, and focus on some aspects that producers often encounter in the field of performing arts. In doing so, they always change perspectives and look at both ‘sides’, that of the employer/client and that of the employee/contractor. We explore various questions together: How do I figure out whether employment, hybrid employment or self-employment is the right model for me right now? When does it make sense to hire employees or when is a permanent position mandatory? Which ‘hard facts’ and which aspects of individual (and private) life situations are decisive? What should I bear in mind when transitioning between different models? What are the criteria, advantages and disadvantages for the contractor/employee and the client/employer? How can these be dealt with in each case?
Some of the topics and questions will be explored in greater depth in the following parts of the series work it out #2 | focus permanent employment and work it out #3 | focus self-employment
11.09.2025, 10:00 - 14:00
Speaker: Sandra Soltau (Federal Association of Independent Performing Arts)
In this session, we will focus on the model of permanent employment with Sandra Soltau. We will delve into the complex of ‘employment’ and ask about the possibilities of shaping with attitude.
How do I approach being or becoming employed? How do I employ others? Are you an employee or employer for the first time and wondering what you need to consider to create a good employee-employer relationship? What do I need as a minimum in terms of basic infrastructure to be able to employ someone? How do I communicate the framework conditions as an employer? What about issues such as pseudo-self-employment (Scheinselbstständigkeit) and the prohibition of better employment (Besserstellungsverbot)? What responsibilities do I actually have as an employer? And what does that mean for employees? How do I create a functional, just and preferably anti-discriminatory working environment and what can I do beyond my basic and legal obligations as an employer?
The workshop provides important basics regarding the design of selection procedures (for publicly funded positions) and employment contracts, rights and obligations of employees and employers, framework conditions such as time recording, remote work, etc. and concludes with a focus on the conditions for good cooperation in an organisation.
This workshop is hosted in cooperation with the federal association for the independent performing arts (German abbreviation: BFDK).
Date: 02.10.2025, 10:00 - 14:00
Speakers: Inge Zysk (Project Manager) & Hikmat El-Hammouri (ver.di)
How can I be and remain a freelancer? This is the starting question for this edition of the series on employment models and forms of employment from the perspective of contractors and clients. Our working world in the cultural sector is characterised by individual projects and teams that come together at short notice and on a temporary basis. Self-employment is usually the form of employment desired and utilised by both sides. However, it still often does not fit in with the requirements of public funding and has to be defended time and again.
Together with the speakers, we shed light on topics such as self-employed forms of business and VAT liability, tendering and contract awarding processes, or necessary contract formulations and associated liability issues as well as social security and cultural/political association and lobbying work from a practical perspective.
This format brings together Inge Zysk, an experienced producer perspective from the field, and Hikmat El-Hammouri, a representative from ver.di as a perspective from union work that is increasingly focussing on the issues of the self-employed and is also increasingly concerned with the cultural sector. In this way, a link can be drawn between practice and political communication and advocacy work, which is often not directly accessible to self-employed actors.