Empowering Talent: Campaigning and Activism for Work and Cities

The chapter focuses on talent in the context of the creative economy and specifically considers how creative talent has been responding and reacting to precarity and rights to the city in the past two decades. Building on the recognition of increased financial and social pressures imposed on creative and cultural workers by neoliberal urban policies and the erosion of workers’ rights and securities, the chapter presents forms of activism and resistance that have emerged across cities in the Global North. Firstly, we consider campaigns and actions in relation to the right to space and the city for these workers; secondly, we focus on responses to challenging working conditions including precarity and unpaid work. Finally, we use the examples of two European cities (Athens and Milan) to reflect on how creative workers have engaged with new solidarity and participatory interventions to respond to moment of crisis.