While the crisis unleashed by COVID-19 has been felt throughout the world, it has disproportionately impacted disadvantaged communities. Similarly, it is having a disproportionate effect on the arts and culture. In Europe, art and entertainment top the index of sectors most at risk from the crisis (ranking behind only the restaurant business), putting more than 40 per cent of jobs at risk.

Those who will suffer the most are not the stars of cinema, music or literature, but anonymous workers in the employment chain. Subjected to the precariousness of a sector that was already at risk before the pandemic, they are now faced with an uncertain future.

The 20 or so professionals consulted for this report are trying to understand what this future holds. Regardless of their areas of expertise, they all agree on two points: that the arts “have always been on unstable ground” and that those employed in the cultural sector were the first to suffer the consequences of the virus but will be the last to recover.

The majority believe that authorities in their countries “do not have a specific rescue plan,” lament the “uncertainty” and expect the crisis to extend beyond the period of lockdown. Some predict a return to “some kind of normality” by the second half of 2021 though almost all of them believe that nothing will be the same again.

Fear of contagion, the implementation of social distancing and the economic crisis brought on by the pandemic will force them to change their business model.

“Life first, then cinema”

Only after the health crisis was brought under control did governments begin to think about solutions to prevent the disappearance of the cultural sector, which employs millions of people and accounts for 3 per cent of average global GDP, according to UNESCO.

“Life first, then cinema,” said Spain’s Minister of Culture and Sport José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) in April. His unfortunate nod to Orson Welles sparked outrage in all quarters. Organisations such as the Unión de Actores, the union Artistas Líricos and the Es Música federation called for a meeting to explore options for immediate aid.

In Spain, the government approved some tax relief for the self-employed and a temporary employment regulation scheme including public subsidies for companies. But the sector continues to struggle and, according to Spain’s Association of Music Promoters (APM), many workers (including technicians and assistants) are unable to receive aid as they are not recognised as artists.

Affected workers in Spain point to examples of successful cultural policies in other countries, from France (a country traditionally very protective of its artists) to Sweden (which has continued to hold concerts) to Germany (which had a less restrictive lockdown than Spain) and Portugal (where the government has committed to honouring its investments in events that have had to be cancelled).

“People losing their jobs is also an emergency. We can’t wait for politicians to save us,” says Lorena Jiménez, one of the promoters of the initiative #SomosMúsica (We Are Music), which has broad support from across Spain’s musical ecosystem. The idea behind the initiative is to encourage debate and support the profession’s ‘invisible’ members in areas such as production, editing, sound, manufacturing, etc.

Like much of Spain’s music industry, the work Jiménez does with her company La Trinchera is based on live performance. Like dominos falling, large festivals in Spain and elsewhere, which generate considerable tourist income for the cities in which they take place (through spending in hotels, restaurants and supermarkets), have one by one announced their postponement until 2021.

“This is the time to create a powerful lobby to negotiate with institutions,” says Agustín López. The Argentinian works for Industria Works, an internationally active company that was able to anticipate the current crisis facing live music by diversifying its sources of income between editorial, management, publicity and technology.

The problem with the music industry is that it has very few strong unions that integrate all of its different professions, which often have conflicting interests. “Now more than ever we must unite, it’s the only way for those of us who work in the shadow of the big companies to survive,” says Alejandra Gómez of Colombia, who manages bands like Frente Cumbiero and owns the label Biche.

She acknowledges that until recently she had focused on promoting her bands on the international market, but this new reality has encouraged her to reorient her work towards “raising awareness with local audiences,” bringing together associations and launching campaigns to consume the music of independent artists in her country.

Cuban cultural activist Rafa G. Escalona, director of the music magazine AM:PM, argues along similar lines. “During the quarantine, artists realised the power of sharing their work on social networks and betting on contemporary formats such as podcasts. I hope that this explosion of creativity continues in Cuba when the virus passes.”

While no one knows what the future holds, what is certain is that in the medium-term, restrictions will make it impossible to maintain the old model based largely on major festivals.

“How do you make a concert profitable when you’re forced to reduce capacity to a third and you have to lower the price of tickets because so few people have money to spend due to the crisis? The whole chain will be affected, from the artists to the venues to the organisers,” says Mario del Pino, who has worked as a promoter in Spain for more than a decade with the company 2M Group.

Just as Napster spelled the end of the CD at the beginning of the new century, people like Scott Cohen of giant Warner Music believe that the coronavirus will have the same effect on live performance. With international airports closing and tourism grinding to a halt (in March it fell by 98 per cent in Spain), the live music industry in Spain has at least temporarily been paralysed.

Shared problems

The crisis that the music industry is experiencing is being felt by all of the arts. The catastrophe threatens the publishing world, where small businesses are struggling against bankruptcy. Before the coronavirus, “the sector was already on life support,” says one Madrid bookseller who wished to remain anonymous. Every year in her city, twice as many bookstores close as open, according to the Madrid Bookshop Guild.

“We had some pretty tough days but we survived the first blow and we’re still standing,” says Emilio Sánchez Mediavilla of the independent publishing house Libros del K.O., which specialises in creative non-fiction, and whose survival is uncertain despite publishing hits such as Fariña (Nacho Carretero, 2015). “It’s a very fragile sector, it’s a balancing act month by month,” he says.

“The problem now is the bottleneck being generated by all of the new releases that have been delayed and will all be published at the same time when the market stabilises,” says Mediavilla.

Some publishers are considering lowering the price of their books, which are already barely enough to pay for the work of the entire value chain, from the writer to the editor, the proofreader, the designer and the distributor. “Imagine being able to pay everyone with the less than the €20 that a book costs,” says the publisher.

Book presentations will be affected, especially in the case of foreign authors who will not be able to travel. The major book fairs scheduled for 2020 are in danger, despite the fact that the Madrid Book Fair, which in 2019 broke its record with 2.3 million visitors and more than €10 million (US$10.8 million) in sales, announced that it will be held in October.

The Bogota Book Fair, one of the most important in Latin America, has already been postponed until next year. La Valija de Fuego, a small bookstore and publishing house in the Colombian capital, has been holding out for more than a decade. The store’s owner, Marco Sosa, organised a support campaign to avoid closing down because of the pandemic.

“For the moment we’re holding out thanks to our online business, but the numbers aren’t good,” he says, though he is still considering releasing new titles. “Books are like the devil, they always tempt you. You can’t stop publishing even if it means your ruin,” he says.

Light at the end of the tunnel?

The pandemic has once again made it clear that art brings people together in tough times. Examples include Resistiré (I’ll Resist), a song originally released in 1988 which has been recast as a corona-era We Are The World and now plays every afternoon from Spanish balconies, global hits like the series La Casa de Papel, the documentaries Tiger King and The Last Dance, the resurgence of the crime novel as well as classics like The Plague by Albert Camus, and a boom in video games by authors.

In the first three months of the year, Netflix added nearly 16 million new subscribers. In April, the company announced that it would donate US$100 million (around €92 million) to help the global audio-visual sector in these difficult times.

In March, the Spanish film industry (producers and distributors) asked the government to allow them to release their content directly on internet platforms or on television to help alleviate the severe blow dealt by the closure of cinemas, which in Spain alone bring in an average of €4 million (US$4.3) every weekend.

In the meantime, calls are coming from many areas of the music industry for the major streaming services (Spotify, Amazon, Apple) to pay more money to artists. This is the struggle of a resilient sector accustomed to surviving and continuously adapting to new times.

Colombian editor Juan David Correa remembers that, as e-books began to appear in the late 1990s, the most pessimistic observers predicted the death of books on paper. “Globalisation produced terrible effects that weakened the sector. The crisis became widespread. Once again our existence was threatened,” he says.

But the publishing industry overcame that paradigm shift – at least until now. “Today bookshops are faced with one of the greatest challenges in their history. What are we called upon to do in this moment? To believe in the illusion of ourselves as trailblazers or the illusion that we can get back a world that was taken from us?” asks Correa, who works at Planeta.

Two events that took place in April give an indication of the direction in which consumer patterns are heading: more than 12 million viewers tuned into a virtual concert by American rapper Travis Scott on the video game Fortnite, and the livestream benefit One World: Together At Home organised by Lady Gaga raised more than €117 million (US$127 million).

This trend will be (and already is) one of ‘safest’ ways to avoid contagion, from virtual tours of art galleries to a return to drive-in cinemas. The dilemma is how to make these new scenarios profitable and not lose jobs. The time has come to ask an important question: is culture an essential asset?