Dr. Jaka Primorac, CULTMED project associate, participated in the 4th Labour Transfer School, which was held from 8th to 13th June 2025 in Buggerru, Sardinia, Italy and gathered almost one hundred participants from all over the world. The Labour Transfer School is an independent, not-for-profit, international initiative of global labour scholars interested in collaborations, synergies and knowledge exchange between academia and social organisations, aiming at producing emancipatory knowledge on labour and social issues. Labour Transfer allows participants to exchange their research interests with academics, labour activists, artists, journalists and trade unionists from all over the world.
Dr. Primorac participated in the panel entitled ‘The Cost of Creativity: Organising Against Exploitation in Arts and Culture’, which also included a workshop with participants. The panel and workshop explored the systemic exploitation and normalisation of unpaid labour in the cultural and creative sectors, focusing on the undervaluation of artistic labour as an overlooked form of value-generating work. Drawing on recent examples of art workers’ organising efforts, the session examined how unpaid artistic labour contributes to capital accumulation while being ideologically framed as creativity or passion. Panellists also drew connections to campaigns such as Wages Against Housework, emphasising the parallels between artistic labour and invisible domestic labour in the social reproduction sphere. Other speakers at the panel included: Ella Jones, visual artist, PhD candidate, University of the Arts London, UK; Amanda Tobin Ripley, independent scholar; Ana Cvelfar, Class Struggle Collective, Slovenia; Nayan Iyoti, University of Delhi, India. The panel was coordinated by Katja Praznik, University at Buffalo, USA.
More information about the Labour Transfer School is available here.
