DISCE researchers, Dr Roberta Comunian and Dr Tamsyn Dent, working with Dr Jessica Tanghetti, have recently published a paper on the impact of Covid-19 on creative and cultural workers (CCWs) in Milan.

The paper explores the impact of the pandemic using qualitative interviews and digital ethnography. It highlights how Covid-19 has exacerbated the effects of neoliberalism on CCWs, illuminating their precarious working conditions but paradoxically providing time and focus for workers to collectively organise. It also engages with the need for re-futuring contemporary understanding of the creative city, questioning the value of agglomeration economies and creative city policies. Additionally, it brings up the point that worker’s rights and livelihoods have to become central to the future local policy agenda.

The paper has been published by the renowned Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society and is available to download open access.  The article can be read and downloaded here: https://doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsac018