Music as a profession - also systemically relevant in the future!

SONART wants to participate in these developments - and help shape them. Over the past few months, the SONART Executive Board and office have therefore been working intensively on the following four key issues:
- How can we secure and improve the social and economic situation of our members and their job security in the short term and at the moment?
- In which partnerships at national and regional level can we represent the interests of culture and music vis-à-vis politics, administration and business?
- How can we manage to anchor the profession of professional music makers even more firmly in society and make music a system-relevant component of life as a matter of course?
- Which innovative concepts (in terms of content, but also structurally and technically) should we support and focus on for future musical life "post Corona"?
Our thoughts are naturally based on the current precarious situation: Our employees and the Executive Board have therefore focused on the structure of the newly decreed compensation for loss of earnings, emergency aid programs as well as income replacement regulations and short-time work concepts. Together with its partner organizations, SONART has tried to make it clear to politicians what the specific characteristics of the music profession are - and that you cannot suddenly survive on a fraction of your already modest income. Our realization: without joining forces with all other cultural institutions, you have no chance. This is why SONART was a committed voice in the national Culture Taskforce and thus in direct contact with the authorities, parliamentarians and the Federal Council. Our ambition was and is to inform our members quickly and reliably about the current state of affairs.

Thinking ahead

The day-to-day business is existential, but we don't want to stop there. It is now also a matter of dealing with all relevant issues and helping to shape future-oriented concepts. What will develop over the next 5 to 10 years? We want to tackle this in concrete terms in various key projects over the next few months. The focus will be on the following points:
- What is the job description and what are the career prospects of musicians? What are the "skills" required in addition to making music? The job profile is changing rapidly and today the vast majority of professional musicians work in a wide range of freelance and salaried positions. They are on stage, teach, are networked via multimedia, organize concerts, teach music, organize, manage and manage digitally.
- What does the future social and economic security of the music profession look like? How can the shares of independent artistic activity be compensated in the future? Should there be a "citizen's wage" for creative artists, whereby society directly pays for the added value that music and art generate? What does a secure pension model look like?
- What should the future cultural policy framework look like? Are the current efforts of the federal government and cantons in a federalist cultural promotion concept sufficient, or do we need new foundations and harmonized concepts with a good mix of public and private activities? How can - in addition to quality! - innovation and internationality be promoted more strongly?

All these questions and challenges are not an end in themselves. For SONART, the members are first and foremost at the center. We want to include their sensitivities, demands, ways of thinking and creativity in shaping our future. In this way, we want to be an audible and clear voice in the concert of culture!