APPLAUSE WON'T COVER THE RENT: EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM
APPLAUSE DOESN'T PAY THE RENT
educational program
March, 2026 @ DAZ/UHA, Zagreb
Application deadline: February 25, 2026
Do you study or work in arts and culture? Are you under the impression that you are stuck in a vicious circle of low-paying jobs? Do you feel uncomfortable when you have to ask how much you are going to be paid? Have you had enough of playing for tepid beer and travel allowance? Do you write, do design, photography, or acting for free, in order to "gain experience" and you don’t see the end of it? Do you think it is normal that artists, architects, journalists, and designers work unpaid night shifts, but your back pain and existential uncertainty are telling you that something is off?
We are inviting you to a free education on workers’ rights in the field of arts and culture!
"Applause won't cover the rent" is a program designed for education of young artists and cultural workers, offering knowledge on the relationship between art and work, the history of workers’ struggles, as well as organizations, trade unions, and initiatives that fight for better working conditions. Apart from acquiring this knowledge through lectures, discussions, and presentations, the workshops will encourage us to directly empower ourselves and emancipate for the joint struggle. We have been organizing this program since 2021 and, unfortunately, it is still relevant and necessary. However, year after year, more and more cultural workers and artists are self-organizing to fight for better wages and to learn how to negotiate better working conditions. Come and join us!
Please, send your applications to blok@blok.hr by February 25 with the subject ''Application for Applause''. The applications should contain: name and last name, date of birth, area in which you are active, and a few sentences explaining your motivation for participating in the program. Previous knowledge on these topics is not a precondition or an advantage, but this information will help us prepare the education content. The basic selection criteria will be: motivation, regular attendance capacity, and readiness to actively participate in joint work.
PROGRAM
March 9 - 14 | dates TBA | ONLINE |
Group conversations | Lana Hosni | Conversations on assumptions, beliefs, and habits that circulate in the context of work in arts and culture
*Conversations will be held in groups – each group will meet on a previously determined date during this period*
Dance artist Lana Hosni invites you to come and participate in conversations on assumptions, prejudice, beliefs, habits, unwritten rules, and expectations circulating in the arts and culture space, affecting, more or less obviously, the way we experience/perceive it. The workshop is held in smaller groups in the form of a structured dialogue, with associative cards, during which we are going to work on gaining awareness and check-in related to where we stand today, in relation to the tendencies we encountered in our work in the arts and culture scene, whether they are desirable or not. The conversation practice has been in place since 2022 as part of the research ‘The Event of the Expected’ on the contemporary dance scene, and for this occasion, it is being opened to broader practices.
Thursday, March 12 | 4 – 8 p.m. | DAZ/UHA
Presentation and workshop | Nina Gojić and Dunja Kučinac | ABC of workers’ rights in the arts and culture field
Monday, March 16 | 4 – 8 p.m. | DAZ/UHA
Lecture | Jakov Kolak | Where did we get workers’ rights from?
Lecture | Vesna Vuković | Can freedom of expression be organized?
Wednesday, March 18 | 4 – 8 p.m. | DAZ/UHA
Lecture | Jaka Primorac | Main features of work and employment in the cultural sector
Presentations and discussions | Ana Boljar (DAZ, Klaonica Intiative), Karla Crnčević (branch of AV workers within the SOMK trade union), Nina Gojić (SPID), Silvia Marchig (UPUH), Sandra Mlađenović (DHAP), Katarina Penđer (DHKP)
Wednesday, March 25 | 4 – 8 p.m. | DAZ/UHA
Workshop | Josipa Lulić | Working conditions in culture through the Theatre of the Oppressed
In this workshop we are going to use exercises from the arsenal of the Theatre of the Oppressed (a political theater whose methodology was developed in Brasil in the 1960s), in order to question obstacles – internal and external – to good working conditions in the field of culture. We will analyze power relations in the field of culture, messages that we internalized while growing up as well as via the media, on what exactly should work in culture look like. We will form short scenes that will present the collective experience of working conditions in culture, and we will explore the possibilities of their change.
Thursday, March 26 | 4 – 8 p.m. | DAZ/UHA
Workshop | Jasna Žmak | The artist may be assertive
To be an artist today means being one’s own accountant, PR agent, lawyer, and a secretary – and each of these posts entails continuous negotiating of one’s own positions and rights. In other words, you get tired and you haven’t yet written the first sentence, begun the first rehearsal, drawn the first line, composed the first tone... In this workshop we are going to explore ways to empower ourselves in these negotiating positions, in which, due to the lack of a stronger structural support, we often feel alone. We are going to search for external and internal obstacles that prevent us from being louder and clearer in negotiating our own work, time, and values, as well as for strategies that can, perhaps, help us become more assertive in protecting our rights in the future.
Organisers: BLOK and SPID
Thank you: UHA/DAZ
Design by: Lana Grahek
“Applause Won’t Cover the Rent” and is financially supported by the City Office for Education, Sport, and Youth. BLOK’s annual program for 2026 is supported by the Kultura Nova Foundation.
