Abstract:

When the pandemic broke out in Poland, the regular cultural activity had to be stopped. The government undertook a series of measures, mainly economic/ fiscal and legal/ regulatory to support culture. The purpose of the paper is, first, to analyse the application of diverse cultural policy instruments by the state authorities to support cultural and creative sectors (CSS) in Poland during the first wave of the pandemic, with special focus on independent artists, creators and performers. Second, it intends to examine the reception of such a support by cultural workers, based on semi-structured in-depth interviews (IDI). The analysis shows poor general situation of the CCS in Poland, which became more obvious under the crisis. Moreover, independent cultural workers have been offered quite limited aid compared to public and commercial organisations. Their reception of measures undertaken by the state is manly negative.