How is the artist role affected when artists are participating in projects in work life?

摘要

In Sweden, during the last decade, the artist has come to function as a creative resource in workplaces. There are two organisations, Skiss (Contemporary Artist in the Contemporary Society) and Airis (Artist in Residence), that organise projects for artists and coworkers. These projects are intended to have a positive effect on the well-being of organisations and their employees through artistic means, and the artist often focuses on the social interaction between the employees in their work. The artists’ work involves frequent interaction with coworkers. The aim of this article was to describe how visual artists’ roles as artists are affected by their engagement in artistic and social projects at workplaces in Sweden. The focus in the article is on the social interaction between artists and employees. The study is a qualitative narrative interview study with fine artists participating in different projects in work life. Since the artist's intervention is usually directed towards social relations in the workplaces, a social perspective on well-being is from a micro-sociological point of view. The categories in the interviews were how the artists worked with the projects, how the social interaction between artists and coworkers worked out, and how the artists evaluated the projects in relation to their ambitions. The results show that, many times, the artistic projects promote well-being in organisations and to some extent benefit the artist, but that the ability of the artists to actually function as artists can be problematic.