MUDA Project launches survey on harassment in the arts

The MUDA — Harassment in the Arts in Portugal project is launching a national survey on Thursday to survey workplace harassment situations and prepare responses to improve the sector , organizers revealed to Lusa.

The MUDA project, launched in April, is coordinated by Catarina Vieira, Raquel André and Sara de Castro, who are involved in creation, research and training in performing arts. It aims to produce knowledge and create tools to combat and prevent harassment among those working in the arts.

One of MUDA's first initiatives is the launch of a national survey to collect data and produce a scientific study on cases of workplace harassment and the social and psychological impact on professionals in the performing arts and across disciplines.

"One of our main goals is to reach the most diverse group of people possible from different parts of the country, with different employment contracts: artists, technicians, producers, teachers, students. That's our main work objective ," performer and researcher Raquel André, one of MUDA's scientific coordinators, explained to Lusa.

The survey will be available on MUDA's official website and social media channels from Thursday until the end of September and, according to researcher Dália Costa, from the Higher Institute of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Lisbon, at least 400 to 1,000 responses are expected .

"The main purpose of this entire project is to map harassment situations, with a very clear, transformative intention. [...] We want to know which people, at what age, with what gender identity, with what vulnerability from a disability perspective" have situations to report, the researcher explained.

Sara de Castro, who is also part of the executive coordination team, acknowledges the difficulty in obtaining accurate data on the number of workers in the performing arts (such as theater, music, dance, and circus arts) and disciplinary crossovers.

"It's a very unregulated sector. The IGAC [General Inspectorate of Cultural Activities] has partial figures because many workers aren't registered as cultural workers. It's very difficult to accurately assess the total number of workers in the sector," said Sara de Castro.

Raquel André corroborates: "I think the study will reveal this: The precariousness of the sector goes hand in hand with harassment. It's a sector highly prone to workplace harassment due to poor working conditions."

According to the National Institute of Statistics, in 2023, the population employed in the cultural and creative sector in Portugal was 201 thousand people.

In 2021, the Portuguese Observatory of Cultural Activities launched a national survey of independent professionals in the Arts and Culture sector, concluding that nearly four in 10 workers were service providers without a contract, i.e., "green receipts," and that half earned less than 600 euros per month.

This relationship between job insecurity and vulnerability to harassment is not new, and MUDA coordinators have been discussing the issue and listening to testimonies from the artistic community since at least 2018 and 2019.

The data from the survey now being launched will only be known in March 2026, and with it, MUDA aims to produce knowledge, namely the creation of a manual of good practices for reporting and responding to situations of workplace harassment, the preparation of proposals and the launch of training actions.

"What can be changed in a rehearsal room, in a cultural institution? What concrete action is needed to prevent harassment from becoming such a common and prevalent problem in our sector?" asked Raquel André.

All of this work by MUDA is taking place at a time when the association MUTIM — Mulheres Trabalhadoras das Imagens em Movimento (Women Workers in Moving Images) has already launched a manual on harassment this year, with proposals for good practices for safer work environments , specifically in cinema and audiovisual.

Raquel André explained that MUTIM has also been a partner of MUDA in this work, but believes that new data may emerge, because a scientifically based survey will be conducted.

This national survey is financially supported by the Directorate-General for the Arts, and the funding obtained, of 45,000 euros, only allows it to be limited to the performing arts and cross-disciplinary fields, leaving out the visual arts, cinema, and audiovisual media.

"It's not comprehensive of all culture. The most important thing is to begin, which is why we talk about mapping and not a representative sample. But we have to start somewhere, at some point in this whole process," acknowledged researcher Dália Costa.

Sara Castro emphasized the informative aspect of the MUDA project: "When we delved into this topic, we realized the complete lack of literacy on this topic, which exists across the board. People don't even know that some situations can be considered harassment, let alone where to report it."