Artistic Freedom Under Threat: Mobility, Censorship & the Right to Create
Sound & Culture Summit
Artistic freedom is too often reduced to “freedom of expression”, but for artists and independent cultural organisations, the ground is much more complex. It’s not only what someone can say, but where someone can go, how someone can live, who someone can reach, and whether someone can sustain the work without fear.
Artistic freedom must be defended not as a subset of free speech, but as a fundamental condition for art to exist and flourish. Recognising its many dimensions—mobility, safety, funding, digital presence—is essential. If even one is compromised, the others suffer.
Music, together with all the other creative and artistic sectors, has been a crucial point of the matter. Artists become the symbol of resistance in a sector that is still dominated by oppression of autocratic regimes. It’s time to treat artistic freedom in full, and build frameworks that protect it not as an ideal, but as a lived possibility.
Moderator: Manon Moulin
Speakers: Sarjon Azouz, Nino Davadze