Wages For Wages Against: TOKEN & WASHING
Wages for Wages Against (WFWA) campaigns for fair pay and better working conditions for artists. The collective also advocates for an alternative economy for the arts. It actively fights against inequality and discrimination through public debates and collective action.
As part of its 10th-anniversary celebrations, WFWA is conducting research into tokenism and washing, two concepts that have been central to its work over the past decade. The project aims to examine these two closely related mechanisms. Tokenism is a practice whereby an institution prominently highlights a person from a minority community in order to project an image of inclusivity, reaping the benefits without this serving the genuine interests of the individual and their community, nor being accompanied by genuine structural efforts to combat discrimination. The tokenised individual remains an exception, used merely to create the illusion of diversity. Washing, meanwhile, allows institutions to capitalise on the aesthetics and rhetoric of social struggles whilst keeping their privileges and hierarchies intact.
Alongside testimonials from the artists involved, the collective is producing a publication featuring the results, including inputs from external contributors. WFWA will then invite the French-speaking Swiss scene to a weekend-long showcase event. The event will feature workshops and open discussions, providing an opportunity for sharing ideas and reflecting with artists and those working in the arts.
The project offers a space for discussion, sharing and the generation of context-specific knowledge. The material gathered from discussions with the artists involved will be thoroughly analysed before being summarised in the form of conclusions intended for publication and for inclusion in an awareness-raising campaign, which will be produced and disseminated to make these findings accessible to professionals in the cultural sector, the communities concerned and their audiences.
Published 29.06.2026