Happy 1st of May!

Today we can take an old word, dust off the cliché and remember what it really means: 'Solidarity'

In our trade union communities, in 2025 we should write it over a rainbow-coloured flag in solidarity with gender minorities and women around the world who are still fighting for basic rights. Or over blue with stars for the democratic countries of the European Community, which will now face its ultimate test. Not least, we can write it over the green colour for the climate, when both animals and humans suffer from man's unwise consumption of resources.

Today, Big Tech has acquired a global power that is characterised by the fact that they are largely unaccountable, neither financially nor morally. They cannot be voted on, their underlying algorithms are secret, and not even legislation and regulation can reach them on a global level.

Big Tech doesn't pay at all, or pays very poorly, whether artistic content is primary or secondary to the platform. AI poses a fundamental threat to our entire rights system and in combination, the two are a threat to culture and fundamental principles of fairness and transparency. Community solidarity may well become the strongest defence against great inequality and injustice, just as it always has been.

Unfortunately, most of us artists have experienced how the Danish model struggles to accommodate our working lives. The trade union movement in general has been privilege-blind and fails to look into the future characterised by technology, new needs for us and our modern families and the demand for sustainable transition.

But it is important that we artists still believe that it is worth making improvements from within democratic communities, even if the process can be difficult, time-consuming - and expensive. Knowledge is more important than ever, and acquiring knowledge to inform our choices and our critique of power is critically important. Because as Pier Paolo Passolini said, not all development is progress.

So thank you for being able to contribute, even if it is sometimes out of spite. Thank you for thinking about your colleagues in your daily practice and how we can help each other to safeguard common working conditions through your membership of the Danish Artist Association.

It exists, even if it's not seen on social media. For example, Dansk Artist Forbund provides financial assistance to our colleagues in Ukraine and has done so since the start of the war. Every year we review almost 800 contracts and have a 100 per cent success rate in helping with maternity leave when we get the requests in good time. We negotiate collective labour agreements and framework agreements and create action guides.

Professional community becomes a social and present thing when hospital clowns, music and performing artists, musicians, entertainers, DJs, dancers, performers all contribute, even when they themselves experience scarcity. Solidarity is shown here - not only far away in war-torn areas - but also for a stressed colleague, or when illness strikes and you can't make it to work on stage or in the studio. We can't take it for granted. Colleagues are experiencing this in the US and in some European countries, where the far right in particular threatens freedom of speech, freedom of organisation and public funding for culture.

Protect your stand, promote your art, says the old motto of the Danish Artists' Union. Some things don't go out of fashion, even if the words that describe them do.