Remember Artbox Singapore? The pop-up creative market which originated from Bangkok, made waves when it landed in Singapore during April this year.
This December, there will be a new market called “Flashbang Singapore”. It’s been touted as Singapore’s first largest and creative retail playground in Orchard.
Invade, the organisers of Artbox Singapore, has been awarded by the Singapore Tourism Board to activate this event at Somerset Grange carpark (next to Somerset 313).
Facebook user Amanda Tee uploaded a screenshot of an email by Invade to local performers.
Well, the main point of this email is highlighted in orange.
Basically, Invade is inviting local performers to busk for them “in-exchange for maximum branding exposure thru shoutouts on various some channels”.
What this essentially means is asking them to work for free in exchange for some branding exposure online.
This made many netizens upset including local artists like Hossan Leong.
Invade later sent Tee a new email and apologised for getting it wrong in their previous email.
They said they “believe in providing fair compensation for artistes” and will “go back to the drawing board and work out a feasible compensation model to bring together artistes at Flashbang and hopefully beyond.”
They even published an official apology on their Facebook page.
Sure Boh Singapore would like to remind all freelancers not to work for free. Time is money and your time is precious especially if you’re handling a few clients simultaneously.
By working for free, you’re also setting a bad precedent for the industry and it’ll be difficult for you to start charging money for your work in future.
Clients will also not to value your work if they are not forking out a single cent for it.
Remember, there is no free lunch in this world and this concept must be applied to the services provided by freelancers as well.
Perhaps a better term to describer FREElancers would be “full-time part-timers” because they are not very free and should not be working for free.
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