The Human Behind the Artist: Supporting Artists Through Crisis and Change

A 2026 survey of more than 2,000 independent artists and industry professionals found that 86% report significant mental strain or creative burnout. Behind that number sit people expected to keep creating, touring, promoting and staying visible while carrying personal crises, mental health challenges, grief, displacement or the weight of conflict elsewhere in the world.
The question this session asks is what the people around them do about it. Managers, agents and promoters shape an artist's calendar, workload and exposure, and those decisions are where empathy either exists in practice or does not. It also asks what the dancefloor itself already provides, since community and care have been part of rave culture far longer than the industry has had language for either. As we are heading to an age shaped by AI, emotional intelligence remains one of our most valuable human strengths.