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Liability insurance for creatives
You're not just creative—you're vulnerable
PROOF OF GENIUS #07 — HOSPITALITY
When a City Becomes Your Canvas
Is Leiden his canvas?
Beau Artist laughs at the question. Neither he nor his girlfriend has a driver’s license. With two kids, a lot of their life happens on the cargo bike. As a result, a significant part of his world unfolds within the city. Maybe he should have spent a year in New York first, he says. But why, exactly? In his view, Leiden deserves just as much diversity in places, people, and experiences.
Beau is now involved with four restaurants and bars in Leiden. Not four versions of the same successful concept. On the contrary. Every place has to be different, because every environment is different. Copy-paste is out of the question right now. As the conversation progresses, it slowly becomes clear that Beau might not be designing hospitality businesses at all. He’s building environments where people can feel at home.
Musician's Liability Insurance: What's Covered On and Around the Stage?
The soundcheck is running late, the hum in the monitor won’t go away—and then someone from the venue asks for your insurance certificate. You have your setlist, your cables, your invoice. But what kind of certificate are they actually asking for?
A performance is more than just the minutes on stage. There’s hauling equipment, plugging things in, and interacting with the tech crew and the audience—and wherever there’s work being done, something can go wrong. Musicians looking for the right liability insurance would be wise to first consider what could actually happen on-site.
Sick as a Self-Employed Person: Your Income and Four Low-Stress Options
The fever subsides, the laptop opens again—and yet the studio feels strangely quiet. You can’t just make up for a week of illness: the shoot has been postponed, the hours are gone, and it’s only when you reschedule that you realize what that silence really costs.
Being sick as a freelancer affects not only your body but also your income—starting from day one. That’s no reason to panic, but it does call for a clear plan. Four approaches can together form that safety net.
PROOF OF GENIUS #06 — CRAFTSMANSHIP
When Your Hands Take Over
Anyone who refers to Lois Vlasblom solely as a plasterer is missing half the story. He restores ornamental ceilings dating back to the seventeenth century, reconstructs the techniques of artisans who worked centuries ago, designs new decorative work, and trains new masters. It takes nine years before you can truly call yourself a master plasterer. Lois knows why. In his studio in Zevenhuizen, it’s not just about plaster, lime, and tools, but about something much harder to pass on: the moment when knowledge leaves your head and settles into your hands.
When Your Mind Holds Your Creativity Hostage
Eight Japanese Insights for Creative People Who Sometimes Get in Their Own Way
The Best Savings Account Interest Rates for Self-Employed Individuals: How to Compare Savings Account Interest Rates
A high percentage at the top of a list feels like a clear answer. But for a creative freelancer, the best savings rate is rarely the highest one.
The money you set aside has specific purposes. Some of it needs to be available tomorrow. Other funds can stay in the account for a year. And sometimes you also want to know what the bank is doing with what you’ve built up in that account.
That’s why comparing savings interest rates doesn’t start with the number. It starts with the question: what do I need this money to do for me?
PROOF OF GENIUS #05 — CRAFT and the Courage to Create
Freelancer Emergency Fund: How Much Do You Need as a Freelancer?
One month your calendar is full, the next it’s quiet—and that silence soon starts to mean more than it should. You know full well that freelance work comes in waves. Still, doubt creeps in: Is this a coincidence, or the beginning of something?
The honest truth is that there’s no set answer to how much of a financial cushion you need—it depends on your fixed expenses and how predictable your income is. But it doesn’t have to remain vague. With a few concrete steps, you can figure out today exactly how much is right for you.
Dealing with Income Fluctuations: Budgeting as a Self-Employed Person
On Tuesday, an invoice for €5,400 is paid. Your account balance looks more than sufficient, you feel a weight lifted, and suddenly everything seems possible. Six weeks later, you’re still waiting for two approvals, and that same balance feels like a warning.
Anyone who sells creative work is familiar with these recurring fluctuations.
PROOF OF GENIUS #04 — UX & RESEARCH Design Starts with Understanding
Peter van de Geer demonstrates that good design doesn't start with pixels or prototypes, but with research. Through curiosity, critical questions, and strong ethical convictions, he develops digital solutions that are not only user-friendly but also responsible.
PROOF OF GENIUS #03 — INCLUSION A museum you can feel and hear
Valentijn van Harn (CMD, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences) designed sensory interactions for people who are blind or visually impaired, tested his prototypes with users at a museum — and saw his project selected for the Golden Dot Awards.
PROOF OF GENIUS #02 — DIGITAL SOCIETY Technology that supports people rather than controlling them
Tyneisha van Veltum won the Golden Dot Award for her graduation project on our digital identity and an approach that prioritizes people over technology.
PROOF OF GENIUS #01 — SOCIETY A few seconds that break through online hate
Lucid doesn't block anything or punish anyone—it simply builds in a moment of delay. Just enough to break an impulse. It earned Lanxiang Vermeulen a Golden Dot Award.
Business Liability Insurance for Creative Freelancers: When Do You Really Need It?
A photo shoot can sometimes feel like a little world of its own. Lights, cables, a borrowed location, someone walking by just outside the frame. A design presentation seems calmer: screen open, mock-ups ready, coffee on the table. An installation in a store feels different again. Everything is in place—until someone bumps into a pedestal.
How much does liability insurance cost for creative freelancers?
In creative work, pricing never feels neutral. You may be familiar with this from quotes: setting the price too low feels like you’re undervaluing yourself, while setting it too high feels like you have to defend your right to exist. Every amount says something—about trust, about risk, and about how seriously you take your own work.
Something similar happens with insurance.
Liability Insurance for Photographers: What You Risk on Location
A photograph isn’t just created inside the camera.
It’s created in a room where someone still doesn’t feel at ease. In a restaurant where the lighting is just off. In a factory hall where you’re not just looking at composition, but also at cables, floors, glass, bags, people walking by, and things that don’t belong to you.
On location, your work becomes bigger than you.
Is liability insurance required for self-employed individuals?
Freedom is a very limited concept in the life of a freelancer. It feels expansive—making your own choices, creating your own work, deciding for yourself who you work with. But in practice, freedom consists of agreements, deadlines, traveling to job sites, contracts, access passes… A client who asks, “Could you send me a copy of your insurance certificate?”
Suddenly, that simple question doesn’t seem so simple anymore.
Liability Insurance for Videographers and Filmmakers
On a day of filming, everything is in motion.
From the outside, a video production often looks like a controlled process. But behind the camera, it’s a different story. There are tripods, lights, and cables. Clients are walking around. Things are being moved. Equipment is set up, taken down, and adjusted along the way.
A day of filming is not a static environment. It’s a place where something is constantly happening.
Being Held Liable: Here Are the Steps to Take
An email from a client early in the morning can change the whole day.
Not because anything is immediately certain. Quite the opposite. But because the words feel big and threatening: liability, damage, claim, costs. Maybe it’s about a damaged floor after a photo shoot. Maybe a client says that setting up your installation delayed an event. Maybe a client thinks your design caused damage to something.
Liability Insurance for Graphic and UX Designers
Design work rarely causes damage to the floor.
As a designer, you usually don’t work with scaffolding, lighting setups, or production sets. You work with files. With designs. With choices that others will later implement.
A developer builds your design. A printer produces thousands of copies of a file you’ve provided. An online store goes live based on a user flow you’ve designed. A client makes business decisions based on your advice, structure, or concept.
Business Savings for the Self-Employed: A Safety Net for the Slow Months
There are weeks when everything happens at once. A brand identity project that needs to be rushed through faster than planned. A shoot that gets extended with extra days of filming. A client who finally approves that quote you’d almost given up hope on—and everything has to be done by yesterday.
And then there are the other weeks.
Your inbox stays quiet. A client pushes the deadline back to September, “after the summer.” That summer settles over your calendar like a thick, hot blanket. You’re still working, still thinking, still creating. It’s just that the money comes later. Or there’s less of it. Or both.
Masterclass: Creative Careers by Design
"I wish I’d had this knowledge when I graduated from Central Saint Martins."
That’s what Marije de Haas, director of the Digital Design master’s program at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, said at the end of our four-hour masterclass, “Creative Careers by Design.”
Is liability insurance required for self-employed individuals?
Freedom feels expansive in the life of a self-employed person—but in practice, it consists of agreements, locations, and contracts. And sometimes, a client might ask, “Could you send me a copy of your insurance policy?” For most self-employed people, general liability insurance isn’t legally required. But the more honest answer is a bit more nuanced than that.
Liability Insurance for Graphic and UX Designers
Design work rarely causes damage to the floor. But a mistake can travel beyond the screen on which it originates—into print, code, client decisions, and campaigns. For graphic and UX designers, therefore, liability looks different. It’s no less important—just less visible.
Liability Insurance for Videographers and Filmmakers
From the outside, a video production often looks well-controlled. But behind the camera, everything is in motion—tripods, cables, people, equipment. And it’s precisely in that movement that risks arise. Not because of major mistakes, but because of those small production moments that every filmmaker recognizes.
Damage to Your Client's Work: Who Is Responsible for the Costs?
One clumsy move. And suddenly, it’s no longer about your work. The tripod tips over, an object breaks—and the conversation shifts from atmosphere and style to damage and costs. But damage doesn’t automatically mean liability. Who actually ends up footing the bill?
Being Held Liable: Here Are the Steps to Take
An email from a customer early in the morning can change the whole day. Not because anything is set in stone right away—but because words like “liability,” “damages,” and “claim” feel overwhelming and threatening. What should you do now? And, more importantly, what should you avoid doing?
Liability Insurance for Architects: Where Do the Risks Lie?
As an architect, you bear responsibility in two places at once—behind your screen and on the construction site. A mistake in a design, a misstep during a site visit: the consequences can be significant, even if the mistake was minor. Where exactly does your risk lie—and how do you properly mitigate it?
The Curator as Guardian of Chance
On AI, Serendipity, and the Future of Meaning
Before we talk about artificial intelligence, let’s first take a look at a vase.
Or rather: something that looks like a vase.
How much does liability insurance cost for creative self-employed professionals?
In creative work, price never feels neutral. The question “How much does liability insurance cost?” seems practical—but beneath that question lies something bigger: How much responsibility do you actually bear, and how much can a single mistake cost before your peace of mind, income, or freedom comes under pressure?
Takje & Twijgje in Conversation
Twig:
Hey, little twig…
have you ever stopped to think about the scope of our existence?
Twig:
Scope?
I always thought we were
just the tree’s whisper—small, almost forgotten.
AI is taking over the entry-level work—and no one feels responsible anymore
For Oddny.eu, we spoke with Marije de Haas, Head of Program for the Master’s in Digital Design at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, about an uncomfortable reality in the creative sector. Design and architecture firms are hiring fewer and fewer interns and junior staff. Not because there is a lack of talent, but because that talent simply seems less necessary. AI is doing the work. Fast, cheap, and without a learning curve. But with that, something fundamental is disappearing: the start of a career.
The Power of Small: A Case for Swarm Intelligence in the Creative Sector
The dominant narrative
There’s a story we’ve been telling ourselves for years. It starts with an idea, grows into a startup, accelerates toward scale, and ends, in the best-case scenario, as a company with impact. It’s a clear and compelling story. It offers direction, recognizable steps, and a form of heroism that fits well with the spirit of the times. But if you look closer, you’ll see that this story describes only part of reality. Beneath the surface, a different pattern is emerging—perhaps less spectacular, but all the more fundamental.
The stubborn reality
Most startups disappear. Fewer than half make it past the five-year mark. And what is even less often acknowledged: many scale-ups never truly break through either. They get stuck in an intermediate phase—visible, funded, promising—but without that moment when everything clicks and sustainable returns materialize. Europe thus appears not so much to lack ideas, but rather to struggle to turn those ideas into mature, robust companies. That insight is slowly shifting the perspective. Not because the classic model is incorrect, but because it turns out to be incomplete.
From company to ecosystem
In response, the focus is shifting from the individual company to the ecosystem in which that company operates. Governments are increasingly investing in startups and scale-ups through grants, programs, and funds. But at the same time, there is a growing realization that isolated interventions are insufficient. The OECD emphasizes that sustainable innovation arises from coherence: talent, capital, regulation, knowledge, and infrastructure must align. The European Commission is also moving in this direction by not only supporting individual companies but also strengthening the broader playing field in which they operate.
The revaluation of failure
That may seem like a technical nuance, but it changes the way we understand progress. Instead of a linear process—start, grow, win—a picture emerges of a dynamic field in which many actors move simultaneously. In such a field, failure also takes on a different meaning. Whereas in the classical model it primarily serves as a selection tool, in an ecosystem it becomes part of a circular process. Knowledge, experience, and networks do not disappear when a company ceases operations, but carry over to new initiatives. What appears to be lost fuels growth elsewhere.
The swarm as a system
From this perspective, a different picture of economic power emerges. It is not the lone giant that takes center stage, but the swarm. Not the exception, but the multitude. It is the countless smaller companies, self-employed individuals, creative makers, and researchers who together form a network in which things are constantly shifting. They do not all continue to grow and do not all become large, but together they build a system that can adapt, recover, and renew itself. Precisely because it does not depend on a single player, but is supported by many.
The creative sector as a driving force
In this context, the creative sector occupies a position that has long been overlooked. Too often, creativity is seen as something added on top—a layer, a finishing touch, an aesthetic element that follows “real” innovation. But that view is shifting. The OECD shows that cultural and creative sectors are themselves sources of renewal and, moreover, drive innovation in other sectors. Creative professionals move between disciplines, bring different languages together, and open up new perspectives. They work not only within their own domain, but precisely at the boundaries between them.
Transitions require imagination
This makes them particularly important in an era where major challenges can no longer be confined to a single field. The energy transition is not merely a technical issue, the food transition is not solely agricultural, and the healthcare transition is not just medical. Every transition affects behavior, culture, and experience. Science can analyze and technology can build, but someone must translate it into everyday life. Someone must make it imaginable, understandable, and desirable. That is precisely where the work of designers, artists, architects, musicians, and creators lies.
A new European movement
It is therefore no coincidence that initiatives such as the New European Bauhaus, launched by the European Commission, explicitly link creativity, sustainability, and innovation. Not as a symbolic gesture, but as a practical necessity. Without imagination, innovation remains abstract. Without form, it remains inaccessible. Without experience, it is not integrated into people’s lives.
A different definition of success
This development calls for a reevaluation of what we mean by success. Scale remains important, and companies that continue to grow play a crucial role in economic development. But they are no longer the only benchmark. Progress also lies in the breadth of the system: in the quality of connections, the diversity of approaches, and the speed with which ideas can spread and transform. An economy that leaves room for many smaller players to experiment, collaborate, and influence one another develops a form of resilience that is difficult to achieve in a system that focuses primarily on a limited number of champions.
The position of the creator
For the creative sector, this means it no longer needs to seek its position on the fringes of innovation, but can occupy a place at its very heart. Not by conforming to existing economic models, but by taking its own logic seriously. The logic of making, imagining, testing, feeling, and starting over. It is a way of working that is less linear, perhaps less predictable, but precisely because of that, suited to a world where change is the norm.
From tower to landscape
Perhaps that is why our times do not call for more giants, but for stronger networks of the small. For more space for makers, more cross-pollination between disciplines, and more trust in processes that cannot be captured in straight lines. From this perspective, the future does not appear as a tower growing ever higher, but as a landscape that becomes denser and deeper. Not as a competition with a single winner, but as a movement in which many contribute simultaneously.
And within that movement lies a quiet yet powerful promise: that progress arises not only from becoming bigger, but also from becoming more.
Sources and inspiration
This text is based on recent analyses and reports from, among others:
- Eurostat – Business Demography in Europe
- European Parliament – Startup Ecosystem in the EU
- Mario Draghi – The Future of European Competitiveness (2024)
- OECD – Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Diagnostics; Scale-up studies; Creative Sector reports
- European Commission – EIC Programme; Startup & Scale-up Strategy
- New European Bauhaus
Peter Guido de Boer
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Receiving Feedback on Creative Work: Vulnerability as a Strength
No one ever loses sleep over comments in an Excel file. But a comment about your design, your photo, or your text can stick with you for days.
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There is a reason why fear of failure runs so deep in creative work.
Oddny is quietly going live
On Thursday, March 19, Oddny will be performing an intimate live set at 38CC.
Jip Hinten, co-owner and curator, will elegantly tie the two introductions together.
Koen van der Wal shares his personal story. He started out as an industrial designer but has been working as a qualitative researcher for years now. He explores the relationship between human happiness and financial circumstances. Culture emerges as a potential distinguishing factor, a key to harmony. He senses that harmony in the space, in the on-site gathering with some fifty guests from the creative sector.