How the European Social Enterprise SMart is Creating a Safety Net for Freelancers

Summary

SMart is a social enterprise founded in 1998 in Belgium. The project’s aim is to simplify the careers of freelancers in cities across Europe where SMart operates. These days, there are many freelancer services — cooperatives, coworking spaces, unions — but at the time of its inception, SMart officials were focused on one subsection of this workforce: artists. “That’s how we started,” says Lieza Dessein, a project and community manager for SMart. “What we realize is that a lot of artists have the same kind of issues when they are working. For example, a band would make up a contract. The band would actually pay the musicians with that single contract. And they had very irregular revenues.”