Our Rates Guide 2026-2027

Our 2026–2027 Rates Guide is now live!

This guide was shaped through a series of workshops and engagement sessions thay helped us to shape it together as a community.

Purpose of Our Rates Guide

Use this guide, feel free to create your own or if you already have one, we encourage you to share and discuss it with your community.

Talking about pay can feel uncomfortable, and that silence has contributed to low fees and poor conditions for freelance dance artists. We hope this guide helps to spark open conversations, build confidence, and reminds freelance artists that you’re not alone. As a community, we can organise and mobilise for better standards and stronger business practices.

Understanding hidden costs

This guide benchmarks fair pay, highlights hidden costs, and shows the wage gap between the culture sector and freelance dance artists. It’s a tool for negotiating your worth, costing your full labour, and organising for safer, fairer and more sustainable working conditions.

Reflections and advice for freelance artists

This guide doesn't contain specific details of services being offered. This should be risk assessed, based on each artist's practice and how they value their time and service.

The guide also doesn't specify how artists should manange their practice. These rates are Rain Crew's approach to negotiating on behalf of artists in our community. We encourage artists to use this as a minimum base rate, so artists can and should charge more if that suits their practice.

How to use this guide

Share the guide, talk openly about rates in your circles and communities, support each other in refusing low pay, and stand together to raise standards across the sector.

Download link: Rain Crew Rates Guide 2026-2027

Feel free to also comment below:

What do you think? What’s missing? What needs to happen next?