TL;DR:
At Choirfarm, we are developing a range of AI tools that will greatly benefit choirs. But recently we've realised that the challenge and opportunities that AI presents to choirs are common across the wider performing arts. Europe needs a stronger AI agenda for performing arts. This sector creates major social, cultural and economic value, but many organisations are time-poor and resource-poor, and generic AI tools do not fit the realities of live creative work. We believe performing arts should be treated as a distinct AI work-practice field, spanning creation, production, education, employability, audiences and community impact. That is why we are now seeking partners for a Horizon Europe bid to build a human-centred, multidisciplinary project on AI for Performing Arts Practice. Get in touch research at choirfarm dot com if you can contribute.
Performing arts is not a niche - it is part of Europe’s economic, civic and cultural infrastructure
Europe talks a lot about AI and the future of work. It talks less about what should remain deeply, deliberately human.
That is why performing arts matters.
Across Europe, the cultural and creative sectors employ roughly 8 to 8.7 million people, account for about 3.8% of the EU workforce, and represent around 3.95% of EU value added. The sector is also made up of around 1.2 million enterprises, with over 99.9% of them SMEs. Performing arts is one of the major funded areas within Creative Europe’s Culture strand, and the European Commission explicitly describes it as a sector with “transformative power” in society.
That economic footprint matters. But it is not the whole story.
Performing arts also carries civic, social and democratic value. It creates spaces where people gather in person, collaborate across generations, build confidence, experience shared narratives, and participate in public culture. Eurostat’s recent culture participation data shows that in 2022, more than half of residents aged 16+ in most EU countries took part in cultural activities over the previous year, even after a decline since 2015.
At the same time, public authorities are still investing heavily in culture. In 2023, general government expenditure across the EU on cultural services reached €81.1 billion, equivalent to 1.0% of all public expenditure.
So this is not a niche. It is part of Europe’s economic base, civic fabric and social infrastructure.
Why AI in performing arts now?
Because the wider labour market is changing fast, and the pressure is already here.
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 says job disruption will affect 22% of jobs by 2030, with 170 million new roles created and 92 million displaced globally. It also argues that while AI and digital fluency are rising in importance, employers continue to value human-centred skills highly, including collaboration, communication, resilience and learning capacity. It says that by 2030, nearly six in ten workers will need some form of training.
That should sharpen, not weaken, the case for performing arts.
If Europe is heading into a more automated future, then the activities that build human presence, ensemble working, empathy, communication, live creativity and communal meaning become more important, not less. Performing arts is one of the clearest places where those capabilities are developed, tested and shared.
But there is a problem.
Performing arts organisations are often resource-poor, time-poor and structurally stretched. European policy work on the status and working conditions of artists and cultural professionals highlights a labour market marked by precarious work, temporary contracts, low income and unusually high levels of self-employment. In 2019, 32% of workers in the EU cultural and creative sectors were self-employed, versus 14% in the total workforce.
That means many organisations and practitioners most in need of useful AI support are the least likely to have the time, budget or internal capacity to adopt it well.
The gap in current AI thinking
Much of today’s AI discussion assumes office work.
It assumes a desk, a workflow, a knowledge base, a CRM, a sequence of digital tasks.
That is not enough for performing arts.
Performing arts is a distinctive work-practice environment. It combines artistic creation, rehearsal and preparation, live production, teaching and learning, freelance and entrepreneurial working, venue coordination, audience engagement, community participation, and civic and cultural impact.
It often involves small teams, mixed roles, seasonal pressure, volunteer capacity, fragmented systems, and live events where timing, trust and communication matter enormously.
This is true in theatres and festivals. It is true in orchestras and ensembles. And it is especially visible in choirs.
Why choirs still matter at the centre of this
Our own route into this thinking began with choirs.
Through earlier work on Choir Friendly Venues, and later through Choirfarm, Choirslist and the VoxOffice roadmap, we were looking at how technology could better support choir activity: finding places to rehearse and perform, improving coordination, growing participation, helping organisers, and strengthening the relationship between community singers, venues and audiences.
What we realised is that the problem is bigger than choirs, but choirs remain one of the best places to understand it.
Choirs sit across the amateur-professional boundary. They include grassroots community groups, high-level amateur ensembles, education settings, faith and civic contexts, and professional or semi-professional performance environments. They create belonging, build confidence, animate venues, bring people into town centres, and connect cultural participation with wellbeing, volunteering and local identity.
They are also often underpowered administratively.
Like much of performing arts, they are rich in human value and poor in spare capacity.
That makes them a very strong entry point for responsible AI adoption: not because the goal is to automate away the human activity, but because the goal is to protect and strengthen it.
What responsible AI could actually do
The case for AI in performing arts is not “replace artists” or “generate content faster”.
It is far more practical, and far more human.
AI could help performing arts organisations with readiness, co-ordination, design, learning and outreach across the full lifecycle of performance.
That includes:
1. Planning and co-ordination
Rehearsal schedules, cast or singer communications, venue planning, volunteer co-ordination, production timelines, travel, touring and operational readiness.
2. Artistic creation and production design
Support for devising, repertoire or programme development, set and costume exploration, production design workflows, and performance content formats.
3. Education, employability and entrepreneurship
Helping students, freelancers, arts managers and educators develop practical AI capability for a changing labour market, without abandoning the human-centred essence of arts training.
4. Future roles in the sector
Understanding how the jobs of producer, arts manager, arts educator, venue manager and independent artist will change as AI becomes more pervasive.
5. Audience, participation and community value
Supporting audience development, community engagement, accessibility, cultural inclusion, venue activation and local ecosystem impact.
6. Ethics, trust and governance
Making sure AI is adopted in ways that are transparent, inclusive, safe, proportionate and appropriate for live cultural work.
This is not one tool. It is not one app. And it is not one artform.
It is a field.
Why Europe needs a proper research and innovation response
Europe already recognises that performing arts has strategic value. The European Commission’s own performing arts page points to the sector’s role in competitiveness, inclusion, sustainability and democratic values.
But there is still a gap between broad cultural policy and practical AI adoption in day-to-day performing arts work.
That gap matters because without focused research and collaborative experimentation, AI adoption in performing arts will tend to drift into one of two bad outcomes.
Either the sector gets left behind, unable to benefit from tools that could genuinely reduce overload and improve resilience.
Or it gets flooded with generic AI solutions that do not understand live cultural work, artistic judgement or community participation.
Neither is good enough.
Europe needs a more focused agenda on AI for performing arts practice: human-centred, multidisciplinary, grounded in real work, and serious about both innovation and public value.
Why we are now seeking partners
That is why we are now seeking partners for a Horizon Europe bid in September under HORIZON-CL2-2026-01-HERITAGE-03, on AI integration in CCSI work practice.
What started for us as a choir and live-events innovation journey has opened into a much wider ambition: to help shape the performing arts project within this call.
Our thinking now covers the full breadth of performing arts practice, including:
- AI readiness, ethics and governance
- performance planning and co-ordination
- artistic creation, production design and live delivery
- education, employability, entrepreneurship and future roles
- community participation, audiences and cultural impact
- pilots, validation, sector toolkits and adoption pathways
And the multidisciplinary team is beginning to take shape.
We have been developing interest across areas such as performance education, music education with AI, future arts management roles, performance travel planning, community and civic impact, and AI-driven performance content. That is exactly the point: if performing arts is central to the research, there is room for many kinds of expertise.
This is not a closed concept. It is an open invitation to build the right A-team.
We are especially interested in partners who can help make this a strong European consortium: universities, arts schools, SSH researchers, performing arts organisations, creative tech partners, community and civic actors, and potentially an experienced coordinator.
The bigger argument
The deeper case here is simple.
If Europe is entering an AI-pervasive age, it should not focus only on where automation can go furthest. It should also focus on where humanity must remain strongest.
Performing arts is one of those places.
It is where people learn to listen, rehearse, respond, risk, interpret, improvise and belong. It is where live culture becomes social infrastructure. It is where professional excellence and amateur participation still meet. It is where future skills that are hardest to automate are practised in public.
That is why AI in performing arts should not be treated as a niche cultural technology issue.
It is a future-of-work issue.
It is a civic participation issue.
It is a skills issue.
It is a cultural resilience issue.
And it is a European innovation issue.
Europe does not just need more AI.
It needs better models for where AI should serve human culture, rather than flatten it.
Performing arts is one of the best places to build those models.
Let's find solutions together
If you are interested in helping shape a Horizon Europe consortium around this agenda, now is the time to talk. Contact us at research at choirfarm dot com, and let's see how we can work together.
