The Great Artist Podcast — Season Two: Career Planning × Corporate Internships. Applications Now Open

ALEA DE Global Art Agency
17 hours ago
5 min read

Published by DE Global Art Agency (蝶映藝術文化有限公司), Taipei

Season One: Fifty Episodes, Fifty Artists and Designers

The Great Artist Podcast has completed its first season. Across fifty episodes, "The Great Artist Interviews" profiled creators, educators and industry practitioners across the arts and design, tracing the thinking behind their work.

Beginning with Season Two, the programme moves to a thematic format. The first theme is Career Planning × Corporate Internships.

The reason is straightforward. After fifty conversations with creative practitioners, the question that most needed answering was no longer how they create, but how they make a living.

Why Careers

A degree no longer determines entry

According to 104 Job Bank, Taiwan's largest recruitment platform, 84.4% of positions welcoming new graduates are open to applicants from any field of study.

For those with arts and design backgrounds, this is both good news and bad. The barrier has opened — but once a degree is no longer the filter, what is actually assessed becomes portfolio, experience and demonstrable professional capability. These are rarely taught.

Open to all fields does not mean open without selection.

The national labour market is formalising. The cultural sector is not.

According to the Manpower Utilization Survey published by Taiwan's Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, non-standard employment — part-time, temporary and dispatched work — accounted for 799,000 workers in 2025, or 6.86% of total employment, the lowest share since 2013. Part-time workers numbered 443,000 (3.81%), while temporary and dispatched workers continued to decline in both number and share.

The same survey found that the leading reason for non-standard employment is the nature of the occupation itself — work that is inherently temporary or short-term — accounting for 35.69%, far ahead of the second reason, personal preference for such arrangements, at 21.68%.

The conclusion follows:

Taiwan's labour market as a whole is moving toward stable employment. The difficulty facing the cultural sector is not that young people lack effort, but that the industry has long offered only temporary positions.

The problem is structural, not individual.

Our Position

DE Global Art Agency's position is explicit: we encourage the pursuit of a creative vocation, but we oppose allowing that pursuit to become a prolonged expenditure without institutional support.

Freelancing is not the problem. The problem is that the industry has never built a path that allows for promotion, accumulation and a route to retirement. Labour and health insurance, job grades, salary progression, retirement planning — standard provisions in other sectors — are frequently treated as unreasonable expectations in the arts.

And within educational settings, the most anxious party is often not the student but the parent.

A child who begins studying piano, dance or drawing at five or six, and invests fifteen years, commonly arrives at the same outcome: freelance commissions, substitute teaching, per-performance fees, no insurance, no job grade, no mechanism for salary increase. This is not a question of talent. It is that the route was never mapped.

Ambition requires passion. Arrival requires a map.

Two Groups Receiving Particular Attention

Season Two extends beyond the visual arts to the cultural sector as a whole, with specific attention to two groups rarely discussed.

Performers: more obligation, less protection

The independent contractor trades security for autonomy. The performer's position is more complicated. In many cases, a management contract is not an employment contract, and therefore falls outside the protections of the Labor Standards Act — yet exclusivity clauses, commission structures, penalty provisions, image requirements and non-compete terms impose constraints well beyond those placed on ordinary employees.

Required to comply like an employee, without being protected as one.

Season Two will invite qualified professionals to explain the distinction between contract types, insurance routes available to those without a fixed employer, and the clauses that warrant scrutiny before signing.

Content on this subject reflects the practical experience of interviewees and does not constitute legal advice.

The creator economy: not a job, a business

Influencers, YouTubers and short-form video creators now constitute a substantial occupational group. For them, the correct question is not whether they have social insurance, but:

How many revenue streams do you have, and what share does the largest one represent?

If the answer is that a single platform accounts for ninety percent, that is not self-employment. That is a company with one client.

Season Two will interview creators who have built diversified revenue structures, covering when to incorporate, how copyright and royalties accumulate, and one central proposition: royalties and intellectual property are the only forms of income that continue to pay after you stop working.

The Season Two Interview Framework

Every practitioner interviewed will be asked, specifically:

Job title, and what the work actually involves day to day
The boundaries of responsibility and obligation
Hours, overtime, benefits, insurance and leave — as they actually are
Why the position exists (its purpose within the organisation)
How the original career decision was made
The salary progression curve: starting figure, figure after three years, and the ceiling
Promotion structure and the next position up
How they plan to reach retirement

Participating companies will address: services and market position, open roles and internships, working conditions, hiring criteria, what is actually assessed at interview, and their investment in talent development.

Questions six and eight are the core of this season. Both are almost never discussed openly within the cultural sector.

Objectives

Connect students with industry earlier
Involve companies in talent development
Make career information in the cultural sector concrete and publicly available

Four Categories Now Open for Application

▍Companies — NT$60,000 per episode

For organisations recruiting staff or interns, or building an employer brand. The single-episode package includes:

One employer-brand interview episode (audio and video, published simultaneously)
Recruitment listing in the episode notes and official newsletter
Three short-form video edits
One press release
One online career session
Candidate referrals from applicants and early-career professionals
One brand partnership consultation

▍Career Specialists — NT$28,000 per episode

Career consultants, HR directors and executive recruiters with substantive case experience.

▍Practitioners — NT$28,000 per episode

Working professionals across roles, including:

Visual design, illustration, animation, exhibition production, arts administration
Musicians, vocalists, DJs, music production, rights management and artist representation
Theatre, dance, technical theatre, stage management
Performers and screen industry professionals
Arts and performing arts educators

▍Creators — NT$28,000 per episode

Influencers, YouTubers, short-form video creators and other digital creators. Applications are particularly welcomed from those who have established diversified revenue structures.

Seats, Fees and How to Apply

Season Two operates on a reviewed application basis with paid seats. Places are limited.

Seat	Fee	Included
Individual	NT$28,000 / episode	One recorded episode (audio and video published on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, KKBOX and the official YouTube channel), short-form video edits, one press release
Company	NT$60,000 / episode	Employer-brand interview, recruitment listing in episode notes and official newsletter, three short-form video edits, one press release, one online career session, candidate referrals, one brand partnership consultation

An integrated package is also available, incorporating a brand partnership project (company-set brief, submissions, design work and IP licensing). Annual partnership terms are negotiated separately.

Interviewees must have substantive professional experience. Currently enrolled students are not within the scope of this season. The programme does not offer unpaid recording.

Application Process

Complete the online application form
Review by the production team (response within three working days)
Confirmation of package, scheduling and payment
Recording (studio, Zhongshan District, Taipei)
Post-production, publication, short-form edits and press release

Application form: https://forms.gle/yPrtv4ibmEFt58Q47

Partnership enquiries: deglobalartagencyalea@gmail.com

About The Great Artist Podcast

The Great Artist is an interview programme produced by DE Global Art Agency, focused on professional practice across the arts, design and cultural industries. It is published on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, KKBOX and the official YouTube channel. Season One comprises fifty episodes.

DE Global Art Agency (蝶映藝術文化有限公司) 4F-3, No. 40 Changchun Road, Zhongshan District, Taipei Working with the Association de la Lueur Éclairante de l'Art (Paris) on international exhibitions, arts education and academic publication.

Data cited: 104 Job Bank; Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, Manpower Utilization Survey 2025.