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Even in coun­tries where there are well-devel­oped fee and pay sys­tems, there is evi­dence to demon­strate that artists’ wages remain unac­cept­ably low. This is a base­line prob­lem that few in the infra­struc­tures for the arts seem will­ing to tack­le and resolve.

Here in the UK, as the Pay­ing Artists cam­paign revealed in 2014, the major­i­ty of con­tem­po­rary artists are bare­ly sur­viv­ing finan­cial­ly, with no or low pay the norm.

In real terms, near­ly three-quar­ters of artists are get­ting just 37% of the aver­age UK salary from their prac­tice. At £10,000 a year, these artists receive only 66% of the liv­ing wage: the UK bench­mark for a civilised soci­ety. But while some argue that it’s the absence of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing mech­a­nisms that result in such exploita­tion – once that’s in place here every­thing will be fine in terms of pay and con­di­tions, they say – even in coun­tries where there are well-devel­oped fees sys­tems, low pay for artists remains the burn­ing issue. 

Cana­da

In Cana­da, where the sta­tus of artists has been leg­isla­tive­ly pro­tect­ed for many years, a Wag­ing Cul­ture sur­vey in 2007 (a new sur­vey is cur­rent­ly under­way) found that when includ­ing income from all sources, a typ­i­cal Cana­di­an artist earns $20,00011,219) a year, which is 74% of a typ­i­cal nation­al income of $26,85015,061). Even then, only 43.6% of visu­al artists made any mon­ey from their stu­dio prac­tice, with artists typ­i­cal­ly mak­ing a loss from it, at $556. The vast major­i­ty of an artist’s stu­dio rev­enue in Cana­da comes from sales (54%), with grants (34%) and artists’ fees (12%) mak­ing up the rest. 

Fin­land

A report (pdf) for the Arts Pro­mo­tion Cen­tre Fin­land also shows that pub­lic grants were the most impor­tant source of income for near­ly one in 10 Finnish artists, while con­clud­ing that lev­els of state sup­port have not been increased in step with the grow­ing size of the artist community. 

Swe­den

In Swe­den – where since 2009 an agree­ment has been in place between gov­ern­ment and artists’ organ­i­sa­tions KRO/KIF, which sets out artists’ fee scales for pub­lic exhi­bi­tions – a recent review showed that 60% of artists who had showed their work in the small­er state muse­ums either failed to get paid or received less than the agree­ment dictates. 

Aus­tralia

In Aus­tralia, the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion for the Visu­al Arts (Nava) pub­lish­es com­pre­hen­sive visu­al arts sec­tor guid­ance on pay­ments to artists, address­ing every­thing from exhi­bi­tion fees to teach­ing rates and intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty pay­ments. How­ev­er, although incomes in gen­er­al have risen in line with the country’s grow­ing eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty, the aver­age annu­al income of an Aus­tralian artist – $10,0005,396) – is a frac­tion of the medi­an aver­age earn­ings of the country’s workforce. 

South Korea

In South Korea the 2012 Artists Wel­fare Act informed set­ting up the Kore­an Artists Wel­fare Foun­da­tion, which offers aid to 24,000 artists annu­al­ly through insur­ance cov­er and hard­ship pay­outs. The most recent report from the Korea Cul­ture and Tourism Insti­tute on artists’ income from artis­tic activ­i­ties indi­cates that near­ly half of all Kore­an artists are earn­ing the equiv­a­lent of £291 a month. Just 17% of artists earn the equiv­a­lent of £13,782 a year sole­ly from their prac­tice. When artists’ income from all sources is tak­en into account, few­er than a quar­ter make the equiv­a­lent of £20,500 a year, or 77% of the country’s aver­age wage. 

What next

It was 10 years ago in the UK that a‑n The Artists Infor­ma­tion Com­pa­ny first devel­oped a fees frame­work for the visu­al arts, whole­heart­ed­ly sup­port­ed by an Arts Coun­cil that, at that time, real­ly did under­stand the need for good prac­tice and mutu­al­i­ty between those who cre­ate the art – the artists – and those who are paid to medi­ate the arts for pub­lic consumption. 

Bench­marked to the com­para­tor pro­fes­sion of teach­ing in state-fund­ed schools, a‑n’s fees frame­work is one of the most sophis­ti­cat­ed. It pro­vides not only a set of exam­ple rates for employ­ers to use when bud­get­ing projects, but also an inter­ac­tive toolk­it for self-employed artists to quan­ti­fy their worth finan­cial­ly to oth­ers by account­ing for their busi­ness and pro­fes­sion­al costs, local cost-of-liv­ing vari­a­tions and their career stage. In terms of this lat­ter con­di­tion on pay rates, it was the employ­ers, when asked, who had strong views that artists’ expe­ri­ence and rep­u­ta­tion should com­mand high­er rates. 

Is fair and prop­er pay­ment for artists an ambi­tion for gov­ern­ments to action? Or should it be left in the hands of arts agen­cies? Per­haps it’s best cham­pi­oned by advo­ca­cy bod­ies such as a‑n. Of course, it is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of all of these, but if good prac­tices in the arts are to be sus­tained over the long-term, the respon­si­bil­i­ty for plac­ing a val­ue on artists’ con­tri­bu­tion to soci­ety should be shared more wide­ly still. 

Debate and action needs to be tak­ing place as a mat­ter of urgency among cur­rent and future audi­ences for artists’ work – in and among rur­al and urban com­mu­ni­ties and with chil­dren in schools. It’s these chil­dren who need access to viable role mod­els on which to base their own careers, and to be able to see for them­selves that pro­fes­sion­al artists can come from any walk of life, not just the mid­dle classes. 

Susan Jones is a writer, com­men­ta­tor and researcher on visu­al arts and artists’ prac­tice who was direc­tor of a‑n from 1999 – 2014 

Find out more about the Pay­ing Artists cam­paign here and fol­low the con­ver­sa­tion online via the hash­tag #payin­gartists


First pub­lished 12 Jan 2015 

http://​www​.the​guardian​.com/​c​u​l​t​u​r​e​-​p​r​o​f​e​s​s​i​o​n​a​l​s​-​n​e​t​w​o​r​k​/​2015​/​j​a​n​/​12​/​a​r​t​i​s​t​s​-​l​o​w​-​i​n​c​o​m​e​-​i​n​t​e​r​n​a​t​i​o​n​a​l​-​i​ssues