The impossible arts infrastructure

I was hon­oured to be invit­ed into Owen Kel­ly and Sophie Hope’s reg­u­lar pod­casts on com­mu­ni­ty, cre­ativ­i­ty, cul­tur­al democ­ra­cy and the com­mons, where we devel­oped themes from the June sum­mit on artists’ exploita­tion in Aberdeen and the asso­ci­at­ed pub­li­ca­tion by Axis.

In an ​‘The impos­si­ble infra­struc­ture for artists’ we dis­cussed whether activism includ­ing ampli­fied union­i­sa­tion, FRANK’s ambi­tions for wide­spread adop­tion of good work­ing prac­tices or insti­gat­ing new pub­licly-fund­ed, peer-reviewed Cre­ative Allowance awards could be the last­ing solu­tion to what Hol­lis Framp­ton described (on p38 of the Axis pub­li­ca­tion) as artists’ ​‘humil­i­a­tion’ when pow­er­less to effect change in their work­ing conditions.

Clear­ly arts organ­i­sa­tions could — and might choose to — do bet­ter by artists. But could oth­er strate­gic mea­sures ​‘bake’ equi­ty and inclu­sion prin­ci­ples into arts infra­struc­tures for the decades ahead?