​Are there too many artists?

As part of inves­ti­ga­tions for the pre­sen­ta­tion I also con­duct­ed inter­views with some indi­vid­u­als work­ing pro­fes­sion­al­ly with con­tem­po­rary musi­cians and writ­ers to ascer­tain their views about the propo­si­tion of ​‘too many artists’ and on the issues faced by their prac­ti­tion­ers. This is not a major exam­i­na­tion how­ev­er, more of a rapid review to fore­ground lat­er­al think­ing about val­ue and mea­sure­ment of artists’ worth to the arts and society.

Issues of ​‘over sup­ply’ (under­em­ploy­ment) in the arts over­all are not new in being raised. In 1992 econ­o­mist Ruth Towse com­ment­ed: ​“In many devel­oped coun­tries it is wide­ly believed that there is an over sup­ply of artists although the con­cept of over sup­ply is very dif­fi­cult to define.….Concern has often led to moves to restrict HE places. How­ev­er if demand is strong (and increas­es the pool of tal­ent) it is not in society’s inter­est to do this.” 

Her asser­tion that hav­ing choice — to study art — super­sedes the premise of mar­ket dri­ving the num­ber of places/​courses and rais­es the legal­ly-enshrined require­ment of equal­i­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ty. A civilised soci­ety seeks for high­er edu­ca­tion to be more wide­ly avail­able to all who wish to par­tic­i­pate, regard­less of any eco­nom­ic case for doing so. And equal­ly, in con­tem­po­rary neo-lib­er­al­ist cul­ture, the notion of self-deter­mi­na­tion (includ­ing through self-employ­ment) is an under­pin­ning philosophy. 

Num­bers of artists

The Gul­benkian Enquiry into the Eco­nom­ic Sta­tus of Visu­al Artists con­clud­ed there were at least 20,000 ​“pro­fes­sion­al artists” in Britain. 

These artists would have been fine artists painters, sculp­tors rather than the more broad­ly-based def­i­n­i­tions we now have of visu­al arts prac­ti­tion­ers. In terms of their ​‘labour mar­kets’, although sec­ondary careers such as teach­ing pro­vid­ed the main sub­sidy “[m]any artists are very poor and live on state ben­e­fits, but many are not poor and some are very well off”. 

Artists who gained recog­ni­tion from pub­licly-sub­sidised gallery exhi­bi­tions gen­er­al­ly earned less than those who oper­at­ed with­in com­mer­cial gal­leries, who enjoyed high­er lev­el of sales income. Income from grants made a very small con­tri­bu­tion to over­all earn­ings. Many artists ​‘signed on’ for unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fit – with all that this entailed. In 1977, none of this ​‘mar­ket evi­dence’ seemed to pre­vent growth in those join­ing the arts profession. 

It was esti­mat­ed that in the mid 80s the annu­al val­ue of UK art sales was £40 mil­lion – this would be the equiv­a­lent to £101m in 2015. How­ev­er, it is said to be more like £3.08 bil­lion (thir­ty times larg­er). So could there be any cor­re­la­tion between this vast­ly increased fig­ure and growth in the num­ber of artists whose endeav­ours under­pin the art world? 

The 1990 Cen­sus showed a 34% increase in the num­ber of indi­vid­u­als with cul­tur­al occu­pa­tions between 1981 – 1991 and 71% increase in the cat­e­go­ry that includ­ed artists, which con­tained the largest con­stituen­cy — far more for exam­ple than cat­e­gories for writ­ers, actors, musicians. 

When con­duct­ing the fea­si­bil­i­ty study for the Nation­al Visu­al Arts Infor­ma­tion Project in 1987 – 88, I not­ed the expect­ed growth in stu­dent num­bers through devel­op­ment of part-time and spe­cif­ic cours­es. ​“Poly­tech­nics expect­ed 7 – 10% growth in stu­dent num­bers over the next three years…. many full-time cours­es are now shad­owed by 5‑year part-time BA cours­es. There is an also an increase in MA cours­es…” My study was designed pre­dom­i­nant­ly to make the case for a new kind of of arts medi­a­tion mech­a­nism which enabled artists to be at the cen­tre of the engage­ment and inter­face whilst earn­ing direct income from sales and com­mis­sions and from image-based IP. 

In 2006 and in the midst of the ​‘bet­ter’ years of Labour, an Inquiry was set up to exam­ine the mar­kets for art and cal­cu­la­tions were made of the num­bers of prac­ti­tion­ers. Evi­dence from a‑n and VAGA to the Cul­ture Media and Sport depart­ment assessed the num­ber of artists to be ​“between 40−60,000”. Although the Cen­sus def­i­n­i­tion ​“artists, graph­ic design­ers and com­mer­cial artists” was deemed too broad and wool­ly to be use­ful, there didn’t seem to be huge enthu­si­asm for arriv­ing at an accu­rate defin­i­tive num­ber. Did this mat­ter? And if so, to whom? 

Accord­ing to a‑n’s con­tin­u­ous data mon­i­tor­ing, £2m worth of work was open­ly offered to artists in 1998, equat­ing to £3.7m as a 2009 adjust­ed val­ue. How­ev­er the actu­al fig­ure was actu­al­ly £27m in 2007 — ie more than sev­en times larg­er -, sug­gest­ing that growth in vol­ume of artists was at that point well catered for by the sub­stan­tial­ly increased bud­gets and fees on offer. A Mor­ris Har­g­reaves report (2004) indi­cat­ed an enor­mous poten­tial to enhance sales of con­tem­po­rary art to ​‘new pur­chasers and col­lec­tors’ – if only the ​‘art world’ would forego the tra­di­tion­al frame­works which by fil­ter­ing ​“sup­ply” and con­trol­ling ​“demand” have the effect of main­tain­ing the poor/​rich bal­ance for artists. 

Analy­sis in 2011 by Dany Louise pro­duced cal­cu­la­tions of the num­ber of artists in the UK — pro­vid­ing a range of 26,500−30,500 — some ¹⁄₃ more than the cal­cu­la­tion in 1977, but few­er than the 2006 calculation. 

• Eng­land: 20,000−22,000
• North­ern Ire­land: 1300 – 1700
• Scot­land: 3250 – 4250
• Wales 1950 – 2550

Total esti­mat­ed vol­ume 26,500−30,500

So are num­bers ​‘lev­el­ling back’? 

Until now, we might have esti­mat­ed that some 4,000 new­com­ers (from under­grad­u­ate cours­es) were enter­ing the job mar­ket from art and design cours­es annu­al­ly. But what will the antic­i­pat­ed 27% drop in stu­dent appli­ca­tions do the size of artists’ labour mar­kets? Are we wor­ry­ing undu­ly in the ​‘bad times’ about num­bers of artists when every­thing is about to change any­way? Will the UK expe­ri­ence a drop in artist num­bers as Aus­tralia already has, this not attrib­uted to eco­nom­ic recession? 

What is an artist?

UNESCO defines an artist as: ​“Any per­son who cre­ates or gives cre­ative expres­sion to, or recre­ates, works of art, who con­sid­ers his/​her artis­tic cre­ation to be an essen­tial part of life, who con­tributes in this way to the devel­op­ment of art and cul­ture and who is or asks to be recog­nised as an artist, whether or not bound by any rela­tions of employ­ment or association.” 

The term artist is large­ly self-defined — and why shouldn’t it be if we as a nation believe in free­dom of choice and equal access in terms of study and employ­ment? None of us believe in ​‘restric­tive prac­tices or car­tels’ that are unfair and mar­gin­alise sec­tors or peo­ple. That The Office of Fair Trad­ing under the Com­pe­ti­tion Act inves­ti­gat­ed use of rec­om­mend­ed rates of pay in the arts in 2006 is per­ti­nent. Although designed to open up what might have oth­er­wise been per­ceived as a ​‘closed shop’, by caus­ing ACE and oth­ers to remove any sem­blance of ​‘good prac­tice’ about pay­ment from their terms of ref­er­ence and infor­ma­tion sheets, it had the effect of increas­ing poten­tial for exploita­tion of artists and free­lancers and thus increas­ing their poverty. 

Frey and Pommerehne’s (1989) defined an artist by: 

1. the amount of time spent on artis­tic work
2. the amount of income derived from artis­tic activity
3. rep­u­ta­tion amongst gen­er­al public
4. recog­ni­tion amongst oth­er artists
5. qual­i­ty of artis­tic work – as defined somehow
6. mem­ber­ship of a pro­fes­sion­al body
7. pro­fes­sion­al qualification
8. sub­jec­tive self-eval­u­a­tion of being an artist

The eight areas by which an artist may be recog­nised as such includes amounts of income but this is a poor yard­stick in the UK, whilst qual­i­fi­ca­tion (espe­cial­ly at PhD lev­el) and peer recog­ni­tion are more read­i­ly accept­able. Lack of inter­est amongst artists for labelling them­selves ​‘pro­fes­sion­al’ also applies.
The word ​‘pro­fes­sion­al’ tra­di­tion­al­ly means a per­son who has obtained a degree in a pro­fes­sion­al field ….or a per­son who in a field typ­i­cal­ly reserved for hob­by­ists or ama­teurs. In west­ern nations, the term ​“pro­fes­sion­al artist” com­mon­ly describes high­ly-edu­cat­ed, most­ly salaried work­ers, who enjoy con­sid­er­able work auton­o­my, a salary, and are com­mon­ly engaged in cre­ative and intel­lec­tu­al­ly chal­leng­ing work. In 1996, it was sug­gest­ed that an artist may be recog­nised as: 

• A mak­er of unique works of val­ue sold via the art market
• An ani­ma­teur encour­ag­ing the cre­ative expres­sion of others
• A pub­lic ser­vant work­ing to commission
• An eco­nom­ic unit in tourism/​small business/​entre­pre­neur­ship
• An edu­ca­tor deliv­er­ing nation­al curriculum/​art school teachin
• An ini­tia­tor in arts/​social pol­i­cy – pro­duc­ing arts projects, regen­er­a­tion, com­mu­ni­ty well-being — (we would put the 2012 Cul­tur­al Olympiad here)
• A vision­ary and social con­science, polit­i­cal activist

Thus, def­i­n­i­tions of an artist had veered rad­i­cal­ly away from the Gul­benkian Enquiry’s, this is due to greater state inter­ven­tion in the mar­kets for art, with endeav­ours aid­ed and abet­ted by the addi­tion­al fund­ing sources such as the Nation­al Lot­tery which have increased the instru­men­tal­i­ty of art and artists, placed them in the role of ser­vice indus­try and in effect side-lined notions of ​‘art for art’s sake’. 

How­ev­er in the House of Lords in 1998, Lord Clan­car­ty (the artist Nick Trench) ques­tioned the prin­ci­ples under­pin­ning state sup­port of the arts: ​“But what about those artists who of or choose not to oper­ate in a com­mer­cial sense, who are engaged in long-term, life-long ​‘inde­pen­dent’ research – what in sci­ence is termed ​‘blue skies research’ which is extreme­ly impor­tant for the arts. The long-term broad­ly non-com­mer­cial sit­u­a­tion is a real­i­ty for the great major­i­ty of UK artists. Extreme­ly suc­cess­ful artists are the excep­tion rather than the rule.” 

There is a per­ver­si­ty borne from our mixed econ­o­my for the visu­al arts — the pub­lic-pri­vate finance ini­tia­tive that pre­dates the Labour pol­i­cy — that the ​‘blue skies’ is what sets us apart. Artists don’t need clients or patron­age to make art and often view such instru­ments as con­straints and hin­drance to the puri­ty (artis­tic auton­o­my) of their practice. 

In the music indus­try where the growth of musi­cians — indi­vid­ual and ensem­ble — has been great, mon­ey forms a core aspect of career pro­gres­sion. Musi­cians talk about mon­ey — nego­ti­ate fees and terms them­selves, get­ting (for exam­ple) a share of the tick­et income and pro­mot­ing CDs in the inter­vals (with the venue tak­ing a sales com­mis­sion). Def­i­n­i­tions of qual­i­ty are mul­ti­ple – as viewed in the ​‘eye of the (var­i­ous) behold­ers’. Are there too many musi­cians and bands? Analy­sis shows that peo­ple who make music are a vital part of pay­ing audi­ences whether of down­load­able music or through buy­ing seats at events. There are ​“good, excel­lent, mediocre and OK” musi­cians across the con­tem­po­rary music scene — all putting out their stuff, self-man­ag­ing, self-pro­mot­ing, and self-pro­duc­ing. New forms of dis­tri­b­u­tion of music are wel­comed as they increase audi­ences and buy­ers and ensure the music indus­try is more autonomous and less reliant on pub­lic subsidy. 

In 1992 econ­o­mist Ruth Towse point­ed out that: “….risk tak­ing behav­iour is the cause of over sup­ply. It comes about because artists over­es­ti­mate their (aver­age) chances of suc­cess pri­or to enter­ing the labour mar­ket. Artists being for the most part self-employed decide whether or not to con­tin­ue to work in their cho­sen field accord­ing to their realised net prof­its or incomes. Over­sup­ply of the works they pro­duce would result in low prices, but if they are will­ing to accept low incomes they can con­tin­ue in full time [stu­dio-based] work”. 

Look­ing at con­tem­po­rary writ­ing reveals an expo­nen­tial increase in the last ten years in the num­ber of cre­ative writ­ing cours­es. Accord­ing to agency New Writ­ing North, more and more titles are being pub­lished but few­er of each title are sold. New ​‘self-pub­lish­ing’ mech­a­nisms means that ​“no one has to make you a writer” and the his­tor­i­cal ​‘qual­i­ty con­trol’ attached to a writer’s agent and pub­lish­er has dimin­ished. Whilst being self pub­lished was large­ly dis­missed in its infan­cy by the lit­er­ary indus­try, tra­di­tion­al­ists have now come to realise its poten­cy. It is said how­ev­er that since the mid ​’80s it has not been pos­si­ble for writ­ers to make a liv­ing from their work — some 85% have ​“oth­er jobs” includ­ing arts and non arts relat­ed work, sim­i­lar­ly to visu­al artists. 

Mar­kets for art practice

Writ­ing in in 2002, Con­rad Atkin­son com­ment­ed: ​“Not all of us make cor­po­rate art, not all of us think art should shock the mid­dle class­es, not all of us are more inter­est­ed in our own blood than in the blood of oth­ers dying in oth­er parts of the world. Per­haps art can’t real­ly make a dif­fer­ence but it can high­light alter­na­tive ways of see­ing and living.”

In The Visu­al Arts Sur­vey, Lon­don Insti­tute (1990)

• 25% of artists said sales of work were their main income
• 21% gained their main income from com­mis­sions and pub­lic art
• 19% from teach­ing (FE/HE)
• 8% from residencies

In 1996, a sur­vey con­duct­ed for the NAA (Nation­al Artists Asso­ci­a­tion) found: 

• 20% of artists said teach­ing was the most impor­tant income
• 19% said res­i­den­cies were the most impor­tant income
• 18% said com­mis­sions and pub­lic art were the most impor­tant income
• 14% said sell­ing was the most impor­tant income

These lat­ter fig­ures pro­vid­ed an indi­ca­tor that growth of inter­est in being in the visu­al arts was not com­men­su­rate with income acqui­si­tion. Artists were seem­ing­ly pre­pared or able to man­age on less mon­ey whilst the cost of liv­ing rose. 

If the 2011 a‑n and AIR Big Artists Sur­vey find­ings are cor­rect and aver­age turnover artists made from art prac­tice is £9,000, then artists are either mak­ing quite a lot more from non-art sources, being financed by a partner/​family (sim­i­lar­ly to the 1977 Gul­benkian Enquiry find­ings), man­ag­ing to ​‘sign on’ (unlike­ly) or using some oth­er means to put the bread on the table. 

Although the 1996 NAA sur­vey found 37% of artists gain­ing work due to art poli­cies that fos­tered instru­men­tal­i­ty or ​‘art ser­vices’, the Big Artists Sur­vey of 2011 found this ​‘ser­vices’ area of work to be the reg­u­lar or occa­sion­al role for around 24%. 

Is the cur­rent ​‘con­cern’ about the size of the artist con­stituen­cy due to declin­ing pub­lic sec­tor mar­kets? Is this sit­u­a­tion the ​‘fault’ of artists? Does it make them wor­thy can­di­dates for ​‘exter­mi­na­tion’ or any oth­er method one might wit­ti­ly choose to reduce num­bers to the size the art mar­ket can stand? 

I’d like though here to raise an issue I fair­ly cur­so­ri­ly exam­ined in the past. Should there be a redun­dan­cy process avail­able to artists? Because the major­i­ty of artists are self-employed, how oth­er­wise can an artist ​‘leave’ the pro­fes­sion if no longer prac­tis­ing or mak­ing work to their own required pro­fes­sion­al stan­dard or have tak­en on a dif­fer­ent occu­pa­tion? Mem­bers of some artists’ stu­dio groups have com­plained about cer­tain spaces being wast­ed: full of stored ​‘old’ work – let to artists who have in fact become some­thing oth­er than an artist – a full-time art lec­tur­er or man­ag­er, direc­tor of an arts (or artists’) organ­i­sa­tion, or some­one now run­ning an arts busi­ness such as a gallery which shows and frames artists’ work. 

A route for such artists who are no longer prac­tis­ing as artists (non prac­tis­ing artists) could be to take redun­dan­cy – to leave the pro­fes­sion grace­ful­ly. A redun­dan­cy pack­age may suit­ably acknowl­edge an artist’s length of ser­vice, their altru­ism to the arts and the pro­fes­sion; allow them to draw a line and move onto some­thing else. It might pre­vent the dilu­tion of qual­i­ty and pro­fes­sion­al recog­ni­tion that oth­ers in this debate allude to, and min­imise the impact of ​‘too many artists’ on the pro­fes­sion as a whole. 

A self-deter­min­ing practice

Artists tend to select self-employ­ment because (as Whit­my­er, Ras­ber­ry and Phillips said) it is ​“a state­ment about what you are and all that is impor­tant in your life”.

• 7% artists on Enter­prise Allowance (1990)
• 76% of mak­ers self-employed/­sole traders (1990)
• 41% self-employ­ment in cre­ative indus­tries as whole (2009)
• 72% self-employ­ment amongst artists (2010) drops to 50% (2011)

When I start­ed out an artist, artists tend­ed to do a bit of part-time teach­ing or we signed on. In 1980, this was what near­ly all the artists in my stu­dio group did. It was the 90s and the Tory’s Enter­prise Allowance scheme that moved artists into self-employ­ment. Before then, sur­veys did­n’t include the dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion between employ­ment and self-employment. 

I went to art school — as I dis­cov­ered by read­ing a sec­ond-year note book — because I want­ed to explore the role of the artist, not because of any expec­ta­tion that I was employ­able or that any­one would offer me a job after­wards. As I com­ment­ed in a recent lec­ture , ​“In many sit­u­a­tions, the artist kind of ​‘falls in love’ with their occu­pa­tion and whole­heart­ed­ly embraces all that this involves. And as Bob Dylan said: ​‘You can’t be in love and wise at the same time’.” I had no idea that along the way of being an artist I’d acquire social research, writ­ing and edit­ing skills nor lat­er bring my cre­ative prob­lem-solv­ing skills and entre­pre­neur­ship to bear on the non-prof­it arts com­pa­ny I now lead. In many sit­u­a­tions, the artist kind of ​‘falls in love’ with their occu­pa­tion and whole­heart­ed­ly embraces all that this involves, and as Bob Dylan once said: ​‘You can’t be in love and wise at the same time’.

In 2011, new grad­u­ates said that what they want­ed to know about were things like con­tracts, how to set up as self-employed and oth­er ​‘busi­ness-like’ skills – as well as about how to locate and gen­er­ate peer net­works. Note though they aren’t say­ing this whilst stu­dents, only once they’ve grad­u­at­ed and have huge amounts of stu­dent debt to repay. 

Sup­ply and demand?

Quot­ed in a Q‑Arts pub­li­ca­tion, Der­reck Har­ris puts anoth­er slant on ​‘over sup­ply’, com­ment­ing that there are ​“More fine art cours­es per capi­ta in UK than any­where else in the world – more than Europe and North Amer­i­ca where there are well-estab­lished art mar­kets par­tic­u­lar­ly Ger­many and US.” So it should come as no sur­prise that the 2008 Cre­ative Grad­u­ates: Cre­ative Futures report con­clud­ed that: ​“One third of artist grad­u­ates earn £15,000 or under a year, less than the aver­age start­ing salary for a new grad­u­ate across dis­ci­plines. Artists often already sub­sidise or co-fund their own projects.” 

So is the debate about ​‘too many artists’ because there is not enough work for them actu­al­ly a swipe at the mer­ce­nary or cyn­i­cal atti­tudes of uni­ver­si­ties with their uncar­ing atti­tudes to employ­a­bil­i­ty? Giv­en that artists con­tin­ue to be heav­i­ly reliant on HE income (a 2011 sur­vey by AIR Artists Inter­ac­tion and Rep­re­sen­ta­tion showed 69% teach or lec­ture to some extent to pro­vide pro­fes­sion­al income), would the con­cern about ​‘too many artists’ be bet­ter lev­elled at the num­ber of cours­es on offer and by doing so, deny these artists a wor­thy income s lecturers? 

State inter­ven­tion in the arts

“State inter­ven­tion …is not neu­tral … it has rad­i­cal­ly affect­ed what art is, how it is under­stood and how it is prac­ticed” con­clud­ed Dr Nicholas Pear­son in 1981. He assert­ed that state patron­age was devel­oped because ​‘Art’ was deemed to be ​‘moral­ly good’, quot­ing from an 1868 com­men­tary about the ben­e­fit of the arts that ​“No one expects the whole of the work­ing class to at once take up draw­ing and entire­ly denounce strong liquor”. 

One of the argu­ments for set­ting up what lat­er became the Arts Coun­cil of Great Britain was the fear of what would hap­pen to the visu­al arts if left to the vagaries of the mar­ket place. That is to say, left in the hands of those with­out any ​‘taste’). His­tor­i­cal assump­tions for set­ting up state sup­port of the arts as deliv­ered by the Arts Council(s) include: 

• Acknowl­edg­ing dif­fer­ences between high art, cul­ture and any­thing else
• Fine art is impor­tant but very fragile
• Qual­i­ty fine art is gen­er­al­ly found in Lon­don — a per­cep­tion due to the size of the cap­i­tal’s crit­i­cal mass and cen­tral­ist nature of art in England
• Artists are uncon­trol­lable and need to be guid­ed and ​‘patro­n­ised’ by the state, this rather than the state’s role being to nur­ture artists’ cre­ative instincts and the com­plex­i­ty of their practices.
• Artists are poor — the state’s role is to uplift and patro­n­ise them
• Qual­i­ty is some­thing obvi­ous to cer­tain types of peo­ple from cer­tain kinds of edu­cat­ed classes.
• Qual­i­ty is hard to define in val­ue terms — but we know it when we see it or some­one author­i­ta­tive tells us it’s there.

Less than a dozen years ago, arts pol­i­cy proud­ly pro­claimed: ​“The over­all aim of Year of the Artist 2000 is to place the artist at the cen­tre of soci­ety, to cre­ate bet­ter under­stand­ing of the role of the artist, to estab­lish new part­ner­ships between every sec­tor of soci­ety and the arts, to empow­er artists and com­mu­ni­ties, and to have a last­ing impact for their benefit….” 

State inter­ven­tion, patron­age or inter­fer­ence in the mar­ket has cer­tain­ly had the effect of cre­at­ing more work with­in arts medi­a­tion and admin­is­tra­tion. Back in the 1970s, arts ​‘man­age­ment’ jobs tend­ed to be done by artists who moved from prac­ti­tion­er to lead­ing the arts in oth­er ways – set­ting up gal­leries, agen­cies and arts cen­tres, Lat­er on, arts man­agers became a sep­a­rate class of arts work­er with spe­cif­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions and peer net­works. They can become recog­nised for their role through schemes such as the Clore Cul­tur­al Lead­er­ship pro­gramme (which by 2011 enabled just one artist — Joshua Sofaer — to ben­e­fit from a Fel­low­ship). Whilst arts lead­ers rely on an ongo­ing sup­ply of notable artists, rel­a­tive­ly few of them are per­ceived as a leader in their own right. 

In the ​’80s gallery direc­tor Edna Read wrote in : ​“I have a feel­ing that if all the liv­ing artists dis­ap­peared today, the con­tem­po­rary art world would [not notice] — just car­ry on doing what they’re doing”. And a decade lat­er John Pick (founder of Europe’s first arts man­age­ment depart­ment) com­ment­ed: ​“If arts admin­is­tra­tors con­tin­ue to grow at the cur­rent rate, there will soon be more of them than peo­ple”. Is too much arts mon­ey tied up in in this lay­er of arts medi­a­tion? Is it sig­nif­i­cant that in 2004 (when com­pared with 1989) the salary lev­els of arts offi­cers work­ing in the pub­licly-fund­ed arts in Eng­land rose by some 41%? 

Despite the grand state­ments about the val­ue of artists made in 2000, by 2010 Arts Coun­cil Eng­land bare­ly men­tioned artists in their ten-year strate­gic frame­work for the arts, except­ing in the cou­plet ​‘artists and arts organ­i­sa­tions’ will/​should…. [do some­thing or oth­er]. Inno­va­tion, excel­lence and all oth­er impor­tant arts things – ACE seems to be say­ing – are best achieved by plac­ing sub­sidy into organ­i­sa­tions whose mis­sions are to increase audi­ences for the visu­al arts (rather than to sup­port the artis­tic devel­op­ment or auton­o­my of artists). There was some irony there­fore that the theme of the 2012 State of the Arts con­fer­ence (organ­ised by ACE and the BBC) was ​‘Artists chang­ing the world’. 

In the cur­rent squeezed eco­nom­ic cli­mate, it’s poli­cies that respond to artists’ finan­cial needs that have been erod­ed whilst arts man­agers – often just as hard­work­ing as artists — are able to acquire the fund­ing and income to main­tain their roles. 

How are artists practising?

The 2011 Big Artists Sur­vey shows that: 

• 93% of artists use exhibitions/​gallery com­mis­sions reg­u­lar­ly or occasionally.
• 83% of artists use pri­vate com­mis­sions reg­u­lar­ly or occasionally
• 78% of artists use sell/​retail reg­u­lar­ly or occasionally
• 69% of artists use teach/​lecturing reg­u­lar­ly or occasionally
• 60% of artists use fairs reg­u­lar­ly or occasionally
• 60% of artists use com­mu­ni­ty art reg­u­lar­ly or occasionally
• 52% of artists use do residency/​engaged prac­tice reg­u­lar­ly or occasionally
• 52% of artists use offer research/​consultancy reg­u­lar­ly or occasionally
• 49% of artists use fes­ti­vals reg­u­lar­ly or occasionally
• 48% of artists car­ry out pub­lic art reg­u­lar­ly or occasionally
• 35% of artists use emp­ty shops to present their work in reg­u­lar­ly or occasionally

The artist’s port­fo­lio of activ­i­ty has become stag­ger­ing­ly large and diverse. The gap between this grass-roots prag­mat­ic approach to cre­at­ing liveli­hood and the high-end com­mer­cial deal­ing is ever widen­ing – just as is the gap between the UK’s poor and rich. When the UK’s ​‘art stars’ com­ment on the state of the arts they tend to sup­port the art insti­tu­tions and art mar­kets that have giv­en them their place (and stan­dard of liv­ing), this rather than express­ing sup­port for the infor­mal and artist-led infra­struc­tures sup­port­ing the ​‘crit­i­cal mass’ of artists – from which qual­i­ty in the arts emerges. It’s almost as if these well-known artists acquired their sta­tus by good luck and (of course) by mak­ing great work and didn’t do any ​‘port­fo­lio work­ing’ themselves. 

Who wants artists?

a‑n’s 2011 analy­sis of open­ly offered work to artists in the 2010 cal­en­dar year com­pares main employ­er cat­e­gories in 2009 and 2010. 

HE/FE sec­tor	23%	33%
Arts organ­i­sa­tions	11%	13%
Local author­i­ties	6%	10%
Trusts	2%	3%
Health­care	2%	0%

Note the impor­tance of the HE sec­tor in employ­ment terms. In the Gul­benkian study in 1977 ​“sec­ond careers includ­ing teach­ing pro­vid­ed the main source of sub­sidy for the prac­tice of art”. And arts organ­i­sa­tions nowa­days — just as they did in that past peri­od — play a much more minor role in finan­cial­ly pro­vid­ing for artists’ liveli­hoods and career development. 

In 2011 art edu­ca­tor Mo Throp assert­ed that ​“1% [of artists] are mak­ing a liv­ing from being a fine artist.” So will few­er stu­dents be going on art (and fine art) cours­es in future due to the increase in stu­dent fees and greater role of par­ents in the deci­sions about their offspring’s edu­ca­tion choic­es? Note too that UK art col­leges have seen a 27% drop in appli­ca­tions. Could the propo­si­tion that there are ​‘too many artists’ be super­seded in future by ​‘not enough artists’ to form the nec­es­sary vibrant crit­i­cal mass? 

In the course of research­ing this paper, I dis­cov­ered that only 10 – 20 play­wrights nowa­days are mak­ing a liv­ing from their work nowa­days and com­mis­sions for con­tem­po­rary com­posers are far and few between. Some in the high ech­e­lons of the visu­al arts world have voiced approval for the cre­ation of a ​‘Top 20’ artists list­ing as this would clar­i­fy the art mar­ket and make it all much eas­i­er for the sec­tor to deal with. So rather than being cen­tral in cul­ture, is there only room for a cho­sen few artists? 

Being an artist

The Cre­ative Grad­u­ates: Cre­ative Futures study in 2008 con­clud­ed that the more of a port­fo­lio work­er you are, the less you earn: ​“48% of grad­u­ates in work were engaged in mul­ti­ple activ­i­ties or port­fo­lio work­ing…. com­bin­ing paid employ­ment with self-employ­ment… 30% com­bined two activ­i­ties, 13% had three, and 5% com­bined four dif­fer­ent types of work. This pat­tern does not change sig­nif­i­cant­ly over time, even when grad­u­ates are four, five or six years into their careers.” 

Writ­ing in her blog, artist Hay­ley Har­ri­son said ​“I’ve always felt shame know­ing I will always make art regard­less of how much £s I do/don’t make. It’s refresh­ing to hear oth­ers admit that too. It’s espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult to explain to some­one [out­side the arts]. I feel, they think I’m an idiot. What? You’ll work for nothing?” 

Note that back in 1997, researchers con­clud­ed that ​“Mon­ey is not the dri­ving force behind mak­ing work. What is most impor­tant to artists is mak­ing work that they are per­son­al­ly hap­py with. This sug­gests that artists expe­ri­ence non-pecu­niary or psy­chic income from con­tin­u­ing their practice.”

In a twit­ter debate, one speak­er assert­ed that ​“busi­ness­es were now learn­ing from art”. But sure­ly it isn’t just artists who have the abil­i­ty to be cre­ative, inno­v­a­tive, risky and exper­i­men­tal? Peo­ple who are trained as artists can segue into oth­er pro­fes­sions and envi­ron­ments – some of the ​‘too many’ use­ful­ly take their art think­ing and apply it to busi­ness, man­age­ment, social change in oth­er ways. It may be then that such options for artists are not well enough chart­ed, although per­haps the greater require­ment to show employ­a­bil­i­ty and enter­prise with­in art and design cours­es will rem­e­dy this ?

A key issue for the future is whether suf­fi­cient lev­els of invest­ment – from a wide range of sources and per­spec­tives – can be found to sup­port the ​‘blue skies’, the things artists do that raise the game and expec­ta­tions of oth­er prac­ti­tion­ers, that put fash­ion and instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion into per­spec­tive. I believe that it is the pub­licly-fund­ed arts insti­tu­tions that will fail to nav­i­gate the uncer­tain­ties of the 21^st Cen­tu­ry whilst the ​‘too many artists’ will secure our abil­i­ty to do so. 

Com­mis­sioned by Mar­ket­Pro­ject for the sem­i­nar ​‘Too many artists?’ held on 9 Novem­ber 2011, this paper was extend­ed and adapt­ed for online publication.

Bib­li­og­ra­phy

The eco­nom­ics of artists’ labour mar­kets, Ruth Towse, Arts Coun­cil of Eng­land, 1996

Enquiry into the Eco­nom­ic Sit­u­a­tion of the Visu­al Artist, Andrew Brighton, Jose Par­ry and Nicholas Pear­son, Calouste Gul­benkian Foundation,1985

Employ­ment in the arts and cul­tur­al indus­tries: an analy­sis of the 1991 Cen­sus, Jane O’Brien and Andy Feist, Arts Coun­cil of Great Britain 1995

Fea­si­bil­i­ty Study for the Nation­al Visu­al Arts Infor­ma­tion Project, Susan Jones, 1988 

The British Art Mar­ket, Arts Eco­nom­ics, 2009 

Inquiry into the mar­ket for art, Cul­ture Media and Sport Select Com­mit­tee, 2006

Taste buds: how to cul­ti­vate the art mar­ket, Mor­ris, Har­g­reaves, McIn­tyre, 2004 

The chang­ing face of artists’ employ­ment, Susan Jones, a‑n The Artists Infor­ma­tion Com­pa­ny, 2011 (pay to view / free to a‑n members)

Achiev­ing Great Art for Every­one, Arts Coun­cil Eng­land, 2010

The Visu­al Arts Sur­vey, Susan Jones, Lon­don Insti­tute, 1990

Artists’ fees and pay­ments in the UK, Phyl­l­i­da Shaw & Kei­th Allen, Nation­al Artists Asso­ci­a­tion, 1996

The Big Artists Sur­vey, AIR and a‑n, 2011 

Run­ning a one-per­son busi­ness, Whit­my­er, Ras­ber­ry and Phillips, Ten Speed Press, 1989

11 Course lead­ers, 20 ques­tions, Q Arts Lon­don, 2011 (pay to view)

Do you real­ly expect to get paid? An eco­nom­ic study of pro­fes­sion­al artists in Aus­tralia, David Thros­by, Aus­tralia Arts Coun­cil, 2009

A fair share – direct fund­ing to indi­vid­ual artists from UK arts coun­cils, Dany Louise, a‑n The Artists Infor­ma­tion Com­pa­ny 2011 (pay to view / free to a‑n members)

Mus­es and mar­kets explo­rations in the eco­nom­ics of the arts, Frey and Pom­merehne, Black­well, 1989 

The busi­ness of being an artist, Janet Sum­mer­ton, Eric Moody, City Uni­ver­si­ty, 1996

Pro­file of Con­rad Atkin­son, a‑n Mag­a­zine, Decem­ber 2002 (pay to view / free to a‑n members)

The State and the Visu­al Arts, Nicholas Pear­son, 1981

Cre­ative Grad­u­ates – Cre­ative Futures, 2008

Artists’ rates of pay 1989 – 2004, Susan Jones, Paul Glinkows­ki (pay to view / free to a‑n members)

Something’s hap­pen­ing, Hay­ley Harrison’s blog start­ed Octo­ber 2011

Artists’ Career Paths, Arts Coun­cil of Eng­land, 1997

Thanks also to Ros Rig­by, Pro­gramme Direc­tor, The Sage Gateshead and Claire Mal­colm, Direc­tor of New Writ­ing North for insights and evi­dence used in this paper.