Paying artists

Par­al­lel State 27 03 2020

Two pod­casts with­in the Par­al­lel State series dis­cussing the imme­di­ate and sus­tained impli­ca­tions of the Covid19 lock­down and iso­la­tion on artists and the arts. They brought togeth­er vir­tu­al­ly on 27 March 2020 Rose But­ler, Jon Dovey, Tim Etchells, Adri­an Friedli, Susan Jones, Simon Poul­ter, Isabelle Tra­cy and Hwa Young Jung.

Read “State of the Nation: Parallel State” in full

Artists emer­gency hashtag

“We must see the cul­tur­al ecosys­tem in which every per­son, every organ­i­sa­tion, every cul­tur­al expres­sion, has a legit­i­mate place.” Fran­cois Mataras­so, Let’s use this breath­ing space wise­ly, 25 March 2020

Strate­gic arts pol­i­cy fund­ing inter­ven­tions premised on equal­i­ty and co-oper­a­tion are key to sus­tain­ing visu­al artists’ liveli­hoods over a life-cycle. This text in the Covid19 port­fo­lio com­bines sec­ondary data analy­sis with cross-ref­er­ences to pri­or and new research to offer six ref­er­ence points for the eco­nom­ic val­ue of artists’ prac­tices with­in the arts and cre­ative indus­tries includ­ing indi­ca­tion of their income sources in broad terms. It con­cludes with an argu­ment for vital new struc­tur­al arts pol­i­cy and advo­ca­cy mea­sures to ensure that many visu­al artists – not just a few — sur­vive through the imme­di­ate peri­od of the Covid19 emer­gency and dur­ing what is like­ly to be a sus­tained peri­od of eco­nom­ic reces­sion beyond. 

Read “Artists’ emergency: arts policy’s role in the future of artists’ livelihoods” in full

Pay pol­i­cy concept

Intro­duc­tion to fees to artists for exhibit­ing in pub­lic with exam­ples indi­cat­ing that sus­tain­ing such schemes is depen­dent on wide­spread and con­tin­ued accep­tance of the prin­ci­ple and rig­or­ous self-reg­u­la­tion with­in the sec­tor, and on gain­ing suit­able lev­els of pub­lic sub­sidy to the visu­al arts. Three financ­ing options are con­sid­ered in sup­port of equa­nim­i­ty. An after­word con­sid­ers whether in a polit­i­cal cli­mate of reduced sub­sidy to the pub­lic sec­tor, some new strate­gies are need­ed to finance the arts and artists’ contributions.

Read “Enforcement, equanimity and an afterword – thoughts on sustaining fair pay for artists” in full

Being asked a while back to pro­vide some advice to artists on pay and pric­ing mat­ters for a new web­site was the gen­er­a­tor of this short text. It begins with sum­maris­ing some of the issues and ends with a few sug­ges­tions for what artists might do to improve their chances of mak­ing a liv­ing while steadi­ly mov­ing their art prac­tice forward.

Read “Let’s talk about pricing” in full