Knowledge of artists’ individual experiences of making progress, sustaining art practices and of their livelihood choices over time is vital to understanding what makes the lives of artists liveable. This new qualitative research which examines what artists are doing all day and why contributes to understanding what are the most supportive infrastructures and ecologies for contemporary visual artists over their life cycle.
Complementing and amplifying an array of existing demographic and economic data from arts and cultural industry bodies, it explores how an artist’s personal circumstances including their social background, location, family responsibilities and life contexts impact on their everyday decisions, artistic ambitions and career prospects. In a post Covid world with ambitions for net zero, findings can contribute to identifying new structural interventions within an arts ecology intended to be supportive of the well-being and resilience for many creative individuals over the long term.
Through in-depth conversations with selected individual artists, the research illuminates what pursuit of art practices looks and feels like for the artists engaged in them on an everyday basis, where they live, including identifying aspects that help and hinder. Capturing this granularity contributes to understanding the artists’ community’s ‘constellation value’ as formed through their persistent, divergent and place orientated contributions to society over time.
Scope
The term ‘artist’ has multiple definitions and visual artists hold many different roles in society.[1] Visual artists’ career paths and employment prospects and are hybrid and more diverse than those of most creative workers.[2] Recognising this social reality for artists and encompassing the ‘whole person’, this qualitative study for 2024⁄25 that incorporates a longitudinal aspect draws direct from artists’ experiences to provide granular, topical evidence about the scope, and highly individualised nature of artists’ development including the levers and pitfalls they experience as contribution to articulating artists’ solutions to achieving sustainable art practices over a lifecycle.
Credits
This independent study is being supported by Axisweb and CAMP: contemporary art membership platform.
References
[1] Wright, J (2023) Research digest: The role of the artist in society, Centre for Cultural Value https://www.culturehive.co.uk/CVIresources/research-digest-the-role-of-the-artist-in-society/
[2] Sana Kim, S, Lee, H and Warner, K (2024) Policy approaches to tackle precarity in freelance cultural work https://sustainableculturalfutures.weebly.com/uploads/1/4/5/1/145123948/scf-theme2-report-fv1.pdf provides confirmation of the ‘atypical’ and challenging environment for visual artists ‘due to the highly diverse and hybrid nature of work and careers’ and the ‘solo’ nature of artists’ practices.