In the world of the cre­ative indus­tries where the inten­tion for any kind of orig­i­nal, nov­el or bet­ter still inno­v­a­tive cre­ative work is to achieve a mea­sur­able ​‘mar­ket exchange val­ue’ of some kind, the visu­al artist’s role has been seg­ment­ed into a per­former of ​‘art ser­vices’, of val­ue then only once these ser­vices have been imag­ined and scoped and mea­sured to death by the fundrais­ers, mar­ke­teers and cura­tors and arts lead­ers — who form the ranks of the gate­keep­ing class. 

With­in this visu­al arts ecol­o­gy the con­ve­nient dis­re­gard for artists’ deeply-held val­ues and their nuanced artis­tic ambi­tions and wider social role at best obscures the con­tri­bu­tions of most visu­al artists who, armed with endur­ing beliefs and moti­va­tions, seek to work over time as respon­si­ble indi­vid­u­als in soci­ety through pur­suit of art prac­tices posi­tioned and locat­ed where they are. 

At worst, it’s an envi­ron­ment that is under­min­ing of the core arts, social and polit­i­cal aspi­ra­tions for equi­ty and inclu­sion because it priv­i­leges those artists with the edu­ca­tion­al, finan­cial and social means to with­stand lives char­ac­terised by struc­tur­al and eco­nom­ic uncertainty.

My inde­pen­dent qual­i­ta­tive, lon­gi­tu­di­nal study of visu­al artists’ lives since 2017 has iden­ti­fied that visu­al art prac­tices and careers are premised on pur­suit of ​‘sit­u­at­ed prac­tices’. These are art prac­tices con­ceived, devel­oped and mod­i­fied by artists over time and which account equal­ly for an artist’s indi­vid­u­alised artis­tic ambi­tions and their per­son­al cir­cum­stances includ­ing fam­i­ly con­text and loca­tion. Artists – and indeed peo­ple more gen­er­al­ly – are more like­ly to enjoy health­i­er, pro­duc­tive exis­tences through sit­u­at­ed activ­i­ties, these being the grounds for mak­ing their own choic­es and iden­ti­fy­ing and pur­su­ing per­son­al goals for their own sake, while being mind­ful of the envi­ron­ment and con­texts of peo­ple around them. 

Notions of ​‘work­ing from home’ became a neces­si­ty for many in the UK work­force dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Val­ued for the flex­i­bil­i­ty about where and when ​‘work’ is car­ried out, the con­cept of ​‘work­ing from home’ how­ev­er has a wider res­o­nance for artists. It enables these sit­u­at­ed indi­vid­u­als to devel­op and sus­tain art prac­tices and pro­fes­sion­al lives while man­ag­ing the par­tic­u­lar­i­ties, prac­ti­cal­i­ties – and com­pli­cat­ed­ness – of their per­son­al char­ac­ter­is­tics and fam­i­ly situations. 

With­in these ​‘ground­ed’ con­texts, artists fos­ter the adap­tive prac­tices that enable them to sur­vive. Devel­op­ment of cus­tomised approach­es to ampli­fy­ing and sus­tain­ing art prac­tices over time and in dif­fer­ing polit­i­cal and social con­di­tions is achieved by artists striv­ing to keep their val­ues upper­most in every­thing they do. By forg­ing high­ly-per­son­alised solu­tions to gen­er­at­ing tan­gi­ble and intan­gi­ble assets sup­port­ive of career devel­op­ment and liveli­hoods, artists’ implic­it hope and expec­ta­tion is to acquire the capac­i­ty and where­with­al to ame­lio­rate seen and unfore­seen cir­cum­stances as they occur, as they sure­ly do.

For most artists then, a life-work goal is for work con­texts that are self- or co-devel­oped, close­ly reflec­tive of their spe­cif­ic artis­tic inter­ests and aspi­ra­tions and where prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion and deliv­ery isn’t depen­dent on spend­ing much of their time away from their home base. 

My qual­i­ta­tive stud­ies respond to lack of evi­dence about artists’ ​‘every­day cul­tur­al prac­tices’ includ­ing how these ​‘fit’ and are devel­oped, sup­port­ed and enabled – or not – by for­mal organ­i­sa­tion­al infra­struc­tures and arts fund­ing poli­cies. Most sec­toral eval­u­a­tions of artists’ tra­jec­to­ries ​‘talk up’ their suc­cess­es, cap­ture the expe­ri­ences and tra­jec­to­ries of ​‘suc­cess­ful artists’ – the award and prize-win­ners and com­mis­sion recip­i­ents on the radar of fun­ders, inter­me­di­aries and gate­keep­ers. Any awk­ward issues or neg­a­tive out­comes are min­imised or omit­ted altogether. 

As counter, I’ve lis­tened hard to a cohort of artists over a sev­en-year peri­od. The four­teen artists tak­ing part who range from their mid-30s to 60s are from the North West, South West or Lon­don. Art prac­tices encom­pass mak­ing paint­ings, sculp­tures, draw­ings and pho­tog­ra­phy for show and sale in exhi­bi­tions in gallery and alter­na­tive set­tings. Also rep­re­sent­ed are artists using live art per­for­mance, dig­i­tal and mul­ti-media instal­la­tions and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry, social­ly engaged and col­lec­tive­ly realised art prac­tices. Set­tings for art prac­tices range from com­mu­ni­ty and social care to com­mer­cial art galleries. 

Broad­ly reflec­tive of nation­al data, this group is 64% female, 36% in house­holds with chil­dren, a fifth have car­er respon­si­bil­i­ties and a fifth are man­ag­ing chron­ic con­di­tions. Although in 2017 no artist men­tioned neu­ro­di­ver­gence by 2024, six (42%) were cit­ing this as a fac­tor impact­ing on day-to-day lives and art practices. 

Inter­views with few direct ques­tions and much space for reflec­tion draw out the social phe­nom­e­na of artists’ lives and illu­mi­nate the mean­ings, inten­tions, assump­tions and val­ues artists attach to what they do – and don’t do – with­in their ​‘real world’ sit­u­a­tions. Pro­vid­ing anonymi­ty means no need for edit­ing to pro­tect an artist’s pub­lic image by ​‘play­ing down’ unpalat­able or the dif­fi­cult, more neg­a­tive aspects they must con­tend with in their pur­suit of art prac­tices and lives.

Lon­gi­tu­di­nal study address­es a sig­nif­i­cant ​‘real­i­ty’ knowl­edge gap. Although rare in arts and cre­ative indus­tries research, along with reveal­ing under­ly­ing caus­es and con­se­quences of fail­ure for those with vic­ar­i­ous career paths, such an approach artic­u­lates the way artis­tic progress is made – or not made – and the per­son­al, pro­fes­sion­al and envi­ron­men­tal levers and bar­ri­ers to sus­tain­ing prac­tices and careers. 

Using this rich evi­dence seam about the con­tin­u­um of cre­ative indi­vid­u­als’ lives includ­ing nov­el solu­tions to liveli­hood and career pro­gres­sion pro­duced and com­par­ing it with assump­tions of sup­port­ive infra­struc­tures for artists by arts pol­i­cy, fine art edu­ca­tion can maybe inform future – per­haps bet­ter – strate­gies in art edu­ca­tion, the visu­al arts world and the cre­ative industries. 

Despite the rhetorics of the tal­ent pipeline, the busi­ness ontol­ogy under­pin­ning the arts – of eco­nom­i­cal­ly mea­sured growth at all costs – large­ly wastes artists’ tal­ents. Due to high liv­ing and art prac­tice costs and regard­less of career stage, artists spend most of their time not on art prac­tices nor in stu­dios. Instead, they’re doing some kind of tan­gen­tial income-gen­er­at­ing work for most days of the week. Art prac­tice, includ­ing all the asso­ci­at­ed admin­is­tra­tion, has to be fit­ted around these jobs as well as with their fam­i­ly and car­ing responsibilities.

As artist and art edu­ca­tor Anna Fran­cis of Stoke on Tren­t’s Port­land Project notes, an aspi­ra­tion for most artists as ​‘res­i­dents and human beings’ is to be inte­gral to com­mu­ni­ties and neigh­bour­hoods. Art prac­tices locat­ed ​‘at home’ not only makes artists’ over­heads man­age­able but is struc­tural­ly sup­port­ive of artists with child or elder­care respon­si­bil­i­ties. The asso­ci­at­ed ​‘sense of belong­ing’ which is vital to human well­be­ing aris­es from art prac­tices in which artists are embed­ded and inti­mate­ly attuned into their envi­ron­ment and inte­gral to its work­ings. Strength, con­cludes Lan­dau (2018), comes too from cli­mates where artists can act as cit­i­zens and have free­dom to trans­late beliefs into actions to shape their environment.

Also recon­firm­ing Speight (2015), artists liv­ing and work­ing in a place and using local ameni­ties over a life-cycle con­tribute to forg­ing pro­duc­tive cul­tures with­in local economies that are respon­sive to artists’ cir­cum­stances. The ​‘belong­ing­ness’ acquired through such envi­ron­ments is a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in artists’ sus­tain­abil­i­ty, fos­ter­ing adapt­abil­i­ty and sup­port­ing their per­son­al growth. Self-val­i­da­tion nour­ish­es well-being and emo­tion­al resilience, help­ing cre­ative indi­vid­u­als to man­age intense, often com­pli­cat­ed and some­times neg­a­tive emo­tions and ame­lio­rat­ing the inher­ent anx­i­eties of cre­ative lives. 

But since the Mil­len­ni­um and rather than treat­ing them as a pub­lic respon­si­bil­i­ty, suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have placed the arts in the cre­ative indus­tries. Visu­al artists’ abil­i­ty to sur­vive and devel­op art prac­tices and careers have large­ly become depen­dent on the strength of their busi­ness skills and on gar­ner­ing sta­tus in pro­fes­sion­al networks. 

The view is that such par­tic­i­pa­tion fos­ters pro­duc­tive, trust­wor­thy and sus­tain­able rela­tion­ships for mutu­al ben­e­fit. But the extrac­tivist busi­ness mod­els of visu­al arts organ­i­sa­tions are inher­ent­ly under­min­ing of such aspi­ra­tions and it’s most def­i­nite­ly ​‘not cool’ for artists to assert their social and eco­nom­ic needs and rights.

The assump­tion in arts organ­i­sa­tions that all but a dis­crete core of pay­roll staff can be treat­ed as free­lance has nor­malised inse­cure con­tracts and frag­ment­ed work and income pat­terns for artists. Arts organ­i­sa­tions rely for their suc­cess on ready access to cheap, flex­i­ble, skilled free­lancers on a ​‘just in time’ basis. Whether pub­lic or com­mer­cial, this is a visu­al arts envi­ron­ment that is ​‘care-less’ and which dis­cour­ages artists from rais­ing issues around their social cir­cum­stances and assert­ing their per­son­al and eco­nom­ic needs. 

Notions of career pro­gres­sion through art prac­tices are squeezed out. Arrange­ments in which, just to sur­vive, artists must take oppor­tu­ni­ties when and where they can are trans­ac­tion­al and unsup­port­ive of their per­son­alised artis­tic ambi­tions and career devel­op­ment. Such an ecol­o­gy priv­i­leges artists with the finan­cial, social and edu­ca­tion­al means to with­stand the struc­tur­al and eco­nom­ic uncertainties. 

With­in this norm, visu­al artists who are best at sus­tain­ing and grow­ing prac­tices over time are the neu­rotyp­i­cal males with strong social beliefs and arts val­ues who hold per­ma­nent arts or arts-relat­ed pro­fes­sion­al jobs with all the employ­ment ben­e­fits, who have sup­port­ive per­son­al and domes­tic arrange­ments and clar­i­ty about their com­mu­ni­ties of inter­est. Col­lec­tive­ly, these con­di­tions pro­vide artists with the eco­nom­ic and emo­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty to exper­i­ment and take cal­cu­lat­ed artis­tic and eco­nom­ic risks in pur­suit of longer-term art prac­tice ambitions.

Con­verse­ly, the artists’ type far­ing the least well in keep­ing art prac­tices going is neu­ro­di­ver­gent females who believe that art is a ​‘social good’ and who hold fam­i­ly respon­si­bil­i­ties such as child or elder­care, as these indi­vid­u­als have the least time and emo­tion­al capac­i­ty to devel­op and strength­en art careers and suf­fer a poor eco­nom­ic basis for art practices.

But while insti­tu­tion­al sus­tain­abil­i­ty and long-term resilience are now over-reliant on eco­nom­ic growth from grants and increased earned income, it’s indi­vid­ual artists who pos­sess the ​‘best’ chances of resilience. This is because artists inher­ent­ly have a staunch accep­tance of real­i­ty and hold deeply-held beliefs but­tressed by strong­ly-held val­ues that life is mean­ing­ful. They are high­ly resource­ful with an uncan­ny abil­i­ty to impro­vise. As painter Matthew Bur­rows has observed, it’s the slow, dif­fi­cult process for artists of build­ing insight, vision and char­ac­ter that forges a cre­ative atti­tude that’s resilient. 

“I’m often struck by how many well-mean­ing peo­ple offer advice to artists about nav­i­gat­ing the world with­out any real under­stand­ing of what it takes to sus­tain a prac­tice over decades. There’s an assump­tion that refin­ing an artist state­ment or improv­ing net­work­ing skills will some­how address the deep­er chal­lenges we face. But the real work isn’t admin­is­tra­tive. It’s the slow, dif­fi­cult process of build­ing insight, vision, char­ac­ter, and a resilient cre­ative atti­tude.
The world seems intent on organ­is­ing and man­ag­ing what we do, mak­ing it leg­i­ble, prac­ti­cal, and effi­cient. And while those con­cerns are part of every­day life, they’re not what defines an artist’s work.” Matthew Burrows

Artists’ pref­er­ence to act as ​‘indi­vid­u­als not firms’ is also key to this resilience. In con­trast to how small cre­ative busi­ness­es grow mar­kets (and income lev­els) by scal­ing-up resources and out­sourc­ing pro­duc­tion on demand, Virani and Orrù’s research has iden­ti­fied how visu­al artists are intu­itive­ly pro­grammed to ​‘right scale’, to keep their process­es ​‘in-house’ and of a scope and size that’s indi­vid­u­al­ly manageable. 

The self-val­i­dat­ing nature of loca­tive prac­tices and being embed­ded in and attuned to places and rela­tion­ships enables artists to be their ​‘real self’ is a crit­i­cal fac­tor both in artists’ sus­tain­ing prac­tices over a life cycle and in a healthy society. 

As Ben Walm­s­ley has assert­ed, soci­ety and the arts need: “….sus­tain­able, regen­er­a­tive prac­tices [that] accept and work in tune with nat­ur­al and sea­son­al cycles, [which] embrace the ​‘less is more’ phi­los­o­phy and [seek] sus­tain­able devel­op­ment rather than unsus­tain­able growth [and that] … carve out time for rest, recu­per­a­tion [and] wellbeing ..”

Cred­its

‘Loca­tive art prac­tices: a sense of belong­ing’ was a pre­sen­ta­tion giv­en at NAFAE Annu­al Con­fer­ence ​‘It Takes a Vil­lage to Raise an Artist: Local, Trans-local, Glob­al’ held 24 April 2026 in Rochdale.

Ref­er­ences

Bur­rows. M (2026) The Con­di­tions of Suc­cess www​.matthew​bur​rowsstu​dio​.sub​stack​.com

Fran­cis, A (2018) Prospect­ing: new ter­ri­to­ries for artists’ prac­tices, Uni­ver­si­ty Cen­tre Som­er­set, Taunton 1/11/2018.

Lan­dau, F (2018) ​‘Belong­ing in a ​“Cre­ative” City.’ Howlaround 11 Oct https://​howl​round​.com/​b​e​l​o​n​g​i​n​g​-​c​r​e​a​t​i​v​e​-city

Markusen, A (2013) Artists work Every­where: Pol­i­cy Brief. Work and Occu­pa­tions. 40(4)

Speight, E (2015) ​‘Lis­ten­ing In Cer­tain Places: Pub­lic Art for the Post-Regen­er­ate Age’. In Cartiere, C. and Zebrac­ki. M. (eds.) The Every­day Prac­tice of Pub­lic Art: Art, Space, and Social Inclusion.

Virani T and Orru V (2021) Busi­ness reliance and visu­al art: New direc­tions for research in busi­ness-ori­en­tat­ed prac­tice for visu­al artists, SPACE

Walm­s­ley B, Gilmore A, O’Brien, D and Tor­re­giani A (2022) Cul­ture in Cri­sis: Impacts of Covid-19 on the UK Cul­tur­al sec­tor and where we go from here, Cen­tre for Cul­tur­al Value