Study of the lives of 14 artists from three English regions illustrates how arts policies have, over time, marginalised the position of artists in arts infrastructures and wider arts ecology. As a result, artists at all development stages now lack social status, putting them at a disadvantage whether seeking mutuality in arrangements with commissioners and employers or looking for dedicated research and development support.
In parallel, there has been widespread adoption across the funded visual arts sector of neoliberal practices, derived from practices in the commercial creative industries, resulting in reduction in both volume and scope of paid work for artists.
Arts policy makers' ‘market economy’ approach has the effect of undermining stated aspirations to demonstrate equity and inclusion across the arts.
Resilience – for funded arts institutions, not artists – has been a strategic policy goal at ACE since the coalition government introduced austerity in 2010 with resilience promoted as a key expectation in ACE’s Great Art and Culture for Everyone ten-year strategy document and later included in the Tory government’s Culture White Paper. ACE’s policy makers assume that resilience is a product of having sound business models, strong leadership and traditional forms of governance. Yet adopting this narrow perspective has simplified the social scope and expectations of arts infrastructures and undermined artists’ ability to sustain art practices over time.
Contrary to this generic, conglomerated view of ‘creative practitioners’, visual artists’ expectations, social beliefs and life goals aren’t achieved through continually making pitches for short-term projects devised by arts managers and curators. Rather, artists’ quests for self-directed learning through personalised, developmental practices is best characterised as the dedicated, situated pursuit of creativity within a lifelong process.
"I believe the social value of artists comes from their pursuit of art practices over a lifetime and that there are many ways to think about and recognise mutuality and collaboration. By working small-scale and developing ways to show and share work in progress, there’s a sense that artists become indigenous and engaged quite naturally in a place and in nurturing and growing things from the ground up." Edward
In demonstrating that artists’ motives don’t lie in achieving traditional business growth and profitability, or in creating employment for others, Artists lives: ecologies for resilience confirms findings in Tarek Virani and Valentina Orrù’s research, undertaken in the wake of the pandemic, which examined artists’ practices at SPACE Studios. Published in 2021 as Business resilience and visual art, it concludes that rather than opting to increase resources or outsource production to meet prospective market demands – as is common in other creative businesses, visual artists intuitively choose to operate at the ‘right scale’ through a preference for keeping everything ‘in-house’ and manageable in scope and size.
"Interior designers … say they want four of this size and six of that … those massive jobs [for] around 20 original pieces of work [to] pitch to a client. I probably get about three or four requests like that a year … [But] if something like that came [through] … when I’m [doing something else], it would be an absolute nightmare as I wouldn’t have space or time to make the work." Susannah
Contemporary visual arts infrastructures have been in lockstep with government policy and public funding parameters since 2020. They have wholeheartedly adopted principles from the commercial creative industries where the ambition for the work is to be original, novel and innovative and achieve a measurable ‘market exchange value’ of some kind. As a result, work or commission offers to artists from most funded arts organisations are designed to involve as little institutional financial outlay as possible while trading on artists’ emotional need to make artistic progress.
"Arts commissioners don’t seem to really understand what artists want and need to achieve with art practices and in society, nor do they ‘get’ the precarity of working freelance. With one-off opportunities, artists only ever have a transitory relationship with an organisation, so the artist’s tendency is always going to be to max out the budget. We put in loads more hours than the money allows for, just to fit in everything on the list and get something out of it for ourselves too. What I’d really like to see are more artist-friendly attitudes permeating across the visual arts, so that things aimed at artists aren’t all about delivering immediate outcomes."
The upshot of these policies is that survival of both commercial and subsidised visual arts organisations is now reliant on retaining extractivist business models. Initially the immediate fall-out from government austerity policies, this is a response to the even harsher post-pandemic circumstances since for arts and culture.
Arts organisations’ assumption that all but a discrete core of employed staff can be treated as freelance is central to the normalising of insecure contracts and fragmented work and income patterns for artists. Success for arts organisations – including maintaining credible business plans for trustees and funders – has become reliant on a steady flow of cheap, flexible, skilled freelancers on a ‘just in time’ basis. In such a situation, the artists most likely to receive work are those who present as acquiescent, willingly reactive and grateful for what they are given.
"It seems employers don’t understand the difference between freelance and employed work. Their maths doesn’t take account of basic things like [needing enough] pay for holiday and pension contributions. It’s about what’s valued, really: these people and institutions aren’t valuing what experienced creative people bring in." Francis
Failure in arts organisations of the ‘mixed income’ business model presents a considerable threat to artists’ practices and livelihoods. This is because opportunities for artists – residencies, workshops, exhibitions and commissions – take place within funding-dependent public-engagement programmes, where the delivery of the work is commonly appointed on freelance terms.
"I’ve always been prepared to work hard but …even … in the commercial sector, I’m finding the pay hasn’t kept up with the cost-of-living rise. So, I do wonder how women artists can possibly make a living once they have kids. How are we meant to do that?" Tanya
Whether public or commercial, visual arts environments have the effect of positively discouraging artists from being overt about specific personal circumstances and longer-term economic needs. It’s ‘not cool’ for artists to assert the true level of fees and the beneficial contractual terms they require.
"There’s a type of artist that institutions … believe they can hire for cheap, often justifying it by referencing [out-of-date] guidelines. However, those guidelines aren’t … applicable for someone like me with over 25 years of experience." – Mid-career artist
The rise of extractivist practices as an institutional norm has resulted in a lack of career progression for artists. This is because work opportunities from arts organisations can swing wildly from projects of high career significance on one occasion to work at a far lower level the next. Furthermore, current systems which present and authenticate the visual arts as a social benefit have the effect of privileging those artists with the financial, social and educational means to withstand structural imbalances and economic uncertainties. Such arrangements, where artists must take opportunities as, when and where they can, are inherently transactional and less supportive of any individual artist’s career development.
Yet to maintain any credentials in the visual arts ecology, artists must continually pitch for – and, in the main, fail to get – competitively offered and relatively low-value opportunities. Although artists reasonably desire concentrated periods of R&D, such ambitions are tempered with recognition that grant application processes are not only lengthy, exacting and frustrating, but also have painfully low success rates. Not accounted for in such a situation is the 20% neurodivergence rate in the creative industries, with the associated dyslexia and dyscalculia impacting adversely on individuals’ basic communications skills. Such a situation ensures that, for a significant number of artists, grant applications and project proposals are stressfully daunting and highly time consuming.
"When you’re writing applications, it seems that you have to be able to read between the lines. I’m dyslexic, so struggle with words and I’m not good with numbers either. Even the questions in application forms are in a language I just wouldn’t write in." Emily
While much research articulates artists’ plea for better, more accessible R&D resources, the government’s recent Creative Industries Sector Plan (Artnotes AM489) suggests that ministers view visual arts development as a minor consideration catered for by enhancing arts buildings. CVAN’s 2025 advocacy statement Framing the Future: The Political Case for Strengthening the Visual Arts Ecosystem continues this theme by arguing for increased investment in artists’ studio buildings. Yet a significant finding from the new research is that, regardless of career stage, artists currently spend little time in their studios. Although commonly working long hours six days a week, most of an artist's time is spent doing the non-art related jobs that provide just enough income to cover living and art practice costs, including studio rents.
"I probably average 12 hours a month in my studio – a tiny fraction of what it was before the Covid and post-pandemic situation of lack of commissions and funding and cost-of-living crisis. I’m teaching in two art schools in different towns but the workload [means] … my two day a week job takes four days … and there are many weeks where I just don’t get to the studio at all." Mid-career artist in the Midlands
Rather than the 28 days annual statutory holiday allocation for arts employees, any ‘time off’ for artists is most often an occasional long weekend, perhaps a week visiting family or is combined with doing something art related.
"I’ve not been on a long holiday for probably about seven or eight years. The problem is the cost of things now. It’s just so hard to prioritise that with everything else." – Susannah
As advocacy lead for the visual arts sector, CVAN asserts that "every component plays a role in sustaining a vibrant – and genuinely world-leading – cultural landscape". But this ecology’s quality is diminished when most artists suffer the human lack of personal ‘downtime’ and any sustained refreshment, which impact adversely on their emotional health and wellbeing as well as the quality of their work and multiple social contributions. To thrive, art ecology relies on having the wellbeing of artists at its core and policies that genuinely sustain individual artists are key to achieving that.
Credits
Artists’ lives: Ecologies for resilience has received financial support from CAMP Contemporary Art Membership Platform and Creative Land Trust.
This text was commissioned and first published in Art Monthly 490