This resource that includes commentary, evidence and advice is intended for individual artists, arts organisers, commissioners, trainers and policymakers intended to achieve equitable and inclusive conditions in which individuals can flourish. It’s a basis for exploring frictions and misassumptions about artists and pay and understanding why individual negotiation is a vital to ensuring productive exchanges and collaborations.
Cover: Working artists aspect of arts and labour
This essay for the 2014 Seoul Art Space, Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture International Symposium briefly covers UK arts policies for support to artists’ development, comments on their impact on artists’ social and economic status and suggests a rethinking of the artists’ intrinsic role in society as a vital part of securing and sustaining contemporary visual arts in the future.
This paper combines arguments first presented by Susan Jones at an engage annual conference in which she questioned the efficacy of our institutionally-driven visual arts ecology with new research and enquiry into future cultural, digital and social environments for the arts. It calls for adoption of a more open, imaginative, lateral, collaborative and responsive approaches to creating cultural value, premised on building relationships and rapport with the different kinds and bandwidths of audiences and with the enablers and the makers of art. Links updated 17/05/2018
This provocation commissioned by Stoke Airspace for an Artists’ Soup Kitchen addresses and confirms the importance of the role and value of artists within cultural and social change. The four sections are designed to open up a discussion on ‘what now?’ and – more importantly – ‘what next?’ for Airspace and artists and future artists located in Stoke.
In reaction to government arts funding cuts, Leeds Metropolitan University in partnership with Culture Vulture and the Audience Agency, initiated a public debate at which a panel of industry experts debated what arts funding is for and who is most deserving of it. A short provocation by Susan Jones argued for more recognition and resources for artists and individuals to counteract the slow, ponderousness of institutions whether for the arts or otherwise. View the whole event including the audience ‘question time’ at the end using the link provided.
This audio of a presentation by Susan Jones at Work and Art, CRATE, UCA Canterbury, March 2015, considers the climate for visual artists’ practice and their ability to make a living. Referencing evidence and data from arts and cultural sources over the last thirty years and considering insight from future forecasting, it identifies the prevailing issues surrounding support to artists and their livelihoods within the public sector. It concludes by articulating some of the inherent issues and challenges within the current and future ecology for artists and the contemporary visual arts to be addressed by public funders and the sector alike.
This paper used comparative data as a backdrop to a commentary designed to illuminate a discussion on whether there are ‘Too many artists?’, raising a range of issues, questions and (mis)perceptions — in part about the role of artists in life in general and impact of state intervention and arts policy-making in particular.
A debate instigated in the House of Lords that put a spotlight on the artists’ role acted as catalyst to discuss the implications for future support for artists through arts policy.
Even in countries where there are well-developed fee and pay systems, there is evidence to demonstrate that artists’ wages remain unacceptably low. This is a baseline problem that few in the infrastructures for the arts seem willing to tackle and resolve.
