Keyword: “Year of the Artist”

‘Artists always get lost…’

Deliv­er­ing ​‘human thriv­ing’ in and through the arts, includ­ing fair pay for artists, in a pan­dem­ic world calls for sub­stan­tial shifts in how arts poli­cies are made and where they are realised.

Read “Leave no stone unturned, for artists’ sake” in full

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.

Read “Rethinking artists: the role of artists in the 21st Century” in full

1980 — artists’ data

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. 

Read “Ways and means: livelihood strategies 1984 to 2014” in full