Another good article by Sandi Toksvig.
I get criticised for writing a-n blog posts for free, so I know I’m being silenced and pushed out.
Another exploitative “opportunity” here.
I genuinely don’t know who I am now. I can’t produce any art, without funding, I feel like a fake doing a non-arts job to pay the bills, and in trying to find out how to give that up to focus more on my creative practice, bad advice given by volunteers at Citizen’s Advice Bureau was to “get another job”.
That was after yet another job application rejection and a couple of rejected funding proposals.
This caused my mental health to go into crisis mode. I have looked at The Samaritans. I don’t even think phoning them will be worth my time. All they do is listen. They can listen to the ringing of my phone with all the debt collection agencies harassing me for money the Arts Council refuse to award.
But nothing will be resolved.
I went for a respite break to visit family, which did give some relief.
But now I’m back to trying to work out how to get into arts therapy and avoid being coerced into more voluntary stuff while I still have some debts that need paying off.
Good news this week, as the Breathing Space campaign has been successful.
But it doesn’t go far enough to address and safeguard the fact that artists that are carers cannot realistically live off ever-decreasing welfare, Universal Credit delays, PIP application form filling, DWP ignorance and outright financial abuse, Grantium form filling, Grantium rejection after rejection, and maintain a working practice and manage a household as an artist with little or no income.
