Carer’s UK are campaigning for Recovery Space – money and mental health. In this blog, for those that are always keen to support artists with mental health conditions, but not artists that care for them, this explains the difficulties we face, and why it’s impossible to practice working as an artist faced with such economic exclusion.
For International Women’s Day, I joined the strike. I think I’m on strike fatigue now. The art world carries on regardless, and seems to give no thought to artists that have been neglected to the point of all abandonment.
Sometimes, I think of vague ideas of ways to make work that requires minimum input, maximum return. Should I exhibit the smashed glass broken because I do 300% washing up? Should I pay a tenner to submit our failed PIP assessment for an Open exhibition?
City Arts emails me with an Open Call for their latest Institute Of Mental Health exhibition, but Portrait Of Ian Duncan Smith With Bandaged Nose still torments me in my studio, unsold, with mounting debts piling, and an unknown wait for the PIP review, my motivation to make something new with no funding is at absolute zero.
The CAB suggest we could make a new application for PIP. (whilst waiting for the DWP to reassess their failures). And to keep a daily diary. Do I look like Anne Frank??
No.
I’m being realistic here. I’m not dressing up caring as being all nice cups of tea and biscuits, because it isn’t.
Yes, I need time for myself, but that time is valuable. And it needs to be paid for, so for arts funding purposes, make sure you read the blog to understand the effect caring has on artists, and sign the letter to try to mitigate some of the impact.
