#PayingArtists Part 1
This post was meant to be about my recently begun new collaboration funded by an a-n bursary, but I’ve been distracted by the #PayingArtists campaign so I’m going to write about this instead…
That artists are paid properly is something I’m passionate about, not only because I’m an artist who wants to get paid, but also because it’s vital that art as a profession begins to be recognised and artists rewarded for their vital contribution to society and the economy.
It was with despair but not a great deal of surprise that I read that 3 in 4 artists earn less than £5,000 a year, a figure well below the national minimum wage. By hook or by crook I’ve managed to (mostly) earn a fair bit more than this for each of the ten years I’ve been an artist since my graduation, and for this I count myself to be very fortunate. It’s been hard work, but for whatever reason I’ve managed to make a reasonable living from my art.
Keeping an eye on the Twitter #PayingArtists campaign, I’m not at all surprised the majority of artists have such a tiny income. It just illustrates the horrifyingly entrenched culture of expecting atists to work for nothing (or only expenses) across the breadth of the economy. What I find especially sad is that so many requests for freebies are coming from arts organisations who must be aware of how little artists earn, many of them being run by artists themselves, and one would hope would lead by example by paying artists fairly.
So what does this tell me? Is it that art is not viewed as a real profession, and as a result no one is willing to pay artists a professional wage? Are the incredible, unique and honed skills of the practiced artist worth so little? Or in actual fact is it that society is so used to asking artists to work for free that it now expects little else? Of course we artists do love what we do (mostly) but we all also have mortgages, rent, families and need food! Thus, this whole premise of the work in itself being enough reward must be unpicked and the practice of paying/not paying artists remade from the bottom up. And for this, thank goodness, there’s the #PayingArtists campaign.
(continues in next post)
