Does writing applications count as artistic activity? It is certainly an activity that artists do … a time consuming, frustrating, and more often than not a fruitless one at that. In the past three weeks I have made three applications: one wonderfully quick and simple; two more challenging – one of which contained a section which until I attended an ’advice workshop’ I had not been provoked by and now I am.
The section in question concerns providing evidence of income for the past three years. At the workshop we learned that our eligibility for the ’artists’ working award’ might be deemed weak if we have a reasonable/liveable income. This provoking as there is no distinction made between income earned through artistic practice and income earned through paid employment unrelated to one’s practice. As a single artist without a private income I have to have a regular to ensure that I can pay my rent and put food on the table, I also subsidise my arts practice from this paid work. This paid work prevents me from being a full-time artist. The income declaration can be easily checked by the award giving body as information regarding income, tax, and assets is public information in Sweden. So someone who receives support from a partner or other family member, or who has non-taxable private income or assets, can declare income earned solely from their practice and in all likelihood appears to be in far greater financial need of the the award than someone having to work part-time in order to support themselves and their practice.
In the modest space provided ’give account of significant variation of income, for example high sales of work’ I have quite possibly shot myself in the foot by stating in no uncertain terms that more than 90% of my income is earned outside of my practice and that I am too poor to be a poor artist … did I mention that having debt precludes eligibility for the award?
Prior to the workshop I assumed that the income declaration was simple to see that you were ticking along and had some kind of economic stability. I had not imagine that it might used to assess ’need’. Where did that Swedish notion (false by the way) of equality go?
I am truly frustrated by these kinds of biases and Catch 22 situations that reasonable artists find themselves dealing with all too often. Frustration breeds frustration … and now I find myself frustrated by the realisation that the administrative staff working with these grant applications are on far higher, far more secure, salaries than any of the awards that they are administering … and certainly won’t have been expected to spend a full working week (40 hours unpaid labour) applying for their job.
The amount of the award has not increased in several years. The advice at the workshop was to think of it as a six to nine month award rather than a year’s – which is how it used to be referred to.
This is my fifth, possibly sixth, application for the artists’ working award. I am not holding my breath … not least because the results are not known until April next year.
The other challenging application is part of a ’course’ … a series of seminars, study visits, and workshops … that I am attending. The application is in the form of an Open Call for a public art commission. There is no actual commission but a few of the applicants will be selected and given a fee to make a ’sketch presentation’ to a would-be selection panel. Everyone who applies will be given feedback on their application – which is kind of the point of the the exercise – to find out why one was or was not selected to progress to the sketch stage. The Open Call was specifically vague as the selected artists will collectively decide the site for the fictitious commission.
Update 2024 11 19: my Open Call application was not successful. I am waiting for feedback.
