MEASURING THE EXPERIENCE #14
The Arts Council of Great Britain’s enthusiasm for percent for art, a mechanism for commissioning art and craft work within public building schemes, was highlighted through a campaign launched formally in 1988 which subsequently echoed across the country. By that year, there were already seven organisations whose specific job it was to promote and generate public art in partnership with public and private bodies. These public art agencies, which had largely been spawned by the arts funding bodies, provided another layer in the arts delivery infrastructure.
It was hoped that public art, with its access to large new funding sources and its high visibility, might also raise the profile of artists and enhance their employment prospects. Percent for Art: a review contained the comments that “percent for art might be used more widely… to the mutual benefit of artists and craftspeople, architects, landscape designers, the commissioning bodies, the public and the environment as a whole” and “If I were asked to identify a significant factor that would enable artists and craftspeople to make both a valued and challenging contribution to the development of our environment, that would undoubtedly be percent for art”.[1]
Research in 1990 had suggested that twenty-one percent of artists derived their main income from commissions for public and private clients with a further forty-eight percent gaining some income from that field of work. The opportunities for artists to work in the field of commissions and residencies doubled between 1989 and 1990.[2] By 1993, some twenty-one percent of local authorities were employing specialist public art officers or agencies in order to fulfil policies for environmental improvement, entertainment, conservation, community provision, tourism and the arts.[3]
Current information, however suggests that work in this field has not yet substantially improved the income-generation prospects of visual artists that such a ‘boom’ might have suggested.[4] Of the ten categories of income cited in a review of artists’ income and fees in 1994/95, commissions for public and private clients were the most important income source for thirteen percent of artists. The review found that sixty-two percent of artists earned less than £10,000 a year.[5] Artists also appear to be worse off in real terms. In 1990/91, the average income for artists was the equivalent of eighty-five percent of the national average gross income, by 1994/95 the percentage had decreased to seventy-one.[6] Indeed, a recent statement from the Visual Arts Department of the Arts Council of England noted that “For most British artists who have yet to benefit from the flow of new funds from lottery commissions, conditions have worsened: part-time teaching has virtually ceased, and tax and social security problems remain unresolved”.[7]
[1] Preface by Sandy Nairne, Director of Visual Arts and cover statement by Lord Palumbo of Walbrook, Chair of the Arts Council of Great Britain, Percent for Art: a review, Arts Council of Great Britain, 1991
[2] The Visual Arts Survey, Susan Jones, Arts Council of Great Britain/London Institute, 1990 and Business Plan for AXIS – visual arts exchange and information service, 1990
[3] The Benefits of Public Art, Sara Selwood, PSI, 1995
[4] It should, however, be noted that the impact of National Lottery funds for public art projects and for artists’ involvement in capital projects in general has yet to be measured as regards specific income-generation for artists.
[5] Artists fees and payments, draft report, Phyllida Shaw & Keith Allen, National Artists Association, 1996. This figure is comparable with the Socio-economic study of artists in Scotland which found that 67% of artists earned less than £10,000 year for 1994.
[6] See ‘Rights in Sight’, Millie Taylor, Artists Newsletter, September 1996 which reviewed research by the National Artists Association into artists’ income and made comparison with previous surveys.
[7] Contextualising statement for a Public Forum for the Visual Arts: the status of the artist, held by the Arts Council of England’s Visual Arts Department in Newcastle upon Tyne, 14 November 1996.
