Women art technicians unite!

As part of my bursary activity, I spent a lot of my summer weekends in London; visiting libraries and archives, attending meetups and discussions. I found myself in the capital again in early June, on my way to a workshop advertised on the Antiuniversity’s website, titled ‘Woodwork as we want it’ and convened by Jonathan Hoskins.

The Antiuniversity is an experimental learning platform which, in their own words ‘reimagines the 1968 Antiuniversity of London in an ongoing programme of self-organised radical learning and mutual education events. Antiuniversity challenges academic and class hierarchy through an open invitation to teach and learn any subject, in any form, anywhere.’ Chiming with this self-description, the workshop took place at Jonathan’s house on a sunny Sunday, with myself and Sophie Risner, the other participant.

As Jonathan explains in the event text, the session is for ‘people who feel unwanted expectation to behave differently when they pick up hand tools and power tools’. These ‘unwanted expectations’ were something I had tried to unpick myself, and it was a revelation to read it put so distinctly. The session itself was structured in a way that the practical making element was embedded into a discussion. We talked about many things including the hierarchy within workshops, the temporary workspaces of exhibition installs and the dynamics of the workforce in general.

One of the main questions that emerged from our discussion on that day, were centred around generational and class differences of the workforce and how this might affect our ability to create a safe and mutually rewarding workspace. This was a refreshing angle for me as the gender segregation of the workplace has been my starting point. I finally felt like a wider discourse was shaping in my head, thanks to the stimulating conversation I had with Jonathan and Sophie.

Documentation of the event is available on request in the form of co-authored notes by Jonathan Hoskins, Sophie Risner and Effy Harle. Please message me for details.

Throughout the time of the research project, thanks to the bursary, I had been able to travel down to London many times to attend meet-ups and workshops; two of these occasions stand out as milestones, either by allowing me to forge valuable relationships or by shaping my thinking about the topic.

The first of these occasions allowed me to meet my mentor, Sarah Titheridge, art technician and founder of Art Tech Space. Sarah has worked as an art technician in the UK since 2009 across various galleries and museums including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the White Cube gallery and many more.

She founded ArtTechSpace in 2012 as a much-needed networking platform for art technicians and employers. But ArtTechSpace is much more than that; a forum where you can find out about employment opportunities, meet other technicians, share techniques and tools, find out about training opportunities. Sarah started organising art tech meet-ups in London as part of ArtTechSpace’s events. By the time I had started the research project, they have also launched a meetup for women art technicians.

On May the 10th I had attended my first female art tech meet-up in London. It was a real milestone in the project as it was the first time I had met fellow women techs – not just one or two, but a whole crowd. It was a great convivial event, where I had a chance to introduce the research project and chat about the experiences of other women in the trade. I came away feeling recharged and with a dozen emails addresses in my notebook, I felt I had finally really started to make progress.

I had asked Sarah to be my mentor for the project following this meetup. I benefited from face to face discussions and skype and email sessions with her throughout the project. Having conversations with someone who has 10+ years of experience in the art technician world has given me the perspective to reflect on the industry, and her work with ATS has given me inspiration about the tangible change that can be made.

Come April, when the news of the bursary was doing the rounds on social media, it dawned on me; this might be a much bigger project than I intended to take on. I was pretty stunned by the prospect of, well, not knowing what the heck I was doing. I felt pretty alone with it all and largely out of depth.

I wanted to create a research project about the lack of female technicians but the last time I did any kind of ‘academic’ research was on my fine art course, where tutors were proud of the fact that we didn’t have to write a thesis and all of our written coursework was done in bite-sized essays.

At this point, I envisioned my project to take the form of academic research, much like a thesis with case studies and a report, but at the same time I also wanted to meet fellow practitioners outside of my city to create a network of practitioners and organisations that support the ‘feminist building project’.

In the first few weeks of April, I meet with individuals who would be able to help with methodology, as I was terrified of doing the ‘wrong’ thing. I wanted to get a clear plan in my head of how I would build a project up. The first of these sessions took place in London where I met with Beth Bramich, Research Coordinator of Afterall. I had known Beth back from university and knew that she is a well of knowledge when it comes to navigating the intersections of research and contemporary art world.

We met for a coffee at the Southbank Centre and chatted about a lot of things; from anxieties around working in the arts to what the best pitch looks like when you approach someone with your ideas. She has introduced me to what a literature review is and whether it might be useful to me to establish a theoretical foundation. We spoke about how I might get started by writing and sending a survey to a small number of people which would serve as my initial data. This small survey then could be followed up with a number of case studies. Beth had signposted me to various resources, including a handy guide on ‘Writing a research proposal’ and pointed out the potential to use this opportunity to forge partnerships.

Beth and I discussed what outcomes I might work towards with the project and boiled it down to three key targets; creating a network of practitioners, a collection of case studies and survey, finally a policy document which recommends best practice for UK art institutions. She recommended looking at existing policy documents, such as a-n’s Paying Artists campaign and Birmingham’s Steamhouse, which was founded following extensive research into maker spaces nationwide.

Finally, Beth and I discussed the possibility of applying for further funding in the future, to be able to pay for my time spent on the project. ACE’s new Research and Development Grant seemed like a fitting choice for what I wanted to do. Unfortunately though, applying for more funding means more work to do, even if you don’t succeed, and if you do, more reporting, adding on far more work than it benefits a project in such initial stages. This is why, after some consideration, I decided not to go for the R&D Grant at this point. It seemed more productive to reconsider this later down the line when I had already made some solid progress.

One of the main issues I have working on a self-initiated project like this is that although the bursary is great to cover travel costs and to pay for mentoring, it’s not sufficient to subsidise for my time. My current job in April was two days a week which wasn’t enough to cover all my costs. I knew I had to take on more regular work soon, as I didn’t have enough teching jobs at the time to fill in the gaps. This made me worried as I wasn’t sure how to juggle two jobs and manage a project like this at the same time.

Throughout April, I continued to seek advice everyone I could around me, but the more people I spoke to, the bigger the project grew until it became so untangled I could hardly see out of it. It was great to sketch up a big, ambitious plan, but I needed to get my bearings on how I would make even a small part of it happen within the given parameters. The project became a hot air balloon, and was about the fly off, without me.

Since March 2018 I was part of a feminist artist group called The Ultras, initiated by Eastside Project. The collective met regularly, usually in Birmingham. The Ultras become a sort of grounding for me throughout the year; The Ultras is not an outcome based environment, where you are judged according to your achievements, but a convivial, non-judgemental space to grow the courage to make the steps necessary in our lives as artists, makers, teachers, designers, researchers.

I realised that in order to realise this project I need to develop my support structures as an artist and organiser. I will always have multiple jobs to manage and one too many projects to work on, so I need to structure my life in a way that I am supported by ever-growing circles of friends, collaborators, colleagues, and organisations. In a way, I’m talking about an artists’ hierarchy of needs; to put it simply, The Ultras is a perfect example of a group that supports my ‘Self-esteem needs’.

I wanted to seek a similar partnership and support group locally as well. I couple of months into my project I became part of New Art Exchange’s Experimentor Programme. As one of their core artists, I receive mentoring and advice on work in progress. Since I had worked at NAE as a freelance technician before, it great to work with them in a different capacity. I was able to work with NAE’s head technician to develop their changeover routines and recruitment. I will continue to consult with them on developing a more comprehensive guide for other galleries to develop a more diverse technical team and more rewarding changeover routines.

Shortly after the announcement of my AN Bursary, I was overwhelmed by the widespread support for the project on social media. Women who work as art technicians nationwide contacted me and many men expressed their support too. For a while it felt like I had a thousand eyes and ears; people sent me links to interesting initiatives, they shared relevant resources.

The hive mind was a great resource of knowledge but also a source of anxiety. The elevated interest in what I was doing intimidated me and made me quite unsure of myself. I felt like I had definitely put my finger on an important question but had no answers yet and only a half-baked idea about how I might get there. All of this was a similar feeling to how I felt when I had first started working as a technician.

I’ve always tried to ‘be the change that I wanted to see’ and that’s what lead me to work as an art technician at the first place. It frustrated me to see so many of my friends from uni building impressive exhibitions and earning much more per the hour than I did at the time for my office based admin role at a gallery. It seemed unfair and I felt compelled to challenge what seemed to me as a boy club from the outside.

It took me two years to summon up the courage to finally ask for tech work at the same gallery. I actually spent some of those two years studying; gaining qualifications in carpentry and joinery and furniture making while also working in varying assistant roles in galleries. Yet when I finally got offered tech work, I still felt unqualified. It was pointed out to me by someone else, that it’s very telling that I felt compelled to gain qualifications even before I dared to approach the lead technician at the gallery.

This chronic impostor syndrome is something I’ve learnt to live with and control. I’m working towards shaking it off, but it’s a long process to unlearn these things; sometimes I still get nervous sweats when I’m unsure of how to adjust the angle on a particular brand of saw or if I forget the name of a specific drill bit. I think it is particularly challenging for a woman, to deal with these automatic responses in a male-dominated environment, especially when you are new to something and you are still learning. Exhibition installs can be stressful environments, with tight deadlines and little room for error.

You need a certain level of arrogance to come into something knowing that your knowledge and experience might be inefficient. You need a generous amount of blind self-confidence, and most importantly, the support and trust of your co-workers. You can’t make mistakes and learn from those mistakes without allies who are watching your back. This ‘tribal trust’ can be earnt or can be given; I believe that men are often given it before earning it and women will have a hard time working for it.

But, but, but…

But what do art technicians do anyway and why should I care? Art technicians often go under the radar, they are part of the invisible workforce behind art and exhibition production. We are rarely seen by the public eye (like some kind of rare bird), most of us work on a freelance basis with little or no job security (not so rare in the art world, unfortunately). Artists often take on this type of work to make ends meet; ‘teching’ can subsidise studio rent and other artist’s ‘essentials’. Besides learning practical skills on the job, it also offers the opportunity to build valuable work relationships with curators and institutions.

But where do most of the technicians come from? No, not from Mars, less mundane than that; from art schools! Although male students only represent a small percentage of fine art undergraduates, gallery technicians are mostly young, male fine art graduates – at least in my city, this has been the case for years. For one reason or another, female art graduates don’t seem to filter into this line of work.

The table below is from the Higher education student statistics showing the percentages of female, male and other students enrolled on Creative arts & design courses in the academic year 2016/17.

No more buts!

Many contemporary art galleries pledge to programme their exhibitions showing a high percentage of women artists, this effort for equal representation doesn’t affect their decision to employ a heavily male-dominated workforce when it comes to building the same exhibitions.

The above chart is from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation: Art Museum Staff Demographic Survey, from 2015. The survey took place across art museums in the USA. The second left column illustrates the male-female ratio of ‘Preparators/Handlers’.

As the report states ‘Many job categories are highly gender-specific, as shown in Figure 10. Facilities, Preparators/Handlers, Exhibition Design and Construction, … are heavily weighted towards Males.’ The report then goes on to say that Museum leadership roles are approximately equally staffed by male and female employees.

The art industry could and should be a petri dish for forward thinking trends, and be the first to close the gender gap present in jobs involving manual labour. To achieve this change, we need to make visible, the wonderful women already working in these roles and create new outlets for representation, training and networking.