AIR

Jack Hutchinson Podcasts on the need for actively lobbying the Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt and for raised awareness of the individual artist within these discussions.

With over fourteen and a half thousand members, AIR: Artists' Interaction and Representation is now the largest ever membership body for visual artists. Surveyed in 2009, 90% of our members confirmed they wanted AIR "to lead campaigns for increased representation of artists' concerns to government and policy-makers."

Now, more than ever, this is our priority.

This month's AIR Podcast is a roll call to lobby the Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt and make the case that the proposed 25-30% cuts to the arts would be catastrophic for the sector. Although Mr Hunt has so far failed to respond to AIR's request for a meeting, you can still contact him via his Twitter feed at @Jeremy_Hunt

You can also contribute directly to the Government's consultations on the spending cuts through their Spending Challenge and Your Freedom exercises, links to which can be found in the Campaigns section of the AIR homepage.

There is a need to raise awareness of the individual artist within these discussions. Some key facts include:

• 72% of artists are self-employed and as such have been given no specific support in the recession as 'sole traders' and 'small businesses'.
• 1 in 6 posts in universities are due to go and we know that universities are the 'top employers' of artists
• The value of openly offered paid work in the arts has dropped by 27% in the last twelve months when looked at against pre-recession (2007) data.
• Artists' long-term approach to career development means they are in effect 'social enterprises' mixing and matching resources and creatively seeking ways to finance and develop the application of their ideas and social relationships and thus small amounts of funding are well invested in artists.
• Surveys have shown that any income that artists make is largely returned into the communities in which they are located and thus automatically contributes to local sustainability.

Click here » to download the July edition of the AIR Podcast, free on iTunes.

First published: a-n.co.uk July 2010