Publications

With inflation about to hit a ten-year high¹, to what extent can the practices of artists nowadays resist the pressures of the real world?

Whilst public funding for the arts is set to decline in the coming years² – impacting first on revenue-funded arts organisations and subsequently on individual artists as reductions in artistic programme budgets kick in – how will practising artists be able to maintain high professional standards and quality in their work?

Our own research and that of others reveals artists to be at the end of the food chain. The overall size of the artist-market has the effect of encouraging ‘volunteering’ and self-financing of projects – although the rhetoric places ‘artists at the centre’, they’re more frequently at the margins when arts budgets are set, not to mention when policies are formed.

Whilst more often there’s public funding for marketing and management, it’s the artists who will deliver the ‘product’ who are expected either to raise their own resources or failing that, to contribute on a shoe-string³. Consider in comparison the performing arts where dancers and actors are remunerated both for rehearsal time and the performances themselves.

Higher inflation rates impact on day-to-day professional costs including travel, purchase of services and supplies, insurances and so on. As one artist commented:

“I live in a semi-rural location, having to travel is therefore a major part of my practice. Even when working on ‘local’ commissions, time and expenses for travel are a factor. Paid work and commissions quite often do not realistically cover travel.”⁴

Budgets for publicly-funded projects devised in January 2006 probably didn’t take into account the sharp rises in energy costs that have ricocheted across 21st century living and working costs. The more artists themselves provide a hidden subsidy for the public sector by working longer hours than they anticipated to complete a project, by covering their professional expenses from household income, the less likely it is that the profession of artist will be recognised. Rising levels of liability and indemnification cover within public projects and a litigious society suggest that it’s more important than ever before for artists to gain access to affordable insurance schemes⁵.

It needs positive action by arts employers such as the Green Heart Project⁶ that was promoted by a-n in October to maintain a professional environment for practitioners: “The artist’s strength in society should be measured not merely by what they make, but by how they think. We recognise the value of creative thinking in leading both physical and social change, and the artist as not just a ‘maker’, but as a maker of change”. As artist and a-n+AIR member Simon Honey commented: “I have worked on art and environmental projects like this previously. But I suppose this experience differs from these: the fact that the money is already there and the systems are set up to ensure that something will come out of the consultation that will benefit the local community and long-term. It’s a sustainable approach, and if this was not the case, then I would not have taken the project on.” 5

Such collaborations depend on developing professional and mutually-beneficial relationships that transcend the ‘supply and demand’ route. It is this area that is explored in the newest a-n Collections⁷, now published. Here, Editor Gillian Nicol has sought to expose the expectations within the collaborative process, highlighting both the frictions and benefits within professional interaction within a wider public realm. Artists who enter this domain require a multiplicity of skills – not only creative and artistic – but things like tenacity, diplomacy and the capability, as Samantha Clark says of addressing how to “[spin] an awful lot of plates at once”.

Rather than blueprints and models for regeneration – those external agendas again – Nils Norman makes the case for the artist’s role being to insert “pockets of disorder” – to bring in the “oppositional thinking” that generates creative friction from which inspirational art may emerge.

Susan Jones
Director of Programmes

¹ Inflation hit 3% in January, attributed in part to a trebling of oil prices since 2003.

² For example, a 5% cut is forecast in the grant aid from government to Arts Council England in 2008. We also continue to see policy shifts in local authorities that effectively sideline arts into broad social inclusion and well-being programmes – see Peter Mayes’ Comment on www.a-n.co.uk/articles

³ See www.a-n.co.uk/fees_&_payments – Good practice in paying artists – ‘FAQs around paying artists’ for a recent enquiry in this respect

⁴ Making a living as an artist Artist’s Case study 4

⁵ a-n has secured funds through Arts Council England’s Artists’ Insights programme for research into an suitable insurance scheme for practising artists who are members of AIR to be available during 2007 – click here for AIR sign up.

⁶ www.greenheartpartnership.org

⁷ a-n Collections: Playing up introducing a new format, introducing themes and key texts from a-n’s archive and elsewhere, providing bibliography and internet links to support users’ extended personal research and enquiry.

a-n

First published: a-n Magazine February 2007