Back from a few days in Edinburgh. A lovely time visiting friends and art (I studied at eca so it’s an obligatory biannual visit). But kind of glad to be home and to crack on with the next exciting project (more on that soon)!
Quite a while ago I was chatting to someone from Arts Council in Manchester and he mentioned they were planning to split their jobs board into paid and voluntary sections. He said the volume of unpaid work was making the listings almost useless for many arts professionals. I nodded eagerly and looked forward to it happening. Imagine my delight yesterday when I got back and saw this link from Jack Hutchinson on Facebook:
Amazing! No more unpaid adverts at all while they work out a way to only include genuine volunteering and paid work within minimum wage guidelines. Here’s what the arts council have said about their decision:
“Please note that due to the high volume of adverts for unpaid opportunities that contravene Minimum Wage Regulations we are temporarily suspending adverts for unpaid work, work experience, voluntary roles or internships. This is so we can make developments to the website that will help users to post genuine volunteering opportunities only and stay within Minimum Wage Regulations.
Arts Council England is committed to ensuring that artists and those who work in the creative industries are properly remunerated for any work that they do. We recognise that there is great value in people having access to proper work experience, where it is offered and arranged properly and is a mutually beneficial arrangement, but that this should never be used as a way of attempting to circumvent the Minimum Wage Regulations.
We will continue to accept adverts for paid employment and will let you know when we expect the facility to be live once more. Thanks for your patience while we address this important issue”
HOORAH.
