After the Spending Review, the campaigns continue

As the analysis of the Spending Review comes in, campaigning for the arts is set to continue, writes Julie McCalden.


Having been told to plan for 20% or 40% cuts, the arts are breathing a collective sigh of relief after the chancellor George Osborne’s Spending Review and Autumn Statement on Wednesday.

Had a 40% cut been implemented, Arts Council England’s budget would have been decimated to just £186m, compared to £453m in the final year of the Labour government and £325m at the end of the coalition.

In an unexpected move, Arts Council England were not only spared but promised a modest increase in cash (£10million per annum). National galleries and museums will also see increased budgets and free entry will be protected.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport will still receive cuts of 20% to be targeted at its core administration budget (yet to be specified) and further cuts to local authority budgets of £6.1bn by 2019-20 will complicate matters.

If Arts Council England and National Portfolio Organisations have come out relatively unscathed, the picture is not so rosy for those at the bottom of the food chain.

While many artists, who are largely self-employed and low-paid, will be celebrating the u-turn on changes to tax-credits, concerns about the introduction of Universal Credit remain. In a joint statement released ahead of the spending review, the Scottish Artists Union (SAU) and Artists’ Union England (AUE) said: “We believe that the stringent enforcement conditions of Universal Credit will result in far greater hardship and debt for artists and makers in receipt of top-up benefits.”

The new conditions include a minimum level of assumed earnings based on hours worked and the minimum wage.Claimants are also required to submit monthly accounts, which is inconsistent with the variable frequency of artists’ paid work opportunities and the often lump-sum nature of their payments.

Creative education

The deterioration of creative education in schools is another concern for the sector. While Osborne promised increased funding to attract new teachers, this will be largely aimed at STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) to help implement plans for an English Baccalaureate (EBacc).

The EBacc requires pupils to study a minimum of seven GCSEs, but includes no creative subjects; risking art, dance, design, drama, music and other creative subjects disappearing from children’s education altogether. The Bacc for the future campaign aims to challenge plans for the EBacc, which risks eroding access to the arts for young people, increasing inequality of opportunity when it comes to experiencing culture and further diminishing entryways to working in the arts.

For those just embarking on their careers, changes to student loan repayments and housing benefit caps will add to the difficulties faced by artists when trying to establish their practices.

All of this will negatively impact on the lack of diversity that already characterises the arts. The findings of the recent Panic!survey into social mobility in the sector confirmed that class, gender and ethnicity still have a major influence on a person’s ability to enter, progress and succeed in the arts.

The survey revealed that it is becoming increasingly difficult for those without other means of financial support to break into the sector, with young people from less well-off backgrounds being at a particular disadvantage. This inequality inevitably results in the production of cultural forms that are mainly reflective of a small, and privileged, spectrum of human experience. The majority of people remain excluded both from arts production and consumption.

Greet with caution

So although on the face of it positive for the top rung of the arts, Osborne’s announcement should be greeted with caution. Not least because it has been based on a dramatic reassessment of economic forecasts by the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR), which landed Osborne a windfall of £27billion in time for his announcements.

His proposed budget allows no room for error on predictions wildly different to those made just five months ago. From an organisation without a great success rate in accurate forecasts this throws considerable doubt on the deliverability of Osborne’s promises.

However, it is good news that the chancellor acknowledged the economic benefits that the arts bring to Britain, commenting that a quarter of a £1trillion added to the economy from a £1billion investment was ‘not a bad return’. He went as far to say that “deep cuts in the small budget of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport are a false economy” – a point the sector has been arguing since 2010.

It is important that the sector now galvanises around these remarks, not just to hold Osborne to account in the event of adjustments to this budget impacting on the arts, but to begin to make bolder demands for increased funding. The Show Culture Some Love campaign supports the case for greater investment in arts and culture. Its main aims are to campaign for an end to the cuts in arts budgets caused by the pro-austerity policies of the current government and to make the case for increased investment.

Cultural campaigns

Paying Artists campaign
The Paying Artists campaign aims to secure payment for artists who exhibit in publicly-funded galleries. We believe paying artists for the work they do will mean that, in years to come, we’ll still be able to access quality art that reflects the broadest possible spectrum of human experience.

Whether you’re an artist, curator, gallery visitor, art student, policy maker or run a gallery, sign up to the campaign. You can join the debate by following @AIR_artists and using the hashtag #payingartists.

SAU / AUE on Universal Credit
A campaign has been launched by Scottish and English artists’ unions, with the aim of helping freelance and self-employed workers who will be affected by changes to the taxation and benefits system through the introduction of Universal Credit.

Supporters of the campaign can get involved by doing a number of things. This includes: downloading the campaign statement and forwarding to local MPs; arranging a meeting with your MP; and asking your MP to take the issue to the Department for Work & Pensions.

Bacc for the future
The Bacc for the future campaign aims to challenge the implementation of the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) which currently includes no creative subjects and is expected to be undertaken by at least 90% of pupils.

As an individual, you can support the campaign by signing the petition and spread the word by telling your colleagues, friends and family as well as through social media using the hash tag #baccforthefuture.

Show Culture Some Love
The Show Culture Some Love campaign believes there is a powerful case against austerity and supports the case for greater investment in arts and culture.

You can support the campaign and their 6 pledges by liking the facebook page and inviting your friends to join, as well as following them on twitter.


http://www.payingartists.org.uk/2015/11/after-the-spending-review-the-campaigns-continue/

What are artists really worth? Funding, friction and the future of art

As artists find themselves at the end of the cultural food chain, Susan Jones suggests a new activism to reaffirm their status

 

 

The so-called golden age of arts funding has given way to debilitating austerity, particularly for artists who find themselves at the end of a long food chain, divorced from arts funding and policy decision making. But when did these divisions start and how can artists use activism to create meaningful change for the future?

The millennium saw arts funding increased through imaginative strategies and policies. Artists and the artist-led flourished. With the lottery-financed arts buildings came a new wave of curatorial positions – and in 2006, the advent of cultural leadership roles designed to "nurture and develop dynamic and diverse leaders to equip them for the challenges of the 21st century" (although scant few of these went to practitioners). Divisions between artists and the public were apparent too.

In 2013, the widening divide between rich and poor is manifesting itself clearly in the arts. Contributing to debates on more imaginative ways to measure cultural value, Louis Barrabas says: "The creative sector is full of scuttling scavenging bottom-feeders." What he's describing are the middle people whose infrastructural preferences over recent years have by default resulted in a steady nibbling away at budgets, resources and recognition factors – things that used to be the territory of artists.

In the arts infrastructure developed since the early noughties, artists weren't invited around the table with the curators, directors and consultants. Peer review was abandoned by Arts Council England as it was deemed too expensive, long-winded and subjective. In the arts ecology of today, it's almost as if artists have to be held in suspended animation, waiting for someone to need them.

Where has all the money gone?

In 1989 the salary of an artform officer in what was then a regional arts association pretty much matched the sum offered for an artist's fellowship, which in those days tended to be for a year. By 2004, the salaries of arts officers in the funding system (when index-linked) were 41% higher than those in 1989/90. Advertised in May 2013, an Arts Council England salary for a relationship manager in its London office is £31,623 – 8% higher than the equivalent pay in 2004 when index-linked. Consider this against an example of an artist's fellowship, such as the Stanley Picker Fellowship in Design & Fine Art 2013, which is paying £12,000.

Published in May 2013, Arts Council England's economic impact report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research shows that full-time earnings in the arts have risen by 6.8% in the past five years, while part-time earnings – one might surmise these to include freelancers and artists – have decreased by 5.3%. As Mark Robinson, a former ACE director and now arts consultant, asks: "Are we squeezing our key nutrients – the artists and creative freelancers – and widening inequality in our own sector?"

Our own a-n research indicated that in 2004, the exhibition fee for artists holding a solo exhibition in a major gallery was £1,000. In 2013, a new survey from AIR indicates that less than a third of artists exhibiting in publicly-funded flagship galleries in Arts Council portfolios are getting any fee at all – with £200 being the most likely figure. While the majority want to share their work with the public, nearly half the artists surveyed reported that it's simply too expensive to exhibit.

Another of our surveys, this time on openly offered jobs and opportunities for artists in 2012, revealed a steady decline in the volume of paid work for artists. In 2012, the overall value of work on offer to artists was £5m (20%) less than in the pre-recession year of 2007. Only 39% of jobs and opportunities in 2012 offered to pay anything to artists, in comparison with 57% in the recession year of 2008. And the value of residencies has dropped to an all time low, amounting to just over 1% of the value of all work offered in 2012. These paid an average fee of £2,600, in contrast to a £7,354 average in 2011 and £6,342 in 2007.

Art feeds the soul but who feeds the artist?

Artists are at the very end of the arts food chain. For artists and their practice, the future is littered with uncertainty for a variety of reasons:

• The variable length and terms of contracts and commissions
• The unpredictability of work offers and variable income
• The short notice of engagements and commissions
• The delays in the start of a production
• The sequential stop/start patterns of employment
• Managing concurrent projects and contracts
• The need to be available at all and/or unsociable hours for work
• Unpredictable locations of work
• Changes in fashion, cultural trends and market preferences

Artists seemingly love their practice so much that it's assumed they will be delighted with any opportunity they get to gift it to others. Increasingly, artists find themselves shoe-horned (through financial necessity or the arts PR machine) into making art or delivering projects, the efficacy of which are measured in terms of their instrumental powers – how well they serve the needs of others (achieve social improvement such as regeneration; uplift the lives of disadvantaged people; fill the 'arts gap' in school curricula; contribute to the economy).
As Hans Abbing commented in Why are artists poor?: "Although the arts can operate successfully in the marketplace, their natural affinity is with gift-giving rather than with commercial exchange. People believe that artists are selflessly dedicated to art, that price does not reflect quality and that the arts are free."

Negotiating your status and practice

So how might artists prepare for a different kind of role in determining the status of their art and their profession? Researching the conditions for collaboration, Chris Fremantle comments: "Artists very often see themselves without much power – is collaboration the context for a new dynamic between artists and those they seek to have relationships with, or at least a signal of hope for that?"
A symposium held in Stoke-on-Trent in 2011 explored working contexts for artists in an age of austerity. A manifesto was drawn up by artists and arts workers present, designed to create strength of purpose and solidarity amongst practitioners. The manifesto stated:

1) Be active: support each other
2) Be active: be an activist
3) Be active: be an artist.
4) Value yourself, your time and your skills
5) Share your knowledge and resources
6) Focus, strategise and plan.
7) Be critical, be fair
8) Know your rights

Reporting on the event, artist Nikki Pugh said: "It was notable that all the rules seemed to be independent of the current economic climate. The issues of prime concern to us were to keep making work of high quality; to be rewarded (financially or otherwise) fairly for our work; and to be part of wider, mutually and innovatively generous networks."

When only extended by the artist , however, this generosity can result in exploitation. Artists continually report lower or no fee offers from commissioners and employers. But institutional budgets exist to enable arts programmes to deliver 'great art' to audiences. Surely how they are constructed can be open to review, negotiation and reallocation?

For the sake of future arts, we really do need to demonstrate how much we value artists. The following statement (though made more than three decades ago and many miles from the UK) sums up why mutuality is vital: "Artists stand at the centre of all arts practice. Without the artist's ability to practice his/her own art, there is no literature, no music, no dance, no painting, no theatre, no film-making – no art of any kind."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2013/jun/24/pay-artists-funding-friction-future?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487