Paying artist launches

The Paying artists campaign and website was launched on Monday, and has already gained lots of well-deserved support. If you would like to add your own support to the campaign, follow this link

The website contains a concise and comprehensive report about the need to support artists, case studies of galleries showing good practice, information about what change is needed and how to support the campaign.

Here is the foreword to the report:

Without artists there is no art.Artists are the innovators from which great art emerges and on which our society’s well-being depends.

It is through artists’ ideas, experiments and ingenuity that creative ideas and products
are made manifest.Art by its nature presents a wide range of levels of engagement and participation for people and audiences.Artists thrive on such engagement as an essential ingredient to feed what is their continuous, life-time’s dedication to a creative practice.

The world is always looking for new ways of seeing.Art practice – the collective performance of art making between materials, artists, artworks, galleries and people -
is an inter-disciplinary reflexive process that enables us all to rethink and re-imagine our realities, which creates cultural value.

Paying artists is about transforming opportunities for artists, galleries, funders and policy- makers alike. In removing the financial barriers faced by many artists, it will give publicly- funded galleries – and the public themselves – access to quality art which covers the spectrum of human experience.

It will bring value to the investment of all who fund the arts by encouraging and enabling diversity and equality of opportunity for all artists now and in the future. In doing so,
it will play a direct role in ensuring we retain our reputation here for supporting creative talent and delivering world-class art.

Now is the time to demonstrate in the arts how much we value art and value artists.
By working together to define and adopt practical steps and frameworks for good practice, we can safeguard and strengthen the symbiotic relationship visual artists have with publicly-funded institutions and with the communities and audiences they collectively serve.

a-n The Artists Information Company / AIR Artists Interaction and Representation

May 2014

for more information visit

http://www.payingartists.org.uk

AIR's UK-wide Paying Artists Survey

The first results of AIR's UK-wide Paying Artists Survey – which focuses on artists' experiences of publicly-funded galleries – reveal low earnings, miniscule or no fees at all for exhibiting, and shrinking production budgets.

The first set of results of a survey by AIR: Artists Interaction and Representation reveal that the majority of artists receive no fee at all for exhibiting work and most earn less than £10,000 a year from their practice.

Over 1000 artists took part in the UK-wide survey exploring artists’ experiences of exhibiting in publicly-funded venues in the UK. The survey was developed by DHA Communications within a wider campaign to highlight the need to pay and value artists for their vital contribution to arts and culture. The results will inform the next research stages which include discussions with galleries, professional networks and arts funders.

Key findings from the survey include some sobering figures on the income artists earn from their practice:

- 72% of artists earn up to £10K a year

- 17% earn between £10K and £20K

- Only 12% earn more than £20K

Sales, teaching and commissions were the key sources of income for artists, with most citing 'sharing their work with the public' as the most important reason for exhibiting. 

However, nearly half of all artists reported that exhibiting their work is prohibitively expensive.  

Key findings in relation to exhibiting include:

- 71% of artists surveyed had not received any fee at all for exhibiting. Of those who were paid a fee, over a third received less than £200. Over half expressed dissatisfaction with their fee when set against their experience and status

- 63% of artists have turned down an offer to exhibit for reasons including unsuitability of venue, lack of fees, or non-payment of expenses

- 62% of artists have exhibited in a publicly-subsidised gallery in the last three years

- Only 16 of 134 publicly-funded UK galleries were cited by artists as providing exemplary support for exhibiting artists

- Less than half received production support (technical assistance, etc) from the gallery and less than a third got expenses, such as covering the cost of transporting their work to a gallery

AIR Council member Caroline Wright said: “The aim of the survey is to generate advocacy including knowledge of good practice frameworks, and to shape positive policy change for artists. We hope the campaign will empower artists and galleries to work together to improve the current state of affairs.”

An infographic of the key survey findings can be viewed at www.a-n.co.uk/paying_artists.

Jack Hutchinson

Creative Scotland under scrutiny

http://new.a-n.co.uk/news/single/creative-scotland-under-scrutiny/25

Arts funding body Creative Scotland has been scrutinised by MSPs on the Scottish Parliament's Education and Culture Committee, with representatives from Scotland's visual arts sector giving evidence.

By Chris Sharratt on a-n news

Published 18th September 2012

Representatives from Scotland’s visual arts sector have given evidence to MSPs on the Scottish Parliament’s Education and Culture Committee, as it discussed the work of Creative Scotland, the arts funding body which replaced the Scottish Arts Council in 2010.

Francis McKee, director of Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA), and public artist Matt Baker were joined by Creative Scotland Chief Executive Andrew Dixon and Gwilym Gibbons, director, Shetland Arts Development Agency.

Baker, who is based in Dumfries and Galloway, raised concerns about the geographical bias of the funding body, accusing it of disregarding local input: “We’re getting large cultural producers being parachuted into our areas [by Creative Scotland], swallowing significant amounts of our local budget,” he said. “That’s left a lot of discord locally and been very destructive.”

Baker also criticized the organisation for a lack of transparency, a point picked up on by Francis McKee. He said: “It’s good dialogue face-to-face [with Creative Scotland], but there’s not enough dialogue publicly with the arts community, trust is being lost and that’s dangerous. There’s a communication gap that needs to be bridged – that communication has to happen.”

Despite the controversy surrounding the organisation’s funding decisions – Turner Prize nominee Luke Fowler has characterized it as "New Labour meets the politburo”, while Scottish poet Don Paterson, who won the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2010, recently described Creative Scotland as a "dysfunctional ant-heap" – the mood among the panel was good natured and professional rather than heated.

Poor communication by the organisation was a recurring theme throughout the session and on numerous occasions Dixon accepted that the organisation needed to improve on this: “I’m absolutely committed to transparency and I admit that we’re not getting it right,” he said.

Flexible funding

On the issue of changes to flexible funding for 49 organisations across Scotland announced in May, the deadline for which has since been extended by six months, McKee said: “It’s a fraught process because it’s change for a start. There have been problems along the way and those problems are still evolving.”

McKee explained that an organisation like CCA couldn’t operate on a project-by-project basis, as Creative Scotland's changes initially required it to, due to the need for long-term and strategic planning. He acknowledged that Creative Scotland had modified the process in order to enable the organisation to apply for project funding across a two-year period.
“There’s been a constant moving of the parameters which are helping us as we go, and that has been a positive change,” he said. “They’re changes we need to see."

Baker said that the issues around flexible funding were largely irrelevant to him. Describing the artist-led organisations and initiatives that he was involved with, he said: “We’re not expecting core funding, we’re after advocacy and help from Creative Scotland to allow us to use the arts for the wider good. And [in that area] quite a lot of the noises we’re hearing are quite good.”

McKee added that there were concerns among flexibly funded organisations around the use of Lottery funding. He said: “Perhaps on behalf of all the flexibly-funded organisations, I should say that there’s a worry about the relationship to the Lottery. The Lottery looks as if it’s project funded, and we’re now talking about more sustainable funding through the Lottery. We all welcome this, but we just want to know that the Lottery agrees."