Sustaining the arts
JA
August 19
(via)
On Tuesday, the Australia Council released two research projects on the working lives of professional artists: ‘What’s Your Other Job’ by Stuart Cunningham and his team from the Queensland University of Technology, and ‘Do You Really Expect to Get Paid’ by David Throsby and Anita Zednik of Macquarie.
The titles probably give you a fair idea of the gist, but in any case the reports pointed to two things: one, that professional artists generally made very little income from their work, and second, that they often supplemented this by taking up jobs in related industries, which in turn cut into their creative output. The Age provided this handy summary:
Average annual income of artists is well below the average wage – just $37,000 compared with $43,400 in 2006 – and the gap is widening.
Sixteen per cent of artists earn less than $10,000 a year directly from their art, although 5 per cent earn more than $100,000.
(Women, as it turns out, earn even less – around $5000)
Arts bureaucrats and administrators have a higher and more secure income than artists.
A third to a half of artists in Australia put their skills to use in other industries.
There are fewer authors, painters, potters, actors and dancers than in 2001, but more dance teachers, photographers, graphic designers and book editors.
Also sobering was the news that ‘writers, painters and dancers are doing it toughest. About two-thirds of professional writers earned less than $4000 in the 2007-08 financial year directly from their writings.’ As a result, many are now working as copywriters, editors and journalists.
There’s no doubt that these stats are disappointing, but I’m wary of becoming drunk with pessimism here. Assertions about the ‘death of the industry’ etc are much too sensationalist, and in any case don’t help anyone at the end of the day. Many corners are thriving and there’s a chance, for example, that there are fewer authors, painters, actors and so on because those surveyed might not have felt entitled to identify themselves with their chosen profession (which Spike has written on before, here). Then again, this probably says something in itself, and, broadly speaking, these reports do point to a wider cultural shift in term of how we perceive the arts, and how those within the industry are coping in the meantime.
In March 2010, OzCo also released a report entitled ‘More bums than on seats’, which declared that: ‘Nearly three quarters of Australians attended the arts last year and, most impressively, four out of ten of us creatively participated in the arts – that’s over 7.2 million people exploring art around the country.’
So then, this decline then is not due necessarily to lack of audiences or of demand. We clearly love our cultural sector – we like our calendars packed full with festivals, our various literary prizes, our avant-garde, our classical, our jazz, our rap, our modern galleries and our tiny local theatres. My cynical side also wants to point out that governments and the media too love the arts. That is, they love it when they can boast about the artist/actor/writer success story who has made it big both here and overseas, and use it as a benchmark for how wonderful and talented we all are.
The burning question then, I think becomes one of value – namely, how much do we value our creative industries, and what we are prepared to do to sustain them? Rather then simply a question of money, this also has a wider cultural core.
Both Throsby and OzCo CEO Kathy Keele alluded to the reality of undervalued skills, tied in with the myth of the ‘lazy artist’. Throsby had this to say on Tuesday’s 7.30 Report:
What people don’t realise is that the professional standards that are required to operate at a high level in the arts are every bit as demanding as the professional standards that would be required of a surgeon or a lawyer.
And, from Keele:
Australian artists are not sitting around expecting to be paid; instead they’re putting their creativity and education to good use by working in industries outside their own, and making a significant contribution to the economy. They may be musicians working as teachers, writers working as editors, visual artists who design websites or actors who run corporate training.
We can see clearly how creative talents nurtured through artistic practice are being used to build cultural industries and enhance communities and business, but the trade off is that artists have less time and opportunity to practice their art.
I wonder also how much the increasing emphasis on economic growth has affected these professions. Hilary Glow and Stella Minahan have a great short essay on this in the forthcoming September issue, and I’ll quote from it here:
The arts, on the other hand, have been persuaded to comply with business thinking, strategic planning and management know-how—to internalise the idea that the business model is part of a progressive and modernising agenda that will rescue the arts from obscurity and poverty.
… Since the 1980s, the view that the arts are an undeniable public good beyond criticism was superseded by demands to justify funding in terms of tangible benefits. In particular this involved their service to the tourism, information and entertainment industries. These priorities persist in guiding arts policy. Facing reduced government support, the arts are busy addressing the expectations of private and corporate sponsors, planning for audience development, finding linkages with broadcasting technologies, and international marketing opportunities.
If one needed a clearer example of how the arts rank in terms of priority, you could just as easily look to the impending election. For a while, the Greens were the only party to have released an arts policy and, though the ALP and the Coalition have joined the conversation at the 11th hour, it arguably remains the most comprehensive of the three. Labor have pledged $10 million to the Australia Council for 150 new artistic works, presentations and fellowships, and the Coalition have promised $70 million, however as far as I can tell $60 million of this is tied up in a ‘loan fund’ for local films. Tony Abbott’s vague response on Q&A about maintaining the status quo probably says enough about his vision when it comes the creative.
There’s so much more to go into, but this post has gone on long enough. Here’s one final point on economic value from Throsby, also from The 7.30 Report:
Our films, our literature, our paintings, our visual artists, our actors – these are all things which represent ourselves, not just to ourselves, but to the world at large. And in fact as an economist, I would call that a public good.
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Comments
19 Aug 10 at 11:22
Out of curiosity, has there ever been a time when the average income of artists from their creative endeavours has been comparable to that of a person employed in a ‘normal’ job? It seems to me that, unless you are one of the lucky few whose inheritance guarantees a certain financial safety net, artists are always going to have to look for ways to subsidise their time spent producing creative output.
...19 Aug 10 at 22:11
Yes I doubt that the average income of artists has ever been equal to that of ‘normal’ jobs (although I guess that really depends on what you’re comparing). While artists will probably always have to supplement their work with ‘day jobs’, the question is really to what extent. The more you make from say writing, the less you might need to make up for this with other work, which again equals more time to write.
...24 Aug 10 at 17:36
One of the key findings that emerges from these studies is that folk working in the arts often don’t have a ‘normal’ job – or at least, their ‘main job’ is not a normal job. In fact the (misleadingly titled) census based study – What’s your other job? – shows that ‘self-employment’ levels in arts occupations run at much higher rates than the workforce as a whole. In arts occupations less than 50% work as employees, compared to about 90% in the workforce as a whole. Also, one element missing from the Throsby study is an analysis of the relationship between income & expenses in the primary creative practice. If average expenses are deducted from average incomes (which are, as I understand it, before tax & expenses figures) the average figures are a lot bleaker. Because such a high proportion of artists operate their creative practices as ‘sole trader/non-employees’ it may be better to think not of arts jobs, but of arts (micro) businesses. This is ceratainly the approach that has dominated for the last decade since the introduction of the new tax system with the need for non-employee workers to operate with an ABN (I think that B stands for business) .. so if you have one, you’re in (probably small) business.
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