a-n: Valuing Artists strategy
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Yesterday a-n launched a five-year strategy to tackle the growing challenges artists face in sustaining their careers.
The Valuing Artists strategy was developed with input from a-n’s members and AIR Council. The strategy has a fundamental aim of ensuring policy makers and commissioners value the artist as well as the art.
The strategy aims to build support for:
- A Brexit that works for visual artists in the UK, focusing on freedom of movement, residency and rights and, beyond 2019, will continue to promote the rights of artists as they are affected by our withdrawal from the EU by exploring solutions to the issues our members face.
- More sustainable livelihoods for visual artists by making the case for fair payment of artists; to understand and articulate the wider range of issues which impact on artists’ livelihoods and the nature of their practice today; and promote credible solutions to these issues to government.
- Greater diversity in the visual arts sector by using a-n’s intelligence around the scale and impact of diversity as it is reflected in artist-led practice today, while promoting greater diversity at all levels of the sector.
a-n member research shows that:
- The majority of artists still earn less than £10k a year, are self-employed, juggling part-time, low-paid jobs to support themselves in what is a largely unregulated and complex marketplace.
- Shifts in tax credit regulation, the continued reduction in the budgets of traditional employers (local authority and educational cuts in particular) and rising materials, studio and living costs, are already hitting artists hard.
- Uncertainty over Brexit is a major issue and impacts on the already precarious livings of artists.
The full strategy can be read here.
