Income

Shetland Arts has announced it is offering 15 staff voluntary redundancy in an attempt “to avoid the need for compulsory redundancies”.

The redundancies will be offered to staff at office and manager level. 

The organisation's trust said the measures were necessary due to its current financial situation, after commercial income failed to return to pre-Covid levels and emergency funding had ended, with costs “continuing to escalate”.

“This reduction in commercial income and increasing costs means the organisation needs to make savings,” a spokesperson for the trust said.

According to local press, total savings of around £318,000 need to be made, with around half of those savings found already.

Freelance creative workers living in the North of the UK are suffering from three significant pay gaps, a new poll has found.

Recruitment agency Major Players polled 450 digital, marketing, product and creative workers in the Midlands, North East, North, West Yorkshire & the Humber and Scotland, and found pay gaps relating to gender, ethnicity and identity.

The poll found the pay skew in favour of men working within freelance roles in the north was “considerably higher” than the UK average, at 15.9%.

An ethnicity pay gap was also found on creative assignments, with Asian, Black, Mixed, Arabic or Other background freelancers earning an average of 7.1% less than their counterparts.

The poll also revealed LGBT+ freelancers in the north earned on average 7% less than the average UK day rates. This gap was also considerably higher than the UK average LGBT+ pay gap of 1.4%. 

The statistics underscore just one aspect of the challenges faced by minority freelancers, George Greenaway-Poole, Major Player’s Group Marketing Director wrote on LinkedIn.

“I saw a recent statistic which said that more than 35% of the LGBTQIA+ community hide their sexuality at work in fear of negativity or discrimination,” he said.

He added that for those who were ‘out’, repeatedly sharing aspects of their identities can be “emotionally draining”.

He suggested that businesses could help alleviate the pressures on LGBT+ workers by asking people for their pronouns, using inclusive language and gender-neutral terms and including visual cues in work settings, such as hanging rainbow flags.

Over £2.3m was paid to 873 artists and artists’ estates in Artist’s Resale Right (ARR) royalties by the Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS) in the first quarter of the year.

Of the 873 recipients, 53 were paid ARR royalty for the first time. The median payment for the quarter was £280, with over 60% of all royalties under £500.

£120m has been paid out in total to 5,900 artists and estates since 2006, when the right became UK law.

DACS Chief Executive Christian Zimmermann said ARR is a vital source of income for artists working in the UK.

“We know from our members how important these payments are to artists who use their royalties for living expenses, materials and studio space – helping sustain their practice,” Zimmerman added.

“Estates often use the money for cataloguing, archiving and restoration – making sure that the legacies of British artists are preserved for future generations."

Most independent artists who promote their own music releases make a loss, according to new research.  

The research by Pirate.com, a global music studio hosting 350,000 artists worldwide, found that 75% of musicians who spend money on promoting releases don't make it back. 

Over 1,000 live musicians, producers, rappers and MCs from the UK and US were asked how they promote their music.

Of these, 91% said they did so without the support of a label or manager.

Of the musicians surveyed 54% said they use social media for self-promotion, with 56% of these using it everyday.

The research highlights the increasing need for musicians to create additional, visual content in order to promote their work.

More than half (56%) of music creators said they will make visuals for their next release.

Dan Davis, Head of Community at Pirate.com, said: "Making music in the social media age means constantly jumping on new promotional trends.

"However, making content is rarely free and new revenue sources for artists aren’t emerging at the same rate as new trends."