Price tag

And so we lope into 2012, having survived Mayan predictions of the rapture/apocalypse and endless Best Of 2011 programmes on radio and telly. ‘Bests’ of any kind were in short supply last year: I’ve lost track of the number of friends who were happy to bid farewell to 2011 while cheerfully proclaiming that 2012 will be better. After all, how could it be worse?

That’s not a question most artists ask right now. Swingeing Arts Council cuts, deep reductions in local arts provision, the great financial Hoover that is the 2012 Olympics…the list goes on. Campaigns extolling both the social and economic benefits of the arts seem to have had little practical impact. Hatches have been duly battened for a hard and possibly long ride.

Plus ça change, of course: after all, artists have always been grafters and survivors. But the current climate of political hostility and economic austerity constitutes a kind of perfect storm that raises the question of what kind of sector will emerge once blue skies return.

Exhibit A is a report published just before the holidays by the Artists Information Company (AIR) assessing financial conditions for visual artists. Conditions are fairly grim: for instance, only 16% of artists have anything like a retirement plan. The AIR report is mainly about visual and applied arts, but it’s easy enough to get a sense of a broader picture: how many dancers, writers, and actors among your friends have long-term financial plans that don’t involve an inheritance or surprise Lottery win?

Another recent report confirmed that artists earn less than half of the UK national average salary, which itself has plunged in recent years. Alas, in many cases artists aren’t being helped by those still in a position to commission. Being generous, one could argue that public and private funders are themselves facing an unprecedented resource crunch and therefore have less to offer. Less generously, some funders know very well that artists are squeezed for work and are happy to squeeze further.

Such circumstances raise any number of questions for artists. Do you stick to your guns and proclaim ‘This is what I’m worth,’ even if it loses you a job? Do you instead work for peanuts and risk hating the work because you know that it barely puts bread on the table, not to mention degrading your experience and talent? Do you take only work you feel properly compensated for and do other jobs to pay the rent…all the while knowing that your practice as an artist is suffering as a result?

These are the big questions we ought to be asking ourselves, and each other, particularly as our government continues to shovel money and love to those professions considered ‘productive’ (with banks, amazingly, still leading the way). Others may choose to devalue the arts, both literally and figuratively. But artists should be the last ones to give in to that game.