July will see a fresh batch of newly-graduated artists leaving University, most with the ambition to live on income made in their chosen career (as opposed to in a bar, say). As an artist myself I know how difficult and unpredictable it can be to make a living in this field, but eight years after finishing my BA, I am working as a self-employed artist almost full time and getting by. Working for Intute over the last four years has been a big help; scouring the internet for resources (I think I have catalogued over 500 records now) has meant finding all sorts of free advice out there. These resources are just one way to develop your professional practice and find a suitable structure for your career.
Things are getting tougher with the recession and graduates will be competing for increasingly reduced funding and opportunities in the arts. Susan Jones, Director of programmes for a-n, The Artists Information Company, wrote this in a letter to the Guardian newspaper on 4th June 2009,
“Our research into artists’ employment in 2008 shows an 81% reduction in volume of openly offered work in October to December – 63% fewer commissions, 95% fewer residencies and no academic jobs listed. Factoring in evidence from the first quarter of 2009 suggests the reduction in the value of paid work this year could be as high as 44%.”
Not great news, but careers advice, networking and toolkits freely available on the internet are plentiful and searches in the Arts & Humanities section of Intute for things like opportunities or funding will return a number of resources. These results can then be specialised by filtering resource types (galleries or projects for example) or by date.
If you have little patience with searching through results (although this method could lead to finding new and unexpected resources!) then the following records are some hand picked resources from Intute that might be useful.
In addition to the big organisations we all know, such as the Arts Council and British Council, there are a number of regional organisations around the UK that offer some good advice on their websites; these are often free thanks to local Government funding or similar. Try LAN (Lancashire Arts Network) to start with, or Cheshire County Council’s Art Service, which offers some really fool-proof step-by-step guides to things like event managing. Other networks with free advice include Alias Arts in the South West of England, Creative North Yorkshire, Arts Derbyshire, and APD (Artists’ Professional Development Network). There is also Arts Admin and Artquest in London, Aspex and their ARC service in Portsmouth, ISIS in Newcastle upon Tyne and Art Sheffield. If you are particularly interested in Live or new media art then the New Work Network, liveartwork.com, Live Art Development Agency and this Guide to Good Practice in Collaborative Working Methods and New Media Tools Creation might be useful. You could also try a general new media keyword search. This is just a tiny selection of the art-related resources online, and is intended to focus on those with a good amount of freely available information.
For those who wish to subscribe to resources, a-n; the artists information company and Axis offer plenty for your money; a-n have toolkits, professional profiles, case-studies, they offer funding, an online network with your peers and access to events in your area. a-n’s AIR subscription for artists also includes £5 million public liability insurance as well as other benefits: this is actually cheaper than an insurance policy alone. I believe a-n are currently offering new graduates a free 12-month subscription too so really, there is no reason not to. On Axis artists can post a profile of their work, which can be found by other artist, curators and universities looking for artists and there is also a plethora of job opportunities to be found here.
Another place to follow developments and find interesting information is twitter; plenty of arts organisations use twitter and post links to interesting websites or news items.
Online networks can be great places to find like-minded artists, garner advice and locate opportunities. As well an a-n and Axis, Wooloo, based in Berlin and Rhizome, from the New Museum in New York are both interesting websites. There are many more out there, but my feeling is that some, including high-profile websites such as Saatchi online, are not worth joining as there is no selection process and you may find yourself as one face out of thousands, being shown alongside artists whose work you do not particularly admire. In my experience it has been most useful to use more specialised websites, where there is a real chance of communicating with other artists. These also tend to have truly useful advice based on the experience of others, as opposed to something akin to school careers advice that bears little relevance to the reality of making a living.
