Hearing artists’ voices

Recently I was asked to talk very briefly to a conference about why is it important for artists / creatives to be involved in developing plans for cultural activity and what impact could this have.

I have a lot to say about this and could happily have talked for hours but I was limited to five minutes! This is a longer version of the talk with all the detail that I had to take out for time added back in. This was originally commissioned by Culture Leicestershire for their Visioning a Creative and Cultural County Summer Project Day in July 2023, which was a thoroughly inspiring event and I am grateful for the invitation to take part and share my thoughts.

Cultural activity does not exist without creative people. Galleries would be empty rooms, theatres would have empty stages, there would be no novels, no films.  Yet for decades, high level decisions have been made about cultural activity and creative programming without those creatives being part of the conversation. Artists and creatives can end up being the afterthought, the service provider, the workshop leader despite being the face of the organisation / institution and the ones actually doing the engagement work and using their myriad skills for the benefit of the participants.

It’s absolutely right that participants & audiences are important to the organisations and that their needs should be addressed but that should not mean that the creatives are less important. I’m absolutely not suggesting that artists should come before audiences. There shouldn’t be a hierarchy with artists at the bottom, Yet it can often feel like that. There is no reason why this relationship shouldn’t be equal in value. The situation as it stands in many organisations is hugely disempowering to creatives. It demonstrates how little they are valued by wider society and particularly by those organisations who should be championing and supporting them.

Most artists / creatives have the massive challenge of being freelance or self-employed too which means there is no one covering their sick pay, let alone holiday pay. There is no one checking contracts for freelance work (if they even get a contract) to see if they are unwittingly signing away their rights, there is no one else to chase up invoices.

Creative freelancers have to create their own training and development opportunities unpaid, they have to pitch for work – giving up their valuable ideas and experience in the hope that they will get picked and that no-one on the panel ‘borrows’ their brilliant idea. Often creatives are doing difficult work with emotionally-draining subjects or with participants who have challenging behaviours or disclose awful things, and 99% of the time the artists are getting no support or recognition of the difficulties this can create. 

We usually work alone and only very rarely can a creative afford to buy in the kind of transformational support a mentor or coach can give. We are meant to just get on with it and be pleased we have any paid work. Professional development, personal and creative growth is undervalued and under supported even though it is clear just how transformational this can be. 

Most funded projects are evaluated from the perspective of the participants, which is important and good, but rarely are the creatives encouraged to share their reflections or paid for their time for debriefs and project closing. Where does that learning go? The organisations learn but does the artist get to learn from previous or parallel projects? Who has the time to pursue or read evaluation reports from other projects in order to better inform your own? I don’t know anyone who does and that’s a terrible shame. Artists shouldn’t have to forgo earning in order to develop knowledge and skills but that’s in effect what is required, and it’s not usually possible as incomes are so small and precarious that spending even a couple of hours a week learning and developing means a shortfall in pay that week and less time pursuing more work for following weeks and months. It’s pretty impossible. There’s so much that needs to change and some of it isn’t that hard to implement. Organisations choose how to spend their budgets and they could choose to support the creative people they rely on. 

Having our voice heard in the development of cultural plans has the potential to create change which will be felt not only in this county but across the cultural sector, and it is sorely needed. For far too long creatives have borne the brunt of budget cuts and policy change, and have struggled with a lack of voice in the decision-making processes of arts institutions, local and national government. 

By putting the creative peoples’ voices back into creative and cultural strategies we can create ecosystems where those creative people can thrive not just survive, where the creative talent is valued and supported to do amazing work. Where people are paid fairly and quickly, where training and development opportunities are available and accessible, where professional expertise and experience is recognised and valued, where we can collaborate not be in competition with each other, where we can be involved in planning and evaluation of projects, have our skills and knowledge valued and appreciated and, crucially, be paid for all of this work. 

I hope I’ve been clear here that it’s not just about monetary value. It’s about being valued as humans, as incredibly skilled creatives who can create amazing projects out of no budget, who can inspire audiences and create joy out of nowhere, and who are trusted to deliver great work and supported to do this  great work.

There’s a long way to go towards artists and creatives being properly valued and supported by all institutions but dialogue, consultation and being paid for sharing professional knowledge is absolutely heading in the right direction.  Creatives should be paid for their professional expertise and time and should be part of making cultural organisations better in how the collaborate with creatives. I use collaborate intentionally because that’s what is should always be, not a delivery contract, but a creative collaboration from the very smallest 2 hour workshop to the whole cultural strategy. By putting the creative people’s voices back into creative and cultural strategies we can create ecosystems where those creative people can thrive not just survive, where the creative talent is valued and supported to do amazing work. I hope that the work Culture Leicestershire is doing can inspire other arts and culture organisations to reconsider how they work and put their creatives at the centre of their thinking. Above all,I hope that this work will demonstrate the value of creative people and creative work, and support and empower our amazing creative people be the brilliant change makers that I know that they can be. 

What next?

In the photo above, I’m running a session with artists looking at the values and behaviours that organisations should uphold when working with freelancers. We started by looking at what creative practitioners bring other than the basic delivery of programmes including knowledge, communication expertise, passion, curiosity, connection and understanding. We then started listing all the amazing outcomes when collaborations with organisations go well, and the challenges that pop up when things aren’t so great. From this we worked on a selecting some values which we felt were the most important in this relationship between freelancers and organisations. For the values exercise I used the brilliant cards ‘Live Your Values Deck’ by Lisa Congdon and Andreea Niculescu.

Later in the year I’ll run a follow up workshop with council staff to further develop a statement of values and behaviours to make great collaborations with freelancers.

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Working with artists and organisations

I am constantly developing my work around artist development and support. Most of this work is directly with artists though mentoring, my membership, courses and workshops, as well as raising the profile of issues through blogging and social media. I also talk about this stuff plenty in my podcast Making Meaning. I am keen to continue to work with organisations to improve how they collaborate with artists and freelancers. Previously I have done research, facilitation for discussions, pilot projects like peer mentoring facilitation, networking events and artist support with funded projects. What I’ve noticed doing this is that there are lots of pockets of great practice, a lot of mediocre practice and very clear holes in the system where freelancers are undervalued and at times actively undermined. There’s no doubt that improvements need to be made, and can be made if organisations are open to learning and changing. I’m very happy to talk to organisations who believe in improving their working relationships with freelancers and making the whole ecosystem better for everyone. Contact me to find out more about my consultancy work.

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