Supporting Artists as Workers
2022 Conference Blog
Jasmine Liu
On Sunday, the “Supporting Artists as Workers” pre-conference convened several panels that discussed the importance of treating artists as workers — even as the nonprofit, private, and public sectors often refuse to view them as such. This kind of approach is a needed one as cultural workers unionize across the museum and publishing worlds: how might we capture momentum gained from the increasing consciousness across all sectors that creative work is labor and apply it to artists as well?
For too long, the art world has preferred to romanticize artists as agents who exist apart from capitalism and society, to detrimental effect to artists themselves who are left entirely vulnerable.
The first panel of the day — titled “‘Yes we can’ fund systems change through advocacy and policy” — broached what it would mean for artists to be supported as artists at a systems level. Katrina Mitchell from Grantmakers for Southern Progress stressed that funders need to listen to voices on the ground, even and especially when doing so is uncomfortable. She noted that often artists and groups who are funded share and use the same language as program funders. This isn’t a problem in itself — but it’s a problem when only a sliver of people and groups consistently get funded. Through her research and policy work on California’s A.B. 5 at the Hewlett Foundation, Jessica Mele shared her insights on the shifting legal landscape around the classification of independent contractors and freelance work and how it might come to affect artists. She pointed out that that work exposed the total shortfall of arts organizations focusing on policy and advocacy lifting up the concerns of independent arts and cultural workers. She highlighted the potential for solidarity between arts and cultural workers and domestic workers and service industry workers who also rely on the 1099 employment structure. It strikes me that work in this arena that fights for a better social safety net for artists will have momentous implications for workers in general as employment becomes increasing flexible and simultaneously precarious across industries. There seems to be a real opportunity for advocacy organizations to learn from California’s new legislation and figure out what protections artists need.
Particularly powerful was hearing from Ashley Mireles, an arts educator and organizer who worked in art classes with students at a vocational high school to produce prints that were then exhibited and sold to members of the community. In the process, students learned to install work, lighting, and wall text, and walked away from the project empowered that they could create and sell their own work. At the end of her presentation, Mireles shared a list of frustrating experiences she had with funders and nonprofit partners, including poor communication, unresponsiveness, and inconsistency of support.
In the afternoon, a panel with freelance organizer and theater artist Daniel Park, Applied Mechanics dance company member Rebecca Wright, and Creatives Rebuild New York director of strategic initiatives for guaranteed income Maura Cuffie-Peterson opened up into a fishbowl format as participants joined panelists in the center of the room to discuss meaningful solidarity between artists and funders.
What can relationships between these two groups look like that transcend the mold of transaction? My takeaway from this conversation is that there are structural differences between artists and funders — and while these differences don’t necessarily make productive relationships impossible, they do need to be acknowledged and conscientiously navigated.
As one contributor offered, there is a fundamental imbalance at play when an artist needs to go into debt to write a grant proposal for a funder to consider. Panelists’ recommendations to close these gaps? Some were to distribute money widely rather than selectively, to offer multi-year no strings attached grants, and to approach artistry as a process rather than a product.
A final panel of activists closed out the day, with representatives from Oakland’s Love Not Blood Campaign and the Inner-City Muslim Action Network present. They urged funders to talk to communities impacted by the work they fund and to invest in artists over the longer arcs of their careers.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jasmine Liu is a staff write for Hyperallergic.
ABOUT THE CONFERENCE
The 2022 GIA Annual Conference begins on Thursday, October 6 and runs through Wednesday, October 12. In the meantime, get familiar with our virtual portal and check out the in-person sessions!
You can follow the convening and join the conversation using the hashtags #ConvergeTransform and #GIArts2022 on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. And, don’t forget to visit the Conference Blog for stories and reporting from the in-person and virtual conference tracks throughout the week.
