Earl of Clancarty
Main Page: Earl of Clancarty (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)
The Earl of Clancarty
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what support they are giving to individual artists, including visual artists, writers and composers.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss the concerns of artists this evening, and look forward to the speeches of other noble Lords. We have never had an arts policy in this country that has properly prioritised the makers and the production of art, although, of course, in the support that the Arts Council and local authorities have given over a long period, production has been a significant part of the mix. However, the overriding considerations—especially recently—have been largely instrumentalist ones. For this Government, it is a justification in terms of the economy; for the previous Administration, it was access and social regeneration as well as the economy. Now, of course, the new weapon in the instrumentalists' armoury is well-being.
Yet the bedrock of the arts in Britain since the war has been, in large measure, the work of the individual artist, whether visual artist, film-maker, novelist, poet, composer, singer-songwriter or others, including many whose true influence is yet to be felt because of the long gestation period of much innovative work. Notwithstanding the importance of teamwork in the arts, it is the individual creative vision which, to a large extent, has determined the artistic and cultural landscape of this country. Without the fine artist, there would be no Tate Modern; without the playwright, there would be no contemporary theatre; without composers and musicians, there would be no concert halls. Therefore, this comparative neglect, in terms of an overall arts policy, is wrong, and there are specific issues that the Government should address. My emphasis will be on the concerns of visual artists, although some of these concerns are common to those working in other media.
The first of these, and possibly the most crucial, is pay. Most artists, indeed many working within the arts as a whole, have a low income—often less than half of the national average. The 2010 survey from the Design and Artists Copyright Society found that the median rate of annual income for a fine artist was around £10,000; for a photographer, it was £15,000. For a writer, according to the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society, it is now just £11,000, a drop of 29% since 2005. A theme that emerges is the extent to which, in our current climate of cuts and greater commercialisation, many artists occupy a position at the bottom of a food chain, and are, as a result, being increasingly exploited. Fine artists, musicians and others are, more and more often, being asked to offer their services for free.
The “Paying Artists” campaign, launched last year by the Artist Information Company, demands that artists are paid fairly by publicly funded galleries. “Don't Work for Free” is another similarly minded campaign supported by journalists, photographers and artists. The Artist Information Company estimates that 63% of artists have to turn down requests from galleries to exhibit their work because they cannot afford to do so without pay. I can see that a standard retort to this might be: “What are artists thinking about in turning down exhibitions at all?”; but artists, writers and musicians are frankly weary of being treated in this way. There is no other industry in the world that is expected to live in such a culture of perpetual loss leaders. Shonagh Manson of the Jerwood Charitable Foundation says:
“Paying artists creates value; it doesn't simply ‘cost’ it. Not paying artists limits the potential of the work they can create and the value audiences derive from it. We know that talented artistic voices are lost as the challenge of making ends meet increases”.
This is an area that the Government need to look into. An important point to make here is that the artist being concerned about pay is not the same thing as becoming more commercialised in the work being done. That is the current pressure coming from the Government, which may lead to doing a different kind of work—the pressure, for example, that has already been exerted on arts centres and theatres in the regions. Artists need to be remunerated properly for the work that they do.
Another concern about exploitation is exemplified by the dispute between DACS and the Copyright Licensing Agency. DACS maintains that the publishers who control the CLA are, in its own words, “bullying” artists, photographers and illustrators—and, indeed, writers too—into accepting unreasonable conditions for publication by signing away copyright regarding the distribution of secondary rights. This needs to be sorted out, and one partial solution—I just suggest this as an idea—might be that the CLA should be owned equally by DACS and the ALCS, with publishers having reduced powers in the decision-making process. However, fair contract terms covering intellectual property might also be addressed through legislation. What is the Minister’s response to these concerns?
Writers are having a particularly tough time. Cuts to libraries must be reversed, and while the ALCS is grateful that the public lending right has been extended to non-print formats, it rightly believes that it should also cover remote lending e-books, e-audio books and voluntary administered libraries.
Something that will affect many artists is the projected changes to the regulations for the self-employed on universal credit, because of the lower cut-off point for consideration of tax credits as well as the way that income is calculated on a monthly basis, as artists’ incomes may vary greatly from month to month. One of the problems is the change in our culture towards one that refuses to recognise that those on low pay might be engaged in a vocational pursuit that might need a long time to develop financially, rather than a business that is seeking to make a profit as quickly as possible. I ask the Minister whether serious thought can be given to this.
A measure that affects visual artists is the artists’ resale right, which since 2012 has been a benefit for those who have started to gain a toehold in the marketplace. The cap of £10,000 placed on the maximum level of royalty per artwork and the fact that ARR payments represent only 0.1% of the revenues of the art trade mean that they are no threat to it. Will the Government be an active supporter of ARR in Europe, and can the Government ensure that the ARR regulations are properly complied with, as there is no dedicated enforcement measure in place?
A particular problem that fine artists face is the shortage of studio space and, with rising rents, particularly in London, this is an increasing problem, with spaces being sold off. The GLA estimates that there will be a 30% loss of studio space within the next five years. Artists need reasonably permanent cheap spaces. The success story in London is the charity Acme, one of a number of organisations that provide studio space and which for more than 40 years has been supported by the Arts Council, although that support finishes this year—which founder Jonathan Harvey sees as a success as the charity is now self-sufficient. The keys to that success are the long-term support and the fact that Acme has managed to buy its own buildings. But where that is not possible Section 106 agreements might be used by local authorities in areas where studio space is required, enabling continued employment use in buildings and a guaranteed 100% occupancy. This is something that the Government ought to be encouraging where it is appropriate to do so.
My question today is of course directed towards the Government but it would be unrealistic to deny that everyone within the arts world is now concerned with what will appear in all the parties’ manifestos in terms of their arts policies. The response to that now infamous tweet from the Labour press team is telling because it is clear that there is an increasing belief among many in the arts world, especially artists, that an incoming Government should be seriously considering reversing the cuts.
In the past year, there has been a mobilisation of artists themselves: the formation of Artists’ Union England, and the creation of the Artists’ Assembly against Austerity, a group including the artist Peter Kennard, whose demands in a letter to the Guardian on 27 August last year I certainly support. His demands are also those for a better society and include, for example, the capping of rents—one reason, incidentally, why so many British artists now live in Berlin. Production needs to be enabled from the bottom up, which means that local authority cuts in particular really do need to be reversed. But sooner rather than later, cities need to be allowed tax-raising powers to help generate their own production. There has been talk in recent times of statutory provision of the arts. If such a provision is brought in, the artist must be a part of that.
We need a policy that puts the artist before the audience because logically the art comes first and an audience for a new work may take a long time to develop. That audience should not be socially engineered—I think it is patronising to do so. More consideration should also be given to longer-term support. If you do not achieve in financial terms immediately, you cannot afford to be a successful artist and have a family; this discriminates against women in particular.
Everything that is making going into the arts more difficult—primarily the cuts but also tuition fees and a school education that undervalues the arts—will make being an artist, a musician, a writer or an actor increasingly the preserve of the rich. Nevertheless, there are still many working on very little or no income who contribute significantly through the work they do as artists to a necessary cultural debate held within the wider society, even as that work is under threat. Public funding is and ought to be an important part of maintaining this debate, and support for the artist is the litmus test of how truly a Government, and by implication a society, value it.