A new report by the University of Glasgow has just revealed the financial plight of visual artists in the UK, with disturbing income disparities and systemic inequalities across demographics.
The study, called the “UK Visual Artists’ Earnings and Contracts Report 2024,” found that the average annual earnings of artists have plummeted to just $15,600, a drop of nearly 40 percent since $25,000 in 2010. Organic farming income is also 47% lower than the average full-time minimum wage worker in the UK, on $29,800.
The report commissioned by the Design & Artists Copyright Society (DACS) — drew on surveys of 1,200 artists nationwide. It showed that women artists were paid 40 per cent less than their male counterparts and that disabled artists are among the worst affected, earning under $5,000 each year. Fifty per cent reported that their artistic practice was their only source of income (and the other half said that they relied on supplementary jobs earning an average of $22,000 — still under the country’s lowest wage threshold).
Christian Zimmermann, the Chief Executive of DACS, said that the findings were deeply troubling, adding that visual artists were among the lowest earners of all workers in the creative industries despite their essential contributions to the sector. “This widespread low pay and precarity that artists are facing today drives talent out of the sector and stifles creativity,” he said. “A greater level of support and protections are urgently needed for visual artists faced with challenges such as income instability, studio rents on the rise, and the effects of Generative AI scraping their work,” she said in a statement.
The report highlights a set of recommendations laid out in the “The Visual Arts Manifesto,” released by the DACS and 26 other arts organisations in June. Priority proposals include the creation of a Smart Fund that would pay for collective licensing a Freelancer Commissioner and strong regulation to ensure artists were paid and had control over the use of AI. These steps were also supported earlier this year by the UK’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee.
The report’s authors, Dr. Amy Thomas and Dr. Arthur Ehlinger, said that the overlapping difficulties posed by Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic have dramatically eroded the artists earning potential. They also highlighted systemic problems such as the gender gap in pay and income disparity among disabled artists. “These findings have worrisome implications for the sustainability and diversity of the artistic professions in the UK,” the authors wrote.
UK visual artists are calling on their government to act on the advice in the report that would set us on more equitable and sustainable economic footing for our creative future.
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