Precarity & The Arts
An Essay discussing the current neoliberal climate and the impact this has on historically marginalised communities & arts workers.
What The Fuck Happened?
Following the global financial crisis caused by the banking crash in 2008, the UK’s Liberal Democrat and Conservative coalition Government 2010-2015 responded by introducing an austerity programme with aims to drastically reduce public spending and further withdraw the role of the welfare state in an effort to reduce the deficit.
The last time the UK implemented austerity policies and such extreme cuts to public services was in 1945 after World War Two when there was not such an unequal distribution of wealth within society. In 2010, the richest 1% of the UK population consumed 15% of the UK’s income, meaning the tightening of purse strings and cutting our cloth according to our means was not a shared burden of equal suffering.
The wealthiest 1% made a decision to implement austerity policy and drastic cuts to public services yet this would have little impact on their daily lives as it is the poorest, most vulnerable people and services in society that have been affected. In 2009, just months before David Cameron was elected as Prime Minister, he delivered a speech addressing the Conservative Party where he argued the case for austerity measures blaming “Britain’s culture of irresponsibility” and a “broken society” for the country’s debt and claimed that the next few years would be difficult yet “we are all in this together”. These phrases would become a rhetoric that would define the next ten years of Government policy and social structure.
Neoliberalism is rooted in ideas of meritocracy; a promoted notion that within society we all have a fair chance at success and we should strive to be the best, however there are barriers, privileges and discriminatory practices in place that mean this is not the case. The free market is arguably designed to protect and develop the wealth of upper classes by encouraging individualism, self-sufficiency and competition amongst the working classes who will never have access to the same opportunities or privileges.
Society within the UK defines quality labour not by what the job entails but by who it is serving and who benefits from the work. Post modernity and neoliberal thought have led us to a place in society where creativity and culture are not valued economically. I have worked on creative projects with working class young people in South Tyneside (one of the highest areas of social deprivation within the UK) who have expressed feelings of guilt or shame in taking part. Historically marginalised communities are prone to feeling this when they participate or interact with the arts as it is perceived to be a luxury, or a leisure activity where citizens aren’t directly upgrading their “human capital” and therefore the state perceives this sector as something that is not a serious priority worthy of investing in as it will not effectively contribute to capitalism.
Tories Lied & Now We Pay The Price.
Austerity measures were legitimised and accepted in 2010 because it was portrayed to the nation that there was a global crisis that was at breaking point and was directly caused by individual carelessness for which we now had to demonstrate personal responsibility and that the only way of resolving this perpetual crisis was to cut back public resources. Hyperbolic, ultimatum-style language bombarded communities and alluded to imagery of one shared “money pot” into which we had all equally and collectively dipped into too often. There was an emotionality to language used by the government and the media during this time that created a culture of blame, stigma and a rise in shaming the most vulnerable in society.
In 2012, while being questioned about the rising number of food bank users Cameron refused to acknowledge the damning figure as a negative outcome of his government’s actions and instead praised volunteers and highlighted this as an example of how “Big Society” ideology can successfully work. Big Society ideology is problematic and manipulative because it relies on human kindness, ideas of collective community endeavour yet it is not equally designed or fair to those who have nothing yet are expected to contribute more than they can to have their basic needs met. The Big Society ideology was promoted as a tool to “empower local communities” to deliver and maintain services and resources that were once provided for by the state.
There is an exploitative nature of requesting those in society who are financially or socially vulnerable to contribute to society on the basis that they will depend on it at some point, use it the most or that they owe something that must be repaid to the state, this clearly reinforces archaic ideology of the deserving and undeserving poor. In 2010, Chancellor George Osborne described people who live in poverty and depend on benefits to survive as having made “a lifestyle choice” implying that there is a desire within society to depend on the state and that more fortunate, financially secure individuals simply chose an alternative lifestyle. Within the context of the arts and cultural and creative sectors, austerity perpetuates an issue of inequality that already pre-existed.
It is easier for those who are privileged or financially independent to seek out opportunities in the arts and can afford to undertake low paid internships or volunteer for creative exposure or experiences with skilled mentors. In 2010, the arts sector began to formalise and normalise exploitative working conditions which in turn made it more difficult for working class people to access these opportunities.
“The policies put in place since 2010 are usually discussed under the rubric of austerity. But this framing leads the inquiry in the wrong direction. In the area of poverty-related policy, the evidence points to the conclusion that the driving force has not been economic but rather a commitment to achieving radical social engineering.” (United Nations, 2018)
The quote above from The United Nations is a reminder that there was an active and deliberate decision to reform and restructure society and that the recession in 2010 was merely an excuse to bring this plan into action. This resulted in the government prioritising those services they deemed valuable and which ones were an unnecessary expense. A political decision was made to disregard and rank by economic value and prestige the most investable elements of society and austerity was a way of the treasury justifying spending cuts.
We are now living in an age of postmodernity where security and certainty are no longer guaranteed. People are entering the labour market and taking their place in society with more individual risk than ever before. Although this brings new difficulties and obstacles it could also arguably be seen as emancipation from tradition and a welcome social restructure. Post-industrial society has brought about significant economic, structural and environmental changes that have led to new formations of relationships, work opportunities, new ways to participate and new forms of exclusion. Risky individuals are no longer easily defined exclusively by a precarious or low born position in a class system, there are now more nuanced, complex ways of people being seen as a threat or a risk to themselves and/or to the social order. Just as Kimberle Crenshaw describes the matrix of domination, we are now living in a reflexive period of time where the old risks are now layered on top of new ones and it is clear that risk does not affect everyone equally; those who are the poorest and most vulnerable are the most adversely affected by risk.
Working for the Knife//Discussing The Increasing Precarity for Historically Marginalised Arts Workers
The future of the arts is uncertain. We are facing multiple layers of change within the social, political, and cultural landscape as the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic unfolds, not least of all the fact that decades more of austerity policy have already been promised following what is being anticipated as the greatest recession in living memory.
I am someone who’s life course was defined by creative opportunity and arts projects, yet my path was unconventional as I did not train at university or embark on a route into higher education until I had found an area of vocational interest that I felt passionate about and dedicated to.
Throughout my career I have needed to work simultaneously in multiple jobs in order to sustain my involvement in creative but poorly paid or short-term projects. I have been financially exploited, promised good exposure instead of a wage, underpaid and I have worked freelance as an artist yet, ironically, working precariously in the arts has never made me feel free. This is a common experience of precarious arts workers, and there is a particularity to the harm caused by austerity for the community of creative professionals that I am not alone in noticing.
There is an increased sense of economic insecurity for so many young people, especially since austerity policies were introduced in 2010. Academic training no longer offers job certainty in the same way it did a few decades ago and this is particularly true within the arts and cultural sector. University education is marketed and sold as a form of insurance against unemployment, yet this is increasingly a promise that cannot be kept. Those who opt in are told that they can make themselves attractive to the labour market through “self enhancement”. A truly neoliberal concept of meritocracy is promoted at the core of university study which is that if you work hard enough you can be whoever you want yet it is rare that personal identities or the wealth of perspectives represented by an intersectional approach are acknowledged.
Students who embark on arts courses at university are often expected and encouraged to undertake an unpaid internship as an accredited aspect of their course meaning some educational institutions are actively embedding poor working conditions and normalising a culture of exploitation within the arts and cultural sector. It is common for creative industries to offer internship, exposure or free training rather than a fair, living wage. As a result, it is likely to be middle-class aspiring creatives who pursue these opportunities and can enjoy the freedom from financial disadvantage to be able to benefit from these unpaid roles and build social capital and networks.
CREATE/DISRUPT
A recent study in the UK revealed that young people under 25 make up less than 2% of the creative industry workforce. This could be because the roles are too invisible, the process of applying is misunderstood or because opportunities to work within the arts are short term, under-funded, under-valued and therefore precarious. There is a choice many young people must make between creativity, freedom and excitement or financial security, a pension and material comforts and how the two are rarely seen to be mutually attainable within society. There is an epistemic injustice that precarious arts workers face as the promise of “good exposure” instead of a wage prevails, particularly for the young or inexperienced worker. This factor combined with a hunger to succeed, a lack of knowledge in civil or social rights and linguistic barriers including hyperbolic language insinuate that the arts are a privilege not an entitlement or a wealth creating industrial sector, which they indisputably are.
This neoliberal culture of exploitation is now beginning to permeate other aspects of university and education. It is now not uncommon to see call outs for “non-stipendiary” positions requesting postgraduate students to volunteer their time to do unpaid teaching or to assist with research projects with the promise of it being a “career development opportunity’. This illuminates that education and university can now no longer be associated with stable, guaranteed income and are now places where neoliberal ideology thrives with little resistance. This is something that has been articulated as being one of the many “hidden injuries” of neoliberalism and austerity.
Thirty years ago, creative industries were predominantly made up of young people from working class backgrounds yet now this is completely reversed with a staggering 96% of creative jobs held by people from upper/ middle class backgrounds. This is partly due to access to educational and training opportunities, but this also intersects with the current emphasis on meritocratic values upheld by the sector and reinforced by the state, experiences/ availability to working for free and personal, cultural preferences. Professional hiring can also be a form of “cultural matching” which will inevitably exclude individuals who have not had access to the same opportunities and create a more subtle form of social exclusion and harm.
The amount of opportunity for positions within creative industries has not altered over time, yet class origins and ideology of who is perceived to be working class, precarious or a risk to society has changed. There has never been a “golden age” where the arts had an abundance of financial security, diversity and equality yet austerity has led to a severe polarisation in the diversity of the workforce and increased barriers to involvement and exclusivity; It is disproportionately easier to access creative opportunity and careers in the arts for those who are privileged since austerity measures were implemented.
ACE, Funding the Third Sector & How Neoliberal Thought is INVASIVE
Arts Council England (ACE) have funded regional and national arts organisations and projects for over 25 years and are a Non-Departmental Public Body of the department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). They offer several grant giving programmes that are sustained by support from National Lottery England and aim to fund cultural and creative work within the UK. As part of the Spending Review in 2010, ACE had their funding cut by 30% resulting in the end of Creative Partnerships, a national school arts programme and the abolition of 19 quangos including the UK Film Council. Despite this, ACE have remained a mainstream, reputable and accessible funder within the UK and offer multiple grant giving streams for organisations and individuals including their National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) programme where they invest in arts organisations that are able to demonstrate leadership and a commitment to “protecting and developing a national arts and culture ecology” . It was in 2010 that we began to see the words “resilience” and “sustainability” appear in ACE policy documentation and funding agreements. It is significant that at this moment of time where austerity measures had just been introduced, we begin to see core funding bodies react by quickly passing responsibility and the duty of conserving finances and preserving the “culture ecology” to arts organisations and individuals.
In the same way that any training or development is the responsibility of the worker and not the employer we can now see that same neoliberal ideology mirrored in grant giving within the cultural sector; the onus of risk is now passed on to the creative work force. 2010 was the first year, the term “resilience” featured in ACE policy documentation and appeared only 33 times in their “ten-year strategic plan” yet by 2017 it was counted a staggering 5744 times. The repetition of “resilience” is partially to encourage austerity-driven financial responsibility for arts organisations and workers but also positions ACE almost as a broker or an enabler with a role to encourage arts organisations to use their state funding as a means of raising additional private funding.
Language used in key policy documentation provided by ACE reflects the current climate of cuts to public spending and is laced with ultimatums, hyperbolic conditions and even a “risk mitigation” process where applicants are assessed on their financial viability, governance and management and the likelihood of achieving their goals. Those of us who have spent time working in any third sector capacity where fundraising is essential to survive will be familiar with hearing the word “conditionally”. We regularly see this with trusts, foundations and grant giving programmes both financially and academically. it is kindness at a price; a play on human morals, it implies a choice in behaviour whether that be on an individual or organisational level.
Ideology and values centred around cooperation, inclusion, self-expression and empathy are embedded at the heart of creative industries. This is reflected in the most recent British Social Attitudes survey which evidence arts workers and the creative industries as being the most liberal, pro-welfare and left-wing of all UK sectors. Ultimately, these values are a magnetic force that pull precarious arts workers in, and it is this kinetic energy that sustains the workforce and industry despite there being an awareness of exploitative working conditions, precarious contracts and intermittent spurts of employment. This engrained ethos is arguably similar to what David Cameron aspired to creating during 2010 with “Big Society” ideology. This is not an empowering philosophy; it is one that reinstates privilege as those who are vulnerable, marginalised or living precariously will be disproportionately unable to participate, succeed and thrive in an environment that ignores intersectional barriers and disadvantage.
Neoliberal ideology and funding structures are gatekeeping and forming the parameters in which art and creativity can exist; Art is always political and is rarely created with one honest agenda in mind as neoliberal competition has led to a reduction in economic support which has infiltrated the system that financially sustains this work.
This same element of competition and the pressure to deliver art projects that simultaneously create “excellent”, meaningful art whilst also addressing a social agenda has meant that third sector organisations are competing for the same limited grant giving streams when they are often services and projects that should all be able to access financial support and exist simultaneously in order to support and serve their community in a way that the state once did.
Despite programmes and projects of activity frequently being delivered by frontline precarious arts workers who have a better understanding of the arts and their community they are systematically disempowered and limited not to deliver what works best for a place or community but instead what the donor desires. This has led to many third sector arts organisations being led not by creativity but by their financial and economic needs and who and what is able to satisfy them. In the context of the third sector and precarious arts workers, creativity and the arts are impossible to discuss or separate without considering politics, society and the economy.