Episode 28 - Stop Being So Cheap About Art

Fuse Chamber

If we expect there to be a future in the arts, we have to help guarantee it. Nothing about art has to be free. Like so many other ‘public’ professions that don’t have a pure profit focus, we have learned not to value it. When do don’t value it, the quality starts to decline. How can we as artists help ensure a thriving industry?

• We HAVE to treat it as a business. Art IS a business. Business is not the set of boring financial tasks we apologetically force artists to do.
• If you don’t like the sound of this, you HAVE TO BE OK with not getting paid well, or at all, for your art.
• I was reading an article about 10 ways to save crazy amounts of money, and several of them directly affect the arts. Steal or stream music, steal or stream movies and borrow books from the library.
• Yes there are times when we must conserve funds, but there were no suggestions about getting your food from the food library, so the assumption is we’re talking about people with some disposable income
• We should flip our thinking. Our governments tend to (or at least used to) treat the arts as a collective obligation to support. Funding is shrinking by the year, so it becomes incumbent on us to take over that funding. We need to commit a small percentage of our money to supporting people who create tremendous value in our lives and in fact make tremendous contributions to commerce, yet never receive a paycheck or benefits from a large corporation
• Everyone should plan to spend a portion of what they make supporting local artists.
• If you want your money to directly benefit artists - its a bit like giving directly to a neighbour or a friend in need. No middleman. No administrative fees.
• Live music, theatre, local press…etc