Exclusive: report describes culture of low fees and exploitation as research finds median hourly rate of £2.60 an hour
Artists working in the public sector are struggling to stay afloat amid a culture of low fees, unpaid labour and systemic exploitation, research shows.
A survey of people engaged by everything from flagship galleries to smaller projects found an overall median hourly rate of £2.60 an hour, dramatically below the UK minimum wage of £9.50.
Continue reading...Exclusive: head of Aardman studio blames Brexit as UK falls behind on skills and tax relief
The head of Aardman, the Oscar-winning British studio behind Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep, has warned that the nation’s animation productions for children’s television will have to be made overseas because acute challenges are taking their toll on the UK sector.
Sean Clarke, Aardman’s managing director, said the company is struggling with everything from serious competition from other countries on tax relief to a dire skills shortage.
Continue reading...Launched by Anthony Albanese at Melbourne live music pub the Espy, the policy offers welcome support for the beleaguered industry
Australia’s arts industry has welcomed the federal government’s $300m national cultural policy Revive, which was launched on Monday by the prime minister, Anthony Albanese.
Albanese described it as a comprehensive and inclusive way to enhance the lives of all Australians, “from the gallery, to the mosh pit, to your favourite reading chair”. While most of the major policies were released over the weekend, the official launch, held at Melbourne live music venue the Esplanade, revealed a few more details, such as the establishment of a national poet laureate – a position Australia has not had since the convict era – and the commitment to deliver a state of culture report every three years, similar to the government-issued state of the environment report.
Continue reading...Investment will sustain its work in London for another year after ENO was removed from ACE’s national portfolio
The English National Opera (ENO) has announced it will receive an £11.46m investment from Arts Council England (ACE) to sustain its work in London for another year.
The ENO is one of a number of organisations that have been removed from ACE’s national portfolio, losing its £12.8m annual grant and told it must move outside London if it wants to qualify for future grants. ENO chiefs have said the 100% funding cut would decimate the 100-year old company, while many big names across the arts world called the decision a “simplistic move”.
Continue reading...The ultimatum to English National Opera was attacked as ‘cultural vandalism’, but raised some hopes nearer Manchester
When the Arts Council halved English National Opera’s funding earlier this month and made its new £17m grant contingent on the company leaving London – possibly for Manchester – the diktat was greeted as “madness” by the London Evening Standard, “cultural vandalism” by Melvyn Bragg and an order which would kill off the institution by April by the company’s chair, Harry Brünjes.
The battle over ENO’s future soon became the latest frontline in the culture wars as debate raged over what it meant to “level up” culture.
Continue reading...Branch Hill pond dried up in the 1880s. Now it will teem with wildlife again, as it did in the artist’s heyday
It was a view that John Constable sketched and painted dozens of times. From the top of Hampstead Heath, London’s highest point at 134 metres (440ft), the artist would look west and north towards today’s suburbs of Willesden, Edgware and Harrow. About 100 metres away, down below, was a beautiful natural pond.
But in the 1880s, Branch Hill pond dried up. Now, nearly two centuries after Constable immortalised on canvas his favourite landscape in the capital, the pond has been recreated.
Continue reading...Lawyers for Casey Jenkins, who alleges council’s withdrawal of funding was discriminatory, says ‘security for costs’ order is ‘cynical’
The Australia Council is attempting to get a court order that may force an artist to stump up a down payment on its sizeable legal costs, in a two-year court battle over the national arts funding body dropping its support for a performance documenting self-insemination.
Lawyers for the performance artist Casey Jenkins told the federal court the council’s application for a “security for costs” order appeared to be based on a cynical and misguided premise, and the body was covered by commonwealth government insurance to fight the case.
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Continue reading...Ways With Words, the organisers of Words by the Water in Keswick, say low ticket sales mean it is not viable to run next year’s event
Ways With Words, which runs literary festivals in the Lake District, Suffolk and Devon, has cancelled its forthcoming festival, saying it is not “currently viable” because of the UK’s cost of living crisis.
The organisation had been due to put on Words by the Water, a 10-day event in Keswick, in March 2023. But after experiencing low ticket sales for its festival in Dartington, Devon, in July this year, the decision was made to cancel the Lake District gathering and cease planning events for the foreseeable future.
Continue reading...Royalties company PRS for Music has announced a major funding cut for its charitable arm. Artists such as Black Country, New Road explain why it could damage the UK music scene
One of the UK’s biggest funders of new and emerging music, responsible for fostering the careers of artists including Sam Fender, Little Simz and 2021 Mercury prize winner Arlo Parks, has this week seen its budget slashed by 60%.
The PRS Foundation, which funds hundreds of aspiring artists and music organisations across the country – including a number of artists from groups underrepresented in the music industry – announced on Wednesday that its income would be cut from £2.75m to £1m from 2024 onwards, citing financial necessity. The decision was taken by its parent company and primary funder PRS for Music, which collects royalties for musicians when their music is streamed or played in public.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Maria Adonyeva, who gave arts centre at least £380,000, also steps down as Tate patron
The wife of a Russian businessman who at one stage pleaded guilty to defrauding the Kazakh government out of $4m (£3m) has stepped down as a patron of the Tate and from a prestigious advisory board at Somerset House, where she was a major donor.
Maria Adonyeva, who has a London-based charitable foundation and has been pictured as recently as 2018 on her husband’s yacht with close friends, including the actor Melanie Griffith, has given at least £380,000 in the past two years to Somerset House, where she sat on the arts centre’s development advisory board.
Continue reading...Award-winning artist Maqbool Jan is one of a handful still practising the ancient artform, but without government help he fears it could be lost
Kashmir’s ancient papier-mache artworks are famous throughout the world. The art form is a staple of the luxury ornamental market, and has a rich and long cultural lineage. It is closely associated with the advent of Islam in Kashmir, and depicts scenes from the Mughal court, Arabic verses from the Qu’ran, Persian poetry, as well as Kashmir’s iconic tourist attractions.
However, this ancient art form is vanishing, with only a handful of artisans left practising.
Continue reading...Building an arts centre in Uganda, in a pandemic, was never going to be easy but it’s crucial to our post-Covid future
I’ve been raising funds for a building project: not a hospital, not a school, but an arts centre.
It’s not an easy sell at the best of times but add in a pandemic and the fact that I’m in Africa and, according to the current rules of financial engagement, art is the verylowest of priorities.
Continue reading...Comedians went virtual, Ai Weiwei went to Portugal – and Bake Off pledged the show would go on. In the first of a two-part series, cultural figures look back on a year that shook their industry
Continue reading...The UK cultural sector, so obsessed with being ‘world leading’, is standing on the brink. It needs to broaden its gaze
It’s a painful time to tell stories about the arts. This week, hundreds of venues across the UK were lit up in red – not in an inspired display of creativity, but as a cry for help as arts venues find themselves on the brink of collapse.
The protest culminated in the iconic chimney at London’s Tate Modern art gallery being made bright red, and illuminated with the words “Throw Us a Line” – a reference to the 1m jobs at risk in the live events sector following the Covid-19 pandemic and shutdown. A report from the digital, culture, media and sport select committee warned last month that the UK now faces the prospect of becoming a “cultural wasteland”.
Continue reading...The arts institution, which is home to eight resident arts companies, had gone into voluntary administration in May
Sydney arts institution Carriageworks has been saved from administration after the NSW government backed a multi-million dollar lifeline from a group of 15 philanthropists.
The multi-arts organisation that operates performance and gallery spaces in repurposed 1880s locomotive workshops in Sydney’s inner west owes more than $2m to more than 140 creditors, and went into voluntary administration on 4 May.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Founder says another cancellation would ‘be curtains’ for festival and has hopes for testing scheme, with daughter Emily saying they will ‘mutate to survive’
Glastonbury organisers Michael and Emily Eavis fear they could be in serious financial danger if the festival was cancelled again due to coronavirus.
Speaking exclusively to the Guardian to mark the festival’s 50th anniversary, Michael said: “We have to run next year, otherwise we would seriously go bankrupt … It has to happen for us, we have to carry on. Otherwise it will be curtains. I don’t think we could wait another year.”
Continue reading...This puffed-up cultural citadel was meant to be an endlessly evolving, telescopic arts complex. But the glistening billionaires’ playground rising up beside it had other plans
It seems fitting that the cultural centre of New York’s latest luxury private development should look like a quilted Chanel handbag. Rearing up at the northern end of the High Line on Manhattan’s reborn West Side, the Shed presents a 10-storey wrapping of puffed-up diamond cushions to passersby, standing as the gaudy gateway to Hudson Yards – the most expensive real estate project in US history.
While it might fit in with the gilt-edged world of Swiss watch boutiques and Michelin-starred chefs that awaits in this $25bn private enclave, it is an unlikely costume for what the project’s architect and originator, Liz Diller, insists is “simply a piece of infrastructure” to support whatever artists want to do. “It’s not precious,” she says of the $500m building. “It’s muscular and industrial, just meat and bones.”
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