Susan Jones - Exploding Myths: The Future of Artists' Livelihoods
Jul 2, 2020 at 18:30 — 20:00 (BST)
Susan Jones's recent research revealed that for artists to ‘get on’ rather than just ‘get by’, they need continuous access to specific, nuanced, interrelated conditions. Although over the last thirty years some of Arts Council England’s policies aimed, to a lesser or greater degree, to improve artists’ economic and social status, none have effected lasting change. In the same vein, ACE’s minor allocation of Covid-19 emergency funding for individual artists neither compensated artists whose incomes immediately plummeted nor provided investment towards their future sustainability. Such policy actions perpetuate assumptions that artists are minor contributors to the arts and their precarity is unavoidable.
Using a virtual environment, Susan's talk first busts some myths about artists’ practices and livelihoods and then identifies the unique trio of conditions truly supportive of artists’ social realities over a life-cycle. In the post-Covid19 moment “fraught with possibilities”* the space following for interactive discussion explores radical propositions for achieving them and effecting sustained change for the better for all artists.
* Isabelle Tracey, Parallel State: State of the Nation podcast 27 March 2020
TALK LOGISTICS
The talk will take place online via Zoom. CAMP will send all ticket holders the zoom link a week before the event. The event will be interactive and make use of Zoom's 'break out room' function so you will have the chance to chat to each other and add your insights into the mix and ask Susan questions.
ABOUT SUSAN JONES
Susan Jones is researcher and commentator on contemporary visual arts and artists' matters. Her writing has been published in Arts Professional, a-n The Artists Information Company, Engage Journal, The Guardian and TransArtists. Conference presentations include WTF symposium Creative Factory Middlesbrough (2018), ELIA NXT Project Amsterdam (2018), Threshold Collider Conversation, Leicester (2017) and Artists and Labour Seoul (2014).
She is a mentor and adviser to individual artists and to artists’ groups including Castlefield Gallery Associates, East Street Arts, Mark Devereux Arts, New Bridge Project, S1 Artspace and Somerset Art Works. She was a Board member of Redeye: The Photography Network until 2018 and Director of a-n The Artists Information Company 1999 - 2014. New rationales for the interrelationship between arts policy and artists' practices and livelihoods were a topic of investigation through Doctoral research 2015-2019 at Manchester Metropolitan University.