Precarious Workers Brigade (PWB)
‘Training for Exploitation? Politicising Employability and Reclaiming Education’ is a resource pack for educators written by Precarious Workers Brigade (PWB). PWB describes the workbook as a “pedagogical framework that assists students and others in deconstructing dominant narratives around work, employability and careers, and explores alternative ways of engaging with work and the economy” – particularly the cultural economy.
The workbook includes statistics and workshops on topics such as precarity; employment rights; cooperation and solidarity; alternative education; and organising practices.
“This book argues that instead of accepting employability as our goal, and consolidating the meritocracy that governments are promoting through education, we organise against the very system that produces student debt and the anxiety-ridden precarity we find ourselves in. Solidarity with other workers, mutual aid and commoning practices in the field of social reproduction are offered as plausible, and even necessary alternatives to years spent chasing the false promises of ‘employment’” – Siliva Federici
New Museum Workers Union
New Museum, Manhattan
Workers, including art handlers, front of house, and bookstore staff, at the New Museum in Manhattan voted to join the National Autoworkers Union (U.A.W) to negotiate for fair pay and security as the museum undergoes a significant expansion.
The museum initially challenged the workers’ attempts to unionise by hiring ‘union avoidance consultants’ but backed down from this strategy when ‘dozens of artists, curators and others’ wrote an open letter to the museum expressing their disappointment.
Despite mass lay-offs and furloughs during the COVID-19 crisis, the New Museum Union continued to organise, including by filing charges against the New Museum alleging that they have violated the National Labour Relations Act by acting in a ‘discriminatory and retaliatory’ manner by laying off union members.
MOCA Union
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA)
Museum workers across multiple departments at the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Los Angeles (MOCA) declared their intention to form a union with the American Federation of State, Federal and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).
Their key workplace claims were higher wages, lack of benefits, roster instability and high turnover. Rather than contest workers’ decision to unionise, after two weeks MOCA voluntarily recognised the employees union. MOCA Director Klaus Biensenbach stated:
“We have spent the last two weeks thoroughly considering the staff’s initiative through the lens of MOCA’s vision of being a civic-minded institution and we concluded that we want to be supportive of this effort.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, MOCA Union created a fundraiser to support coworkers requiring financial assistance; the mutual aid hardship fund raised $50,000 US by late March 2020.
MOCA Union mission statement
“The workers at MOCA have organized because we desire pride in our place of work and we are advocates for the necessary changes that will maintain the Museum’s integrity. We install the artworks on view, guard exhibitions, and greet and educate visitors, giving them something to walk away with when they leave the museum. We believe that fair compensation for all workers throughout the museum is essential to ensuring its diversity: salaries, wages, and benefits at the museum must be sustainable for everyone, regardless of the privileges afforded them by race, class, or gender.”
UNESCO
Canadian Government
‘Status of the Artist’, a legislative recommendation made by UNESCO in 1980, has been enacted in Canada to provide nationally enforceable standards for artists’ rights, contracts and fees. This recommendation recognises the unique position artists are in regarding issues of artistic and curatorial practice, ethics surrounding collective negotiation, pressure tactics, and good and bad faith bargaining.
Esther Anatolitis, the CEO for National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) in Australia, visited Canada to investigate how the legislation has positively affected artists, and to determine the extent to which this could be applied to an Australian context.
Anatolitis attended the conference CARFAC 50 in Ottawa, and visited the ‘Canadian Artists’ Representation/Le Front des artistes Canadiens’ (NAVA’s counterpart organisation in Canada). Anatolitis also researched a recent trial into Guaranteed Annual Income in Ottawa. This was an attempt to evaluate the benefits of a universal basic income in comparison to traditional social security payments as a method for supporting artists and the unemployed.
Precarious Workers Brigade (PWB)
Future Interns
Precarious Workers Brigade (PWB) issued a letter to the Serpentine Gallery about a non-paid internship, outlining that PWB would engage ‘in a series of targeted actions at yours and other institutions’ until a fair pay policy was introduced. An initial response from the gallery was unapologetic.
The letter was followed by public action at the gallery, organised by Future Interns: protesters dressed as Santa with a banner stating ‘All we want for Christmas is pay’. Protesters also handed out scrolls that contained the unpaid internship ad and commentary on why the protesters thought the role should be paid.
After the protests, the gallery issued a further response to the letter and withdrew the advert for the unpaid internship.
Membership-based organisation with an annual fee. Not-for-profit.
Queensland Artworkers Alliance (QAA) provided professional advice; connected members with jobs and opportunities; ran annual seminars, workshops and other professional development events; and advocated on behalf of the visual arts sector at state and national levels.
In 1998, the QAA had …
“in excess of 1200 artist members who pay $35 per annum for a range of services and programmes including being maintained on a slide and curriculum vitae register.”
Guggenheim Union
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Guggenheim Museum workers—including installers, art handlers, maintenance, construction workers, and others— voted to form a union with the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE Local 30).
Their key industrial claim included higher pay in line with art handlers’ wages at MoMA PS1 (a contemporary art institution affiliated with the Museum of Modern Art, NYC), more consistent schedules, and better wage rises.
Artsource
Membership-based organisation with an annual fee. Provides artist support, advocacy, subsidised studios, insurance, job opportunities etc.
Formed in 1986, Artsource (then called Fremantle Arts Foundation) initially aimed to foster culture in Perth & Fremantle, and provided subsidised artist studios in Fremantle’s Old Customs House. It subsequently expanded to provide other services to artists, including professional development, support, advocacy, discounts, information, and advice. In 1992 the organisation changed its name to the Artists’ Foundation of Western Australia, reflecting its broader role. It was rebranded to Artsource in 2004.
Since its inception, a key aspect of Artsource’s role has been providing subsidised studios at a number of locations across Perth & Fremantle, with long-term leases of up to 5 years. This program has benefited hundreds of artists. However, as of late 2019 Artsource has stated that while they will continue current leases, they will no longer provide new artist studios (with the possible exception of the Old Customs House).
WAGES FOR WAGES AGAINST
‘WAGES FOR WAGES AGAINST’ is a campaign for the payment of artists and improvement of their working conditions in Switzerland and beyond. It takes the form of an online open letter, updated regularly with relevant articles.
Currently in Switzerland most arts organisations (for profit, not-for-profit or public) do not systematically pay artists who take part in their programs. The campaign demands fair pay, condemns ‘exposure payments’, advocates for complete transparency of gallery budgets, and fights to reduce financial inequality and discrimination within the arts sector.
Future Interns
Precarious Workers Brigade
Ragpickers
London Symphony Orchestra (LSO)
A solidarity campaign saw three organisations targeting the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) for offering unpaid internships in roles that would otherwise be paid.
The first action was an open letter posted to the LSO’s social media accounts, questioning the ethics of the unpaid internship as well as alleging the LSO was breaking the law. Following the letter, Future Interns undertook a direct action protest at the Barbican during an LSO concert. They wore masks of famous composers, holding placards and a banner stating: “Your Policies are Out of Tune: Pay your interns”.
LSO reviewed the unpaid internship and started offering a paid internship scheme.
We have a number of concerns that we feel you should address. Firstly, by asking someone to work “9.30am – 6.00pm Monday to Friday plus evening work as required” for 6 months unpaid we wonder how you expect that person to survive in London? Are you only expecting to receive applications from those who are from a very wealthy background, or someone whose parents live in London? Straight away you are excluding the vast majority of people based on either wealth or geography. Do you think it is responsible to be further widening the gap between those who can and can’t pursue a job within the arts?
Art Workers Union (Seattle)
Frye Art Museum
Security workers at the Frye Art Museum, who are predominantly artists, sought to have museum management recognise the existence of their small, independent union—the Art Workers Union (AWU). The museum security workers held demonstrations with city councillors and supporters outside the museum in a bid to get the museum to voluntarily recognise their union. Management initially refused to recognise the union, but changed their position after workers unanimously voted for forming the union.
The union commenced collectively bargaining for higher wages comparable with other institutions and improved distribution of hours.
While bargaining is still underway, the Union has held a ‘socially distanced’ picket to protest the termination of one-third of the museum’s workforce due to losses related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dan Ward
City Projects
Artists’ Moving Image
The Politics of Production: A Report on the Conditions for Producing ‘Artists’ Moving Image’ looks at the conditions under which artists producing moving image works operate in relation to public funding models, independent initiatives, and other support mechanisms which facilitate this mode of practice in the UK.
Dan Ward traces how shifts in public support towards the ‘professionalisation’ of artists, bureaucratisation of processes, and impetus towards the commercial art and film industries, has eroded the possibility of experimental practice, and limits participation in the field to those with a degree of financial privilege. The report illustrates the particular history and precarity of this mode of practice, but also articulates the pressures and challenges faced more broadly in independent visual arts, and the ways in which practitioners might attempt to gain agency and create a more sustainable and diverse sector.
“What I insist on consequentially, perhaps to a fault, is the mutually constructive nature of work within experimental/political image-making, which, by its most basic and unifying definition, is opposed to free-market, conservative ideologies and ‘commercial’ structures (their forms, hierarchies, and aesthetic operations), and a commitment to the redistribution of ‘power’ to both producers and viewers alike.”
Philadelphia Museum of Art Union
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Workers at the Philadelphia Art Museum (PMA), in affiliation with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees District Council 47 (AFSCME DC 47), have formed a new “wall-to-wall” union at the PMA.This means that all staff who are legally eligible for collective bargaining are represented by a single union, including curatorial, visitor services, retail, library and development employees, and art handling workers.
In May 2020, a ‘supermajority’ of workers asked the PMA to voluntarily recognise the PMA Union, and filed their petition with the National Relations Labour Board. The PMA declined and contested the election.
In August 2020, 89% of eligible PMA workers voted to unionise.
“We’re told that we’re not supposed to expect to get paid a lot,” given the rewards of museum work, “but you can’t eat prestige.” – Member of the organising committee, Adam Rizzo
French Government
Intermittents du spectacle
France has an unemployment insurance system, the intermittence du spectacle, for performing arts professionals such as actors, musicians, dancers and theatre technicians.
Paid for by employers and the government, the scheme recognises that arts and entertainment workers are often employed on short-term contracts, and is designed to provide financial cover between periods of employment. To receive the payment, workers must prove that they have worked 507 hours across 10.5 months.
This system contributes to greater job security and wellbeing, and ensures that arts professionals do not have to undertake unrelated jobs to survive financially in between major work engagements. It also improves societal attitudes towards creative professionals, treating culture as a vital public necessity, like health or education.
Artists’ Committee
National Gallery of Victoria
Artists’ Committee undertook a number of actions to protest the contract between the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) and Wilson Security—a security company with a documented record of human rights abuses in Australia’s offshore immigration detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru.
Artists’ Committee issued an open letter calling for the gallery to cut ties with Wilson, and then undertook several creative interventions at the museum, including shrouding Picasso’s Weeping Woman, and dyeing the gallery’s moat red, which garnered considerable media coverage. Artists’ Committee contacted artists involved in the NGV Triennial, which resulted in further spotlighting of the issue by well-known international artists partaking in the exhibition, including Candice Breitz and Richard Mosse. Artists’ Committee subsequently picketed the industry opening event for the NGV Triennial. These pressures resulted in the NGV relinquishing their temporary contract with Wilson Security.
Boycott the 19th Sydney Biennale
19BoS Working Group
A boycott of the 19th Biennale of Sydney (BoS) was initially called for through an open letter and Facebook page, which encouraged actions against Transfield Services, a corporation in the process of taking over the running of Australia’s offshore immigration detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru. Transfield was not only a major sponsor of the BoS but had a long association with the BoS through the Belgiorno-Nettis family.
A number of participating artists, alerted to these concerns, began to organise as the 19BoS working group in response to this call to action. The artists wrote to the 95 Australian and international artists participating in the BoS, to inform them of this relationship and Australia’s violent border control policies. Through a number of public and private discussions, a letter—signed by 46 participating artists—was sent to the board of directors of the Biennale, asking them to cut ties with Transfield. When the board declined to take action, nine of the artists decided to withdraw their work from the program.
Mounting pressure from the artists, alongside the wider activist-led Boycott movement which indicated they would attempt to interrupt the Biennale, led to Luca Belgiorno-Nettis (chair of the Biennale and director of Transfield Holdings) resigning as chair, and the Biennale cutting ties with Transfield.
Michelle Millar Fisher
Anonymous arts workers
‘Art/Museum Salary Transparency 2019’ is a publicly shared and edited Google Spreadsheet listing the roles, and pay scales of arts workers worldwide. Respondents can anonymously detail their institution, role, wages and conditions etc.
Created by Michelle Millar Fisher (an assistant curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art) and others, the spreadsheet provides a measure of transparency around pay and conditions at hundreds of art institutions worldwide. Over 1000 current and former employees of art institutions contributed information to the spreadsheet.
“I hope it encourages a conversation between coworkers,” Fisher stated. “If you don’t do it, everything stays the same. Sometimes it takes just one tiny action. Solidarity is the only way to effect great change.”
Precarious Workers Brigade (PWB)
Carrot Workers Collective
This People’s Tribunal was convened by the Precarious Workers Brigade (PWB) to address the structural conditions of precarity in general, as well as the precarious nature of work in the arts sector. In particular, PWB wanted to address the way in which precarity contributes to the culture of unpaid work in the arts, and how this limits participation to those with financial privilege.
“Our understanding is that precarity is not a perpetrator, person, nor a crime. It is a condition brought on by a set of interrelations that connect the deeply personal and the systemic, the political and the economic. As a result, in the condition of precarity there are regular breaches of legal conventions, such as failure to provide payment, to provide proper contracts, to comply with oral agreements and to provide safe working environments.”
– Precarious Workers Brigade
Artists' Union England
Artists’ Union England is an established trade union representing professional visual and applied artists within the UK. Membership is by a flat annual fee, which grants members public liability insurance, access to resources, training, and legal advice.
Ian Burn, Ian Milliss, Australia Council, ACTU
The Art and Working Life Programme was established by the Australia Council (the federal arts funding body in Australia), in partnership with the Australia Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). The scheme allowed community theatre productions to be commissioned by union arts officers, with the intention to engage union members (and workers more broadly) as both participants and audiences. Productions were often developed and held in workplaces. The programme sought to celebrate and extend the history and culture of trade unionism in Australia. At the same time, it attempted to narrow the division between the arts and the lives of workers by developing a grassroots creative culture.
“Given proper recognition of their creative role, the activities of trade unions provide a natural basis for developing the cultural dimensions of working life, and therefore of all Australian life. But this means that artists must recognise creative forces greater than their own and that unions more fully acknowledge the cultural basis implicit in their organisations. That is the basis of mutual support. The success of the Art and Working Life programme depends on the trade union movement being in control and the initiatives developing from their activities.”
–Ian Milliss and Ian Burn “Art and Working Life: Cultural Activities in the Australian Trade Union Movement” 1983
Artworkers Union (Sydney)
The Artworkers Union was established in 1979, and registered under the New South Wales Trade Union Act in 1989.
They remained small and struggled to gain influence, never employing a full-time organiser. They had 180 members in 1993, of whom only about 80 were financial members, paying dues.
According to Ray Markey:
“[The Artworkers Union did have influence] on other organisations, including the Australia Council … in areas such as equal employment opportunity, occupational health and safety, promotion of standard contracts, and establishment of recommended rates of remuneration.”
The Artworkers Union also produced reports and publications, in collaboration with NAVA, and published a journal, Artworkers news.
Art Workers Italia (AWI)
Art Workers Italia (AWI) is an informal association of workers from all areas of the arts, which was formed in response to the pressures and hardships imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The group was centrally concerned with the lack of government support for workers in the arts, as well as the broader precarity of working conditions in the cultural sector. AWI was focused on the immediate goals of securing financial relief for artists and arts workers affected by the pandemic, and the longer-term goals of forming an organisation which would protect the rights of workers and ensure adequate remuneration. AWI proposed to work towards these aims by developing a professional charter, identifying legislation which could be adapted to better reflect working conditions in the arts sector, initiating reforms of the way funding is designated, and promoting fair compensation across the industry.
ARTEMIS
Founded in late 1985, ARTEMIS Women’s Art Forum Inc. aimed to raise the status of women in the arts and to foster interest in women’s art practice and ideas. The group produced symposia, exhibitions and a newsletter, and also ran the ARTEMIS gallery in the Perth Cultural Centre.
From early in its operation, ARTEMIS paid a professional childcare worker to provide childcare for members at meetings. Core committee members included Penny Bovell, Thyrza Michele, Linda Rawlings, Jo Darbyshire, Anne Jeppe, Michele Elliot, Joanne Harris, Pam Kleemann, Terri-ann White and Kath Letch.
ARTEMIS was sustained by several grants but lost funding in 1990 and disbanded. The Artemis archive—featuring correspondence, meeting minutes, exhibition ephemera, artist files and more—was donated to the State Library of Western Australia.
Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative
Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative was formed in 1987 by ten Sydney-based Aboriginal artists: Bronwyn Bancroft, Euphemia Bostock, Brenda L. Croft, Fiona Foley, Fernanda Martins, Arone Raymond Meeks, Tracey Moffatt, Avril Quaill, Michael Riley and Jeffrey Samuels.
Boomalli supports Aboriginal artists whose language groups exist within the NSW state boundaries. The current membership base is 53 artists, both emerging and established, across both regional and metro NSW. Boomalli supports, promotes, educates and protects copyright for its members, exhibiting work in their galleries and connecting members to projects and opportunities.
“Since its inception, Boomalli has not wanted to be a government-based organisation…its charter as the longest run Aboriginal Artists Co-operative in NSW is to focus on NSW Aboriginal language artists, deliver their works to a wider audience, build appreciation around the social, historical and political events that impact on the creation of these works and to support our artists to create.” - Bronwyn Bancroft
Australian Artists Amidst COVID-19 (Facebook group)
A Facebook group comprised of members who work in the Australian arts sector across various fields including the visual arts, live performance, film, dance, writing, music and more, which was initiated in response to the pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic. The group became a significant gathering point to share relevant resources and information regarding conditions in the arts sector. The page remains an inclusive space for critical discussion of arts-related issues, opposing ‘systematic inequalities within the arts as they existed pre-Covid-19’. It is run by volunteers from industries across the arts sector.
Workers Art Collective (WAC)
The Workers Art Collective (WAC) is a group of Australian artists who produce artwork in solidarity with the workers’ movement. The WAC includes illustrators, muralists, street artists, cartoonists, painters, graphic designers and writers. The collective, which operates out of the Victorian Trades Hall, includes artists Sam Davis, Tia Kass, Mary Leunig, Nicky Minus, Van Rudd, Sam Wallman, Bailey Sharp, Ben Juers, Daniel Lopez, Nic Robertson and Victoria Ivanova. Many of the artists have experience working within the trade union movement and various industries, and are strong believers in the power of the working class in the fight for social justice and equality.
Workers Solidarity
Workers’ collective that publishes a fortnightly bulletin and blog on issues related to workers’ rights and unionism. The collective publishes articles and interviews with rank and file union members, workers and union activists. Its objectives are to assist in mobilising workers into a fighting union movement, and to organise practical solidarity actions and activities for workers in dispute.
Liberate Tate
Liberate Tate is a network of artists who called on the Tate Museum to end its longstanding relationship with fossil fuel giant BP. The group opposed the human rights violations and ecological destruction caused by BP in its operations (including the contribution to climate change effected through its extraction of oil and gas), and the way in which the Tate’s association with BP helped give the company a social licence to continue with its operations.
Liberate Tate was founded during a workshop on art and activism commissioned by the Tate in 2010– in spite of the curators of the event’s attempt to prevent the workshop from instigating any actions against sponsors of the museum. The group staged over fifteen creative interventions, mostly at the Tate galleries, between 2010 and 2017. These interventions consisted of live performances in which participants would occupy the gallery spaces, often making use of oil and other materials. These works were often staged in relation to significant events such as Tate board meetings, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, and BP’s subsequent trial. Other pieces included the commissioning of unsanctioned audio tours examining the relationship between the Tate and BP, and performances in which participants were tattooed at the gallery with a number corresponding to the amount of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere at the year of their birth.
Liberate Tate have presented a number of lectures on their project and their approach to activism, recordings of which are available on their website.
In 2017 the Tate ended its sponsorship arrangement with BP.
“We did this with our determination, commitment, stamina, tenacity, audacity, outrage, creativity, artistic craft, deep ecology and soulful collaboration. We did this with approximately 75 litres of molasses, 25 litres of sunflower oil, 20 helium balloons, 15 whispered hours of court transcripts, 1 tonne of arctic ice, 50 tubes of black paint, one 16.5 metre wind turbine blade, 1 portable toilet, 20 black sleeping sacks, 600 sticks of willow charcoal, 60 carefully selected texts, 60 millilitres of black tattooing ink, 600 black latex gloves, and 100 or so black veils – including one at 64 square metres.
We did this together. We did this with Art. We did this as Art.”
W.A.G.E (Working Artists and the Greater Economy)
W.A.G.E is an activist group and not for profit organisation that has created various platforms to ‘organise an unpaid workforce in an unregulated field’ and ‘to establish sustainable economic relationships between artists and the institutions that contract our labor, and to introduce mechanisms for self-regulation into the art field that collectively bring about a more equitable distribution of its economy’.
W.A.G.E’s key organising platform, launched in 2014 is the ‘W.A.G.E Certification’ program which ‘publically recognises those non-profit arts organisations demonstrating a history of, and commitment to, voluntarily paying artists fees that meet (their) minimum payment standards’.
The Certification process allows artists to self organise across a decentralised field and use collective agency to negotiate fair compensation with not-for-profit institutions. In contrast to a traditional understanding of wages, a W.A.G.E fee is a ‘price for labor’ set by artists as workers.
After 5 years of operation, the Certification process has succeeded in paying out more than $5.5 million to artists through approximately 6, 700 transactions.
W.A.G.E (Working Artists and the Greater Economy)
An online system that allows artists and not-for-profit institutions to establish fair and self-regulating labour relations.
The system is a transactional platform that allows members (‘wagents’) to determine a fair rate of compensation on a sliding scale in relation to an institutions’ total annual operating expenses and an industry-wide minimum. Once the wagent has determined a fee, they commence negotiations with the institution using the range of tools on the WAGENCY platform.
When artist ‘wagents’ either successfully negotiate fees, or withhold content when an institution declines to pay the standard, they become a ‘certified wagent’. Certified wagents can support other artist wagents through leveraging forms of cultural and economic capital. In this way, WAGENCY can potentially enable coordinated, individual boycotts amongst decentralised artists in lieu of a collective strike.
“WAGE doesn’t represent artists. Artists represent themselves through WAGE.”
- WAGE Organiser, Lise Soskolne
Women’s Art Register (W.A.R.)
Founded in Melbourne in 1975, the Women’s Art Register (which is cis, trans and non-binary inclusive) is a ‘living archive’ of women’s art practice in Australia. It is artist-run and not-for-profit, supported by paid membership, grants, and volunteers. From its inception W.A.R held an open collection policy.
W.A.R holds documentation of work by 5000+ artists. The physical collection, housed at Richmond Library, is open to the public, and is in the process of being digitised.
Since 1988 W.A.R has produced a twice-yearly publication, the Bulletin. The organisation continues to initiate new projects, to advocate for equity of representation in the visual arts, and to support women’s art practice.
Evidence and history of women’s art practice is maintained and made accessible, so that women’s voices are amplified and contributions to the visual arts recognised.
“Women are still fighting for equity and in a way not much has changed since 1975 when WAR was founded. For us at the Women’s Art Register we are fighting for equity in the arts by supporting female artists. Similar feminist activist projects like CoUNTess make this inequality very clear when you see that women still aren’t receiving the same exposure or rates of pay as their male counterparts.” —Danielle Hakim and Sally Northfield, 2016
Artleaks
Artleaks is a platform via which artists can report on experiences of exploitation, censorship or unjust treatment in the art world.
Decolonize This Place (DTP)
“Decolonize This Place (DTP) is an action-oriented, decolonial formation and a call to action. Facilitated by MTL+ Collective, DTP resists and unsettles settler colonial structures in our cities as it builds movement infrastructure of care and solidarity on the path of collective freedom and liberation. Organizing, research, aesthetics, and action are rooted in interconnected struggles that are anti-colonial, anti-imperial, anti-patriarchal, and anti-capitalist. The university, museum, and city are sites of struggles and organizing. They are sites of refusal, sabotage, infrastructure, sanctuary, play, exit. Let them be sites of training in the practice of freedom. When we breathe we breathe together.”
1856, organised by Nicholas Tammens
1856 was conceived as a program of exhibitions and events to be presented across sites within and around the Victorian Trades Hall, the world’s oldest worker’s trades hall building, a site that has a significant history of housing both trade unions and artists.
1856 seeks to continue the shared struggle of unions and artists through developing, organising and curating projects that address the cultural history of the labour movement, the labour of artists, and the ways in which artists address issues of social and economic precarity.
During COVID-19, the project evolved to include a weekly series of talks and readings addressing how artistic labour continues in a time of crisis, as well as discussing the collective strategies of artists to transform their socio-political conditions.
Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU)
The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) is the peak body for Australian unions. In the early 1970’s, unions initiated a resurgence of interest in the arts as vital to working class culture. Many unions and peak representative bodies ran arts programmes in workplaces and employed Arts officers. A desire to see this interest recognised translated into the first draft of the ACTU Arts and Creative Recreation Policy taken to ACTU congress in 1977. It was adopted in 1980 and revised by ACTU congress in 1991.
Cultural democracy, equity and access were amongst the key objectives of the policy with the union movements’ belief that ‘cultural activities give people a voice in defining their society and that there must be access and participation to the fullest range of cultural experiences for their families to ensure their right to make an impact on the cultural definition of Australia’.
Later, the ACTU began a partnership with the Australia Council through the Community Arts Board to establish the Art and Working Life Programme.
“…this activity brings ever wider involvement and participation, promoting working people’s confidence in their own creativity and encouraging appreciation in form, structure, feeling and ideas”.
-ACTU Arts and Creative Recreation Policy (1980)
Irish Government
The Basic Income for the Arts (BIA) is a pilot program aimed at addressing the precarious conditions and financial instability faced by many working in the arts sector. The scheme supports artists and arts workers by providing a payment of €325 per week. The BIA recognises the value of time necessary for creative practice and enables both artists and arts workers to focus on production, practice and contribution without necessarily having to enter employment in other sectors to support themselves.
The scheme was the number one recommendation of an Arts and Culture Recovery Taskforce set up to examine how the sector could adapt and recover following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Eligibility for the scheme was based on the definition of the arts as contained in the Arts Act 2003 and was open to three categories: Practicing Artists, Creative Arts Workers and Recently Trained, that is, graduated with a relevant qualification in the past 5 years. From those three categories, 2,000 recipients were randomly selected from the pool of 8,206 eligible applicants. The pilot runs for three years from 2022 - 2025.
“Today is an historic day for the arts in Ireland and a significant change to the way Ireland recognises and supports her artists. The Basic Income for the Arts pilot scheme is a once-in-a-generation initiative. It makes a strong statement about the value Ireland places on the arts and artistic practice, both for its intrinsic value and in terms of our personal and collective wellbeing, and also in terms of its importance to our identity and cultural distinctiveness on the global stage.” - Catherine Martin, Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and the Media.
National Association of Visual Arts (NAVA)
The National Association of Visual Artists (NAVA) is a membership organisation for the Australian contemporary arts sector that aims to improve the fundamental conditions of work and practice through advocacy, education and its ‘Code of Practice’ (Code). While NAVA’s Code sets out fees and wages for artists and arts workers, it is not mandatory or enforceable.
Recognising that this lack of enforcement and legislative recognition was contributing to increasingly precarious conditions in the visual arts, in 2022 NAVA and its members launched an open letter to the Minister for the Arts and Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations for a legislated Visual Arts Award to be included in the upcoming national Cultural Policy. More than 7,300 artists and arts workers (to date) have signed the open letter. The letter calls on the Government to: establish an Award rate for the visual arts, craft and design sector that mandates fair payment for work, recognition of artists in the Australian industrial relations system, introduction or trial of a basic income scheme, and ensuring that the welfare system respects the professional work of artists.
While the new national cultural policy, ‘Revive’, did not go as far as mandating NAVA’s Code or legislating for an Award, it did however endorse the Code and provides that the Government will ‘include Award coverage of the arts sector and minimum standards as part of the upcoming Review of Modern Awards’.
Operative Painters and Decorators Union of Australia (OPDU)
During the 1980’s and 1990’s, a number of organisations emerged to represent the professional interests of artists including the National Association of Visual Artists (NAVA), the Queensland Artworkers Alliance, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) and the artworker section of the Operative Painters and Decorators Union of Australia (OPDU). There was considerable public debate about how to best represent the diverse interests of artists and arts workers including whether artists should unionise, and if so, what was the optimal collective vehicle.
Against this backdrop, the OPDU pursued industrial coverage of visual artists in Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia. A key OPDU initiative was to establish industrial Award coverage of visual artists.
In Victoria and NSW, Award coverage of visual artists was through appendices to the general building industry Awards. However, in WA the OPDU was able to establish a stand-alone industrial instrument. These Awards provided a suite of industrial entitlements including wages, hours of work, sick and annual leave and allowances for equipment and studio use. The artworker section of the OPDU also campaigned for 1% of the funding for building projects over $1 million dollars to be reserved for art production.
While these Awards set wages and conditions for visual artists, there was significant criticism of the scope of the Awards as they were generally limited to visual artists who worked on public art projects within the building industry. The impact of Award rates on the overall wages of visual artists is difficult to quantify.
Metropolitan Museum security guards
I asked many of my co-workers in the security department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to join me in wearing a button on their uniform that states the number of years they’ve worked at the Met and their hourly rate—a personal wage pin.
On March 12, 2022 the New York Times published an article about my wage transparency project which included a photo of 15 wage pins that had been made for and worn by security guards who have worked at the Met between 4 and 41 years. As a result, the large audience that reads the Times newspaper and website was given a greater understanding of the financial realities of art museum security guards. My hope in exposing this information to the public was that it would shine a light on an otherwise often secretive or taboo subject and open up a dialog about the equality and fairness of wages in the workplace. - Emilie Lemakis
Communal Artists Sharing Economy (Nicholas Tammens, Sung Tieu, Studio for Propositional Cinema)
CASE (Communal Artist Sharing Economy) began as a proposal formed with the aim of building more equitable economies within the industry of art, firstly by focusing on the redistribution of profits in the context of commercial galleries. CASE continues on an activist basis arguing for practical inventions in economic equality for artists and arts workers. CASE was founded by Nicholas Tammens, Sung Tieu, and Studio for Propositional Cinema in 2021.