Money Matters

How much do visual artists earn? Where do they get their money from? How much do they spend on making work? Could microfinance help artists grow their businesses?

Research I undertook with 350 artists earlier this year, on behalf of Artquest, highlighted some startling results:

• 66% of artists make less than £15,000 per annum.
• 68% spend less than £5,000 on their work per annum.
• 48% of artists make their primary income from non-arts related work.
• 45% of respondents felt strongly they don’t have the funding or finance they need to make and develop their practice.
• Only 16% of respondents sell work.
• Personal finance and informal lending and donations from friends and family form a significant part of the artists’ economy.
• 60% of artists plan their finances less than 12 months ahead.

Over the past year I’ve been working with Artquest to identify how they can best support London artists in developing effective funding for their work. This has involved a literature review and interviews with partners involved in providing finance to the creative and not-for-profit sectors including Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, Cockpit Studios, Mission, Models and Money, Venturesome, National Council of Voluntary Service, Community Finance Development Association, Association of Charitable Funders, Funding Central, Mycake and Arts Council England Visual Arts Department. This research established the lack of finance opportunities for artists.

We also identified a lack of current intelligence about artists’ funding and finance needs so in Spring 2009 AQ commissioned further research into artists’ funding and finance needs to inform its future plans for how best to support artists. The statistics above are taken from this report and you can download the full findings from the AQ website.

Based on this research we are developing a programme of activity to support artists’ develop more successful and sustainable financial models for their practice. This will build on related work I undertook earlier in 2009 for Funding Central – developing content for their grant funding website pages.

We are currently in the process of fundraising for this project which we hope will launch in Autumn 2010.

If you are interested in being involved please get in touch or join our Ning