Hello Marc, Another way to interpret this statistic is this:
If you're an averagely competent grant-writer, with a 2.5% success rate each artist will have to apply 40 times for each success. How long does it take to prepare each grant application? (I'd suggest at least 3 days to get together a credible, worked out plan - even for a small grant.) 3 x 40 = 120 days of grant preparation work. How much money does each grant application pay out to the artist - as distinct from for the direct costs associated with the proposition? (I'd guess hundreds, not thousands of pounds.) Let's say £1000 for good measure. £1000 for 120 days of work? Ahhh! But the Arts Council does not count the cost of the time invested by artists who they do NOT fund. This is called "Externalising Costs". It defines that time as outside their frame of reference, and outside their responsibility. It is, of course, a clever mechanism, but deeply intellectually and morally flawed. So why do ANY individual artists bother, when temping as a cleaner (or other minimum wage job) is a better economic proposition for raising cash for their next arts project? * Perhaps artists are deluded gamblers, who all feel that they're luckier or more skillful than average. * Perhaps artists feel that getting the seal of Arts Council approval will increase their chances of drawing down other funding, or will increase the perceived symbolic significance of their art. * Perhaps artists imagine that they're building up a stock of "symbolic capital" - becoming more and more famous, and that at some future point they'll be able to cash in their hard-won celebrity for actual cash. * Perhaps individual artists are only investing minutes in these applications - which are REALLY generated by galleries or other institutions, and they are just called upon for a signature. * Perhaps artists are, in general, just not very bright, with only marginal understanding of "numbers, money and bread-head stuff". Are there other explanations? I direct you, and others, to the refreshingly frankly titled book "Why are Artists Poor?" by Hans Abbing. Abbing is a professor of economics (part time) and an artist (part time) and he wonders why it is that he continues to do art even when it does not pay, while he wouldn't consider commuting to Amsterdam University daily and teaching students should that institution cease to provide him with a paycheck. Best Regards, James ===== On 07/11/11 11:45, marc garrett wrote: > Arts funding: why so many artists don't apply for the money. > > Dany Louise introduces a report she wrote on arts funding that reveals > some surprising statistics. > > "The key finding is that surprisingly few individual artists apply for > money in their own right and even fewer are successful. In England, less > than 5% of artists apply in their own name every year and of those, less > than 2.5% are successful. This means that there is little direct funding > being given to artists to pursue and develop their own projects, under > their own control: under 20% of available funding for the visual arts in > England, 14% for Northern Ireland and around 18% for Scotland and Wales > in 2009-2010." > > http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2011/nov/04/arts-funding-artists-dont-apply > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > > _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
