Creative Australia, which describes itself as a “champion and investor in arts and creativity” released a new report about the working lives of Australian artists which:
“shows it is now harder than ever for professional artists to make a living.”
The starving artist
I’m sure it surprises very few that it’s now harder than ever for creatives to make a living, with rising costs of production and living in general, and the challenges of people who think that AI is a reasonable replacement for art about the human condition. This, despite the fact that creatives are generally highly educated, highly skilled,adaptive and actually deeply valued for their contributions.
You can get the whole report or just the summary from Creative Australia’s website.
The hungry soul
This report has come out at the same time as an extract from a three-year-old TED talk by Ethan Hawke has hit social media hard. In it, he talks about how nobody really needs poetry – until they absolutely need it, until it’s essential to grappling with the great joy and pain of being human and wondering if we are alone with those feelings, how to make sense of them, or express them.
“Well… most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about poetry. Right? They have a life to live, and they’re not really that concerned with Allen Ginsberg’s poems or anybody’s poems, until their father dies, they go to a funeral, you lose a child, somebody breaks your heart, they don’t love you anymore, and all of a sudden, you’re desperate for making sense out of this life… ‘Has anyone ever felt this bad before? How did they come out of this cloud?’
Or the inverse… something great. You meet somebody and your heart explodes. You love them so much, you can’t see straight. You know, you’re dizzy. ‘Did anybody feel like this before? What is happening to me?’
And that’s when art’s not a luxury, it’s actually sustenance. We need it.”
– Ethan Hawke (from this brilliant TED talk)
The value of art
All of this reminds me of the time of the pandemic lockdowns, and those feelings of isolation and loss of community. We didn’t know how much we needed people until we couldn’t hug them. Art in every form was not a luxury. We needed it.
We yearned so much for the nourishment of connection, hope and community that creators responded to the call, as artists so often do, with wonderful content to remind us of why we chose to protect each other through a frightening time. Several people I followed made a huge difference to me and my mental health: John Finnemore giving updates as Arthur Knapp-Shappey (from Cabin Pressure); Taika Waititi calling in all his Hollywood friends for readings of James and the Giant Peach; Samuel West’s Pandemic Poetry, reading classic and modern poetry (and taking requests) in his beautiful and evocative voice.
Then, as pandemic lockdowns came to an end, many writers, musicians and artists talked about how, for so many of us, art is what helped us cope. Books and music and art and theatre; uplifting ourselves with new arts too, learning to bake and craft and crochet.
We know how important creativity is to our wellbeing. We fed our souls with creativity when and how we could. We didn’t have to be perfect, or even good, to find solace and joy in the doing.
The value of artists
So how do I wind up this post about the essential nature of art, and the impoverishment of artists?
I guess, to encourage you to see those whose creativity nurtures you as worthy of what they cost. If you don’t have a lot of cash yourself, there are ways to support creatives: boost the work of the creatives that you love; recognise that book and music piracy and AI images created, uncredited and unpaid from human artists’ work, damages those creatives’ ability to make the next thing.
Don’t haggle with creatives when they quote you prices for their work – most of them are chronically undercharging as it is. Don’t try to pay in ‘exposure’ – creatives can’t pay their bills with exposure (electric companies, grocery stores, landlords, banks and supermarkets don’t recognise it as legal currency) and, as some freelancers I know say, people often die of exposure.
Support writers at no cost!
Consider being a book reviewer, if that’s your jam. I know that I, too, need more people who want to read and review my work across all platforms (blogs, Goodreads, retail sites) to help get the word out about my work.
And borrow from libraries (they do ebooks these days too!) when you can. Request your library to get in books that you’d like to read. In fact, in Australia, that’s a great extra income stream for writers, because Australian writers with books in Australian libraries get what’s called Public Lending Rights and Education Lending Rights – a small payment for our books that are read this way. Digital books are now included too!
Value art – and make it
Value the art that enriches your life – and value the people who create what you love enough to help them pay the bills that keep them fed and housed so that they can create.
And don’t forget, in all of that, to find the art within yourself, and nourish your own heart by making it.
Narrelle Harris Writing Services 