Sustainability of Artists in Precarious Times; How Arts Producers and Individual Artists Have Adapted during a Pandemic

Josephine Caust

doi:10.3390/su132413561

Abstract

Making a living as an artist, whatever the discipline, is challenging. In addition to skills and talents, artists need resilience, adaptability, creativity, and the ability to withstand endless setbacks and rejections. Most critically, they need an on-going, stable income. Several studies have demonstrated that the income of most artists is usually very low. To survive, artists often find other sources of income aside from their creative work. Ideally, they also need a place to work, the capacity to do their work and a sense of validation from others of their work. When your livelihood disappears over night because of a pandemic, how do you then sustain that creative work? Using multiple sources of data and a qualitative methodology, including case studies and interviews, this paper addresses the ways that artists and producers from different art forms have addressed these challenges in Australia. It is concluded that while the impact of the pandemic on artists’ lives has been considerable, some artists have been able to survive, adapt, and move forward.

Highlights

Some of the examples will already be in the public domain in various forums; others will be interviews that the researcher has conducted in Australia, either online or by phone, with individual artists and arts producers
In-depth interviews undertaken with 6 individual artists from different art forms provide a nuanced and clearer picture of how different artists have experienced this time
The focus of the conversations between the researcher and the artists was the impact of the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown on those individuals and how they managed during this time

Summary

Introduction

Theatres, festivals, and galleries had to close, and many thousands of artists from all art forms lost their income, livelihoods, and projected income [1,3,4]. This dramatic change of events affected individuals and organizations differently [4,5]. Some found it hard to survive and continue their practice while others have, after the initial shock, looked at ways they could adapt and still thrive at their artistic practice in this changed and changing world. What have some arts organizations done to support individual artists, and how have some individual artists managed to be ‘sustainable as an artist’ during a pandemic?

Methods

Results

Conclusion