Is The Visual Art World Losing Diversity and Becoming Vanilla?
I read an article recently entitled:
‘Arts subjects seen as a 'hobby' and could be wiped out in some schools, teachers warn’
I read this just after another article that suggested that creative degrees were becoming harder to undertake mainly due to extortionate fees and therefore many ‘artists’ (sorry you don’t become one because you have BA next to your name but you certainly do get 3-4 years of focused development on your practice and that is what for me creative degrees are about) were not being able to get that quantified affirmation of their practice. No, creative talent is probably not one you need that lucrative BA to prove worth and best ability but being able to acquire degree level qualifications in theory gives equal weight on paper to these skills against other qualifications in different fields and makes us take it seriously as a profession.
So, in 2010 the Conservatives decided to allow Universities to increase their fee cap to £6000 per year and £9000 (and even more for foreign students wishing to study here) in ‘exceptional cases’ from 2012. A study done in July 2014 by the Office for Fair Access found that 76% of universities now charge £9000 per year in fees - within 2 years 76% have exceptional circumstances?!
We’re now 4 years into this change and the arts is quite bluntly becoming elitist and fairly vanilla and now we are seeing even more damaging effects lower down the scale that the arts are being seen as a hobby subject not a viable career choice.
Now you could argue many reasons for this changes in secondary school but this is how I see it because I certainly took my Art GCSE and A Level and dance qualifications seriously as did my parents and teachers.
The fees went up. This put off many less affluent kids who may have previously gone to University and we know from many studies those from a wealthy background still outstrip those who are not 2:1 in our Universities. Yes there are loans in place to help students out but the impression I get is that it’s the maintenance loan that is the one that makes or breaks whether someone can go to Uni nowadays plus the thought of being in debt for the foreseeable. I put the information I would have supplied to get my loans when I went into higher education into a calculator for 2016-2017 and the maintenance loan for the london area was nowhere close to what the actual living cost is, it’s those middle of the road students like I was that are now missing out.
The ‘type’ of student who can afford to study Art at higher education changed focus to those who could afford it (because it isn’t even a twinkle in the sky if you can’t even contemplate affording it, regardless of repaying over time if there isn't the promise of a job at the end what’s the point).
Oversees students got charged even more (up to £12,000 per year) so on top of British students now attending Art School being only the affluent elite, the foreign students were that too and the number of them attending massively increased - did it get easier for them to get in because they brought in more money? I don’t know, but I do know some Universities have had to but on courses in English because their foreign art students were not fluent enough to fully get through their courses in a second language. We lost cultural diversity in our higher education, we narrowed the types of backgrounds and experiences our students had, they had less controversy and opposing opinions in the ranks making them look at things differently - not because well off kids have less interesting experiences or will make less interesting or quality art but because just like if you filled an art course with only people I grew up with in Yorkshire we’d all have a fair few similarities in our upbringings regardless of class, race, gender etc etc. This is where the vanilla comes in - these student peer groups need diversity in terms of backgrounds and experiences to challenge them at the first point they’re old enough to really grasp, develop and argue opinions.
So these students graduate and begin to try and make their art their profession, earn money from it, gain recognition for it, make it their career… Only we all know this is very hard to do BUT, these students potentially have a bigger support net in the form of parents being able to offer monetary support while they follow their dream… So, they do an unpaid internship, and another, and another until they’re doing management level unpaid internships (they are 100% out there!), and by doing this the industry is making it acceptable to not get paid for hard and skilled work, unpaid internships become and still remain a problem in the creative industries. I accidentally applied to one not so long ago, I didn't even consider a full time, six month contract job post would actually be an unpaid internship and bear in mind I’ve been in the arts 12 years so I don’t go for entry level positions any more, so that’s basically 6 months not to learn about a job but to complete one, utilising your skills but for free.
This problem with unpaid internships in the arts and elsewhere has made headlines, of course the knock on affect from this is parents who now have kids reaching the age where they're deciding their GCSE topics, and this leads us back round to the initial article I read, which stated: Some year 9 students in certain schools are now only doing art once every 2 weeks. The Government is talking about putting billions of funding into extending the school day for more ‘extra curricula activities‘ like sport and art. Parents will see this de-valuing of the arts, will see the number of unpaid internships and poorly paid jobs (because by undertaking unpaid work we are simply making it acceptable and perpetuation the problem) and are seeing the huge fees and likely telling their kids that the arts just aren’t worth it. Sure, Timmy may be excellent on the drums, be able to cut some amazing shapes on a canvas or bring an audience to tears with his soliloquy from Hamlet but hey, even with a qualification you won’t get paid well for it so go do something important, get a PROPER job.
And for me right now this is one of the reasons British art isn’t standing out so much any more. It’s why less younger students are seeing the arts as a viable career path and it’s why the industry is losing professional credibility. Although we can track some of this back to the recession, working and living in London for the past 6 years, on University sites and with emerging artists I’ve seen these further changes, I’ve heard the chat from artists and arts professionals and a lot of talk about elitism in the arts and it is having a lasting affect.
There are some organisations that are working against the grain now, check out School of Punktum https://schoolofpunktum.wordpress.com who offer affordable and free development and learning to artists and Lensculture https://www.lensculture.com who champion new international photographers daily on their site and run great prizes, along with a fantastic site covering most topics. These types of establishments focus on making that support and development accessible to a wider audience. Hopefully these organisations along with others will start to add in the layers of diversity our arts culture is losing and we’ll start to see a more punchy scene…. well, one can hope.
Agree or disagree? Let me know. caitlin (dot) smyth (at) hotmail (dot) com.