{"id":6820,"date":"2022-11-06T10:40:38","date_gmt":"2022-11-06T18:40:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/plugoarts.com\/blog\/?p=6820"},"modified":"2022-11-06T10:53:43","modified_gmt":"2022-11-06T18:53:43","slug":"art-in-society-its-cost-price-value","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/plugoarts.com\/blog\/art-in-society-its-cost-price-value\/","title":{"rendered":"Art in Society: its cost, price & value"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It’s no secret I’ve been on the path of full-time-art for two years now. It’s been a time of great change, not just in terms of personal career, but perhaps the nature of art’s place in society; it’s costs and value. I’ve been continually adding to this subject I’ve been researching, looking back at my own career and community as well as taking time I’d once spent commuting to read deeply on how to live as an artist. In looking at shifts in the our population and the ways artists have worked over the past decade or so, four major trends have surfaced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Norms which define who is an artist have diversified,  expanding the population.<\/li>
  2. Large numbers of artists now work in interdisciplinary ways.<\/li>
  3. Many artists are finding opportunities to work in non-arts fields.<\/li>
  4. Artists are driving the development of new platforms for entrepreneurial work.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    While federal statistics have produced reliable counts of artists in the U.S. over the years, there is a commonly held belief that their categories are inadequate. The bureaucratic definition of artist is too narrow to cover the entirety of artist population, artists can be categorized as \u201cprofessionals\u201d in the U.S., but \u201cartist\u201d is a designation not exclusively defined. “Artist” does not describe a specific professional certification or a uniform standard of practice. The term \u201cartist,\u201d is used among a wide range of skill sets and social norms for what is considered an artistic practice or artistic work change with increasing rapidity. Meanwhile official categories lag behind, and that is gap widening.

    But with-in the categories as they’re currently defined, artists whose primary income is derived from their art include many who have no academic training in the arts. Some people with degrees in the arts do not make the a living from their art. According to a 2015 survey by the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), of 140,000 graduates of art and design schools, only half of them made over 60% of their income exclusively from their artistic work. A 2003 Pew Research Center study found that just 7% of artists they called earn all of their income from their art.

    In 2015 the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Office conducted the American Community Survey which suggested the following. 2.3 million people had primary jobs as artists; an increase of about 185,000 over the 10 years prior. This represents approximately 1.5% of the American labor force. Approximately 271,000 workers who hold jobs in other sectors held second jobs as artists. 59% of artists at least have a bachelors\u2019 degree compared to 31% of U.S. workers overall. But, the majority of working artists earn less than professionals with similar educational achievements in other fields. The median income for fine artists, actors, musicians, dancers, choreographers, photographers, and \u201cother entertainers\u201d remained below the median income of the U.S. labor force overall ($39,280). Lastly, artists are 3.6 times more likely to be self-employed than other workers.

    Labor economists and Artists think that data still under-counts the number of people who should be counted. Consider culinary artists, social practice artists, martial artists or artists who work embedded within other sectors. Those surveys also exclude folk artists and tradition bearers. People who’s artistic practice is important to the cultural or spiritual life of their communities; but who make most or all of their income in other professions. For example, these official counts would probably not include Shaolin Monks, Indigenous artists, Mardi Gras and other Carnival culture exemplars, as well as community-based artists. There are also cultural traditions that prohibit profiting from artistic work, and federal data on volunteering in the arts does not account for these kinds of professional artists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n