Warhol Dollar, by Incase via flickr

We believe that a healthy arts ecosystem should provide opportunities for everyone to participate in the arts at their own individual level of skill and interest. This includes allowing more “scarce” opportunities – like making art for a living – to be available to those people for whom it matters most (i.e., making art is most meaningful) and whose work in the arts offers the greatest benefit to others – by connecting to a large audience, winning acclaim from experts, adding something unique to the cultural diet of humanity, or improving people’s lives in other meaningful ways.

Why We Care

We suspect that economically disadvantaged individuals in particular face a variety of obstacles when seeking to actively pursue careers in the arts, including:

• costs of making/producing art (e.g., materials, rehearsal space)
• indirect costs (e.g., transportation, child care)
• lack of time (due to the need to earn a living)
• inability to take needed financial or social risks (such as student debt for an arts degree, moving to an urban area)
• societal pressure (from social and/or professional environments that treat participation in the arts as a diversion from more economically productive activities)

Then there is the question of tangential income sources – such as a family help or inherited wealth – enjoyed by many who pursue arts careers. If an arts occupation is attractive but probably low-paying, and there are socioeconomic inequalities in the road to becoming a professional, logically that line of work will beckon more people from affluent backgrounds.

So do all the people who have the most to contribute really have the opportunity to pursue a career as an artist? And socioeconomics aside, to what extent are barriers to arts careers shaped by other societal factors – such as race/ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, and/or geographic variables (e.g., urban vs. rural residencies)?

What We Know

… about economic realities and secondary income:

It is difficult to support oneself on making art alone. To make ends meet, many artists have one or more rotating “day jobs” or an alternate plan. Research indicates:

• The day-job phenomenon is especially true for artists who support single-income households. For example, Australian artists who don’t rely on the income from a partner spend more time on non-arts work.
• Others develop a backup plan. Nearly half of artists in the U.S., according to BFAMFAPhD’s “Artists Report Back,” hedge their career bets by majoring in another subject, and arts students pick up more minors and teaching certificates as part of their backup planning.
• The career path of an artist is fraught with economic risk. There is a  long gestation period with high opportunity costs and greater variability in earnings than those working in other fields, and so a greater degree of uncertainty and instability. Artists are also five times more likely to be self-employed.
• Even after establishing a successful career, artists experience the biggest drop between income during childhood and income during adulthood among the 31 careers in a national longitudinal survey.
• Socioeconomic backgrounds play a major role: professionals in “arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media occupations” were about 60% more likely than average to have a father who attended at least some college (55.9% vs. 34.5%), and 70% more likely to have a mother who attended college (55.9% vs. 32.6%).
• Governmental interventions to support artists can be effective, but also come with some strings attached, such as being subject to censorship, systemic perpetuation of cultural inequality, and diluting diversity of cultural expression and creativity.

… about formal education for arts professionals:

Are artist careers mediated by access to higher education? Research indicates that the need for a formal arts degree in order to make a living as an artist is debatable, and the benefits are variable:

• The “Artists Report Back” study claims that 84% of working artists in the United States don’t have a degree in the arts, and about two-fifths don’t have degrees at all.
• Although not necessary to become a successful professional,  an arts degree could help an artist reach a higher level of industry success or make a full-time living as an artist.
• A Danish study indicates that a formal education does reduce the rate of attrition (i.e., abandoning an arts career) for musicians, actors and writers, but not necessarily at the same rate for visual artists and dancers.

What We Don’t Know

Unfortunately, much of the evidence currently available on the topic of socioeconomic status and access to arts careers is indirect and based on incomplete data. The vast majority of research on artists’ livelihoods only examines artists’ current socioeconomic status, not their status at the time when they were deciding what career to pursue (and earlier). We thus don’t know much about how socioeconomic status at different life stages might affect people’s decisions about pursuing an arts career. In addition, while the evidence is consistent with the idea that the high risk of pursuing an arts career deters people from lower education and income backgrounds, we don’t know the extent to which risk really does play a role in the selection of majors, or for that matter whether the level of interest in pursuing arts careers varies across socioeconomic background and other demographic categories. The data and analyses that we do have point to socioeconomic status as one factor, but not necessarily the most important one, in determining whether or not someone will earn a living wage as an artist.

Other key questions we have include:

• What differences exist across artistic disciplines in relation to different career trajectories, opportunities, and potential financial successes?
• How does secondary income (such as spousal or other family  support) affect the opportunities and careers of individual artists?
• How does the availability of a social safety net – such as access or lack of access to affordable health care – affect the distribution and uptake of opportunities to earn a living as an artist?
• To what extent do disparities of opportunities and support for artists from different racial, gender and orientation backgrounds currently exist? And what, if anything, has helped to reduce these disparities?
• What are the differences in access between “very scarce” arts career opportunities – i.e., making a living from the arts – and merely “scarce” opportunities for artists who have more than one income source or who present work in public but not necessarily for money?

How to Use this Information

A few action items to consider:

For researchers

• Synthesize existing research on disparities of opportunities in arts careers by gender, sexual orientation, and race/ethnicity.
• Seek a better understanding of professional opportunities by arts discipline – and also why any differences may exist.

For funders and artist residencies

• Commission current research on the questions referenced above to support more strategic thinking and supportive programs in the sector.
• Be cautious about assuming that supporting artists is the same as supporting socioeconomically disadvantaged populations in other sectors. Although artists may earn significantly lower incomes than professionals in other fields, they may come from or have familial access to wealth, which provides a security net not available to others.
• Consider how funders (and advocacy agencies) can play in a role in protecting artists from censorship risk in the face of variable government support – especially in places like Poland or Hungary where democratic institutions exist but are fragile and under threat.

Resource List

Who Can Afford To Be A Starving Artist? (2016)
The key to success might be risk tolerance, not talent.
This article explores the economic realities involving who can actually take up an arts career – those who deserve it, those who really want it, or those who can afford it?

The BFA’s Dance With Inequality (2016)
Most arts majors come from money. Most artists didn’t major in the arts. What does that say about the sector?
A BFAMFAPhD study raises questions as to whether higher education is an arts incubator or a waste of precious prime time.

When Artistic Education Matters  (2017)
Arts degrees don’t seem to have much impact on income from the arts. But do they affect how long people stay in the field?
A Danish study demonstrates how formal education can reduce attrition rates for artists in some disciplines (music, theater, literature) more than others (dance and visual arts).

The State: A Friend Indeed to Artists in Need? (2016)
Internationally, governments can play an important role creating occupational equity for the arts – but there’s a catch.
This article explores the different results of state-aided arts programs in global locales ranging from Scandinavia to the former Soviet Union to North America.

TEDx Talk (2011)
“Never Heard of ‘Em”: Why Citizen Curators (not Daddy’s Money) Should Decide Who Gets to Be an Artist
A transcript of a speech by Createquity founder Ian David Moss, who argues that a hypercompetitive marketplace ultimately limits opportunity for economically disadvantaged artists.

Artists Are Not Alone in Steep Climb to the Top (2013)
It’s an old story: when they’re not creating, many artists spend their time at another job that brings in a steady income.
This article outlines the many ways creative artists navigate the ever-changing economy.

Supply is Not Going to Decrease (So It’s Time to Think About Curating) (2011)
Providing stewardship for a world in which supply of creative content is exploding and will never shrink.
Why institutions and funders should focus their resources on producers and artists who can actually make a difference.

Around the world, we see people facing challenges not only accessing careers as artists, but also sustaining them. South Korean artists make 77% and Canadian artists 74% of their respective countries’ average income. In Ireland, 80% of visual artists who depend on their creative income live in poverty. One survey respondent in that country describes the outlook for artists this way: “The future always looks worse than the past. Economic booms are quite bad for artists, because they can’t afford to live where they should for their careers. Busts are worse.”

Generally, people born into less affluence have to work harder to catch up in any field. The Guardian’s Sonia Sodha writes that “we’ll never be able to eliminate the role that good fortune plays, but we need to do much more to lessen its influence and increase the relationship between effort and success.” What role can government play in lessening the influence of fortune when it comes to supporting artists? A look at several countries gives us some clues.

Tran Thi Doanh, Vietnames painter – Photo by Flickr user, Duc

Two Models: National Status vs. Sink or Swim

In some countries, including the United States, being an artist doesn’t necessarily mean having a professional artist career track, especially not in any sort of state-sponsored system. As one national study of artists reported, “some painters interviewed said that career was not part of their professional vocabulary; they simply were painters.” In that context, as we’ve explored, many US-based artists have day jobs and backup plans, and find themselves crossing between nonprofit and commercial sectors in a demanding market economy.

In other parts of the world such as in the former Soviet Union, as scholar Nina Dimitrialdi describes in her 2009 PhD dissertation on challenges faced by US and UK artists, “artist” was indeed a profession just like any other. An artist in the Russian Federation with “professional” status from the government currently receives compulsory social programs such as insurance covering illness, housing, maternity, disability, and retirement. Many countries with cultural sectors based on the old Soviet model, such as Egypt, fully bankroll training programs and manage “card carrying” artists and their benefits through a national union.

Left: Egypt’s High Institute of Ballet, 2013 (conditions under Presidents Mubarak, Mansour and Morsi) | Right: Same facility in 2016 (under President el-Sisi) – Images by Shawn Lent and Madga Saleh

Whether or not artistry is a formal profession in the eyes of the state, and what states do or don’t do to support that profession, reflects different agendas within different political systems. While the American model mostly distributes public funding for the arts indirectly, via tax deductions for nonprofit organizations and their donors, many other governments provide substantial direct support to individual artists. Increased overall government funding for the arts could be an important indicator of potential support for economically disadvantaged artists, but there is an opportunity in cultural policy to assess what funding schemes help bridge wealth gaps in the profession.

Unfortunately, we found existing research on this topic to cover predominantly North American and European countries, with few nationally representative results relating to artists from poorer backgrounds. While it is difficult to get a good read on the situation internationally, in many parts of the world, it does appear that dedicated government support – in the forms of subsidies and other incentives – has opened the artistic profession to more people across social classes.

Europe Day Slovenia – Photo by Flickr user, Steve

Public Policy Can Keep Artists Afloat

We see a number of countries enacting support programs for artists that are tied in with their tradition of centralized social services, supporting the basic needs of all citizens; this could be critical for artists and similar types of workers. As Quartz’s Aimee Groth put it when speaking about entrepreneurs, “when basic needs are met, it’s easier to be creative.” By giving more of a safety net to artists born with less means, government programs can make it easier for people (artists included) to risk being “entrepreneurial.”

Slovenia, Finland, Italy and Austria are a few of the many countries that offer pension and retirement programs to deserving artists as defined by those governments. The South Korean Artists Welfare Act extends the country’s employment insurance to 180,000 artists and accident insurance to 57,000 artists. The Danish Arts Foundation’s life-long benefit grants (livsvarige statsydelser) are awarded to state-selected, high-achieving artists in that country. In Thailand artists employed by the Ministry of Culture are considered civil service officers with the same salary system and benefits, and in Germany, the Artists’ Social Insurance Fund (Künstlersozialkasse or KSK) has been supporting self-employed artists and journalists since 1983.

2009 Making an appointment with Sabine Schlüter, head of KSK (Künstlersozialkasse) – Photo by Flickr user, Henning Krause

Estonia

Another country advancing its support of artists is Estonia, where a select group of artists and writers are offered a €1005 salary per month for two years plus health insurance and a pension plan. According to Indrek Saar, Estonia’s Minister of Culture, “the purpose of [the program] is to offer for a couple of years a possibility to work in peace and social guarantees for the distinguished creative people. Economic stability of a creative person gives better preconditions to create a new work of art.” This year Saar announced a 13.5% raise to the minimum wage for cultural professionals in that country’s government. This program is quite similar to one in Sweden, where income guarantees are given to selected artists who have created work considered “important for Swedish cultural life.”

Netherlands

The Netherlands has historically been a strong leader in this realm. The Dutch Artists’ Work and Income Scheme Act (WWIK), in place from 2005-2012, was the third major artist subsidy program developed for the country. WWIK provided financial support (70-125% of the guaranteed minimum income) for artists with a low income for a maximum of 48 months over 10 years to cover the start-up period of their professional arts career. Dutch artists also received extensions in the availability of unemployment benefits (4 years rather than 6 months).

While that program did not track impact for artists from financial disadvantage, another example from the Dutch attempted to connect cause and effect. From the 1960s-80s, the Netherlands provided temporary assistance to low-income visual artists that allowed those artists to sell their work directly to local governments as a supplement to income. The number of participating artists increased from 200 in 1960 to 3800 in 1983. During the same period, the growth rate of student enrollment in fine arts departments at Dutch academies was 60% higher than the average growth rate for technical and vocational training in other fields.

Members of Ethiopia’s Ras Theatre group dance and play as they wait for Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni at Bole Airport, Addis Ababa – Photo by Flickr user, Andrew Heavens

The Warning: Selling Out (or Buying In) for Survival

Governments sponsor artists for a complex set of purposes: cultural tourism like the kind Russia is planning in occupied Crimea; income generation or nationalism such as with the Agencia Cubana de Rap in Cuba; protecting the national image like in Vietnam; “preserving the country’s national cultural assets for the benefit of all citizens and future generations” including aboriginal arts like in Canada; binational collaboration such as that of China-Moldova; cultural diplomacy, placemaking, or improving public morale. Generally speaking, state-sponsored artists are expected to adhere to policies that align with national interests.

2013 Venice Biennale / Maldives Pavilion – Photo by Flickr user, Emergency Room Thierry

Before we all make a rush on the Dutch consulate or start demanding new state-sponsored artist programs in our respective countries – quite the issue to float in our current political climate – it’s worth considering the pitfalls that can come with increased government involvement in the arts.

• Threats to Freedom of Speech: Several of the programs mentioned above are or were careful to allow artistic freedom. The Netherlands supported the artists participating in its assistance programs regardless of the style or content of the work they produced. In Estonia, Minister Saar explains that artists receiving the government salaries are “still free in their creative work; the only requirement for the creative person is the commitment to one’s creative work.” Unfortunately, such freedoms are the exception rather than the rule. Many countries, such as Zimbabwe, have a national agency for censorship. While increased government support for artists can result in great technical rigor in the respective art forms, like in Russian ballet, it can also mean stringent restrictions on artistic expression and a high level of government interference. In 1980, UNESCO recommended governments “determine those remunerative jobs which might be confided to artists without restricting their creativity, their vocation and their freedom of expression and communication.” Russia may recognize artistry as a “profession,” but its track record with creative expression is abysmal; the organization Freemuse registered 32 attacks on artistic freedom in that country (such as censorship, imprisonment, physical attack, and death) in 2015 alone.
• Questions of Scale and Dysfunction: Government funding artists doesn’t automatically result in a net benefit for all individual artists, let alone poor artists. Many of the programs we came across focused on a relatively small number of superstars. Can any of these programs run at the scale needed to address the flaws in our arts ecology? And at what point might increased scale mean increased risk of corruption? Would an international scheme across the sector be more effective than relying on individual polities?
• Risk of Perpetuating Cultural Inequities and the Residual Effects of Colonialism: We have been examining government programs from the perspective of reducing socioeconomic inequality in the arts ecosystem, but in fact artists who are LGBTQ, with disabilities, from marginalized racial or religious groups, or political opposition may be just as likely to be excluded from government programs in many countries. With decision-making about which artists to cultivate via government sponsored programs so centralized, states have few incentives to include groups that may be at odds with perceived government interests.
• Risk of Servile Labor: Similar concerns apply to arts disciplines and new forms of self-expression. If you pursue a career as a painter of socialist realism art because the government only supports and allows that form of art, then there are fewer opportunities for you to express yourself and for audiences to gain benefits from a variety of artistic expressions. Artists in North Korea have been exported to execute massive arts projects in countries such as Cambodia, hired as employees to earn hard currency for the State.
• Lack of Cultural Variety: Even when a government’s intentions are pure, it is not clear that placing decisions about artists’ careers in the hands of bureaucrats leads to the best possible mix of cultural products and experiences. Generous benefits for artists in all likelihood means a limit on the number of artists who can access those benefits, which may mean that the people left out have even fewer opportunities to have a public creative identity and get paid for it. For all its issues, the United States’s market approach is rarely criticized for yielding a boring, homogeneous mix of work.

National Ballet of China ‘Raise the Red Lantern’ – Photo by Flickr user, Jesse Clockwork

Government policies can make it possible for artists to pursue better, more dignified careers, but there is no such thing as a free lunch. As we move forward in addressing the questions of support and equal opportunity in arts careers, we must be conscious of the tradeoffs inherent in systems that rely on more overt government or other patronage of the arts.

In the latest Createquity podcast series, Createquity and Fractured Atlas team members illuminate the major factors that contribute to artists (or prevent artists from) establishing successful careers. We also focus on some of the tools Fractured Atlas has developed to support artists, with the larger goal of helping create a more navigable and equitable ecosystem for professional artists.

Cover image: “Radical – Avant la Tempête @ EDLD 2015,” courtesy of Flickr user, Duc, via Flickr Creative Commons license. 

Who will take care of these artist-citizens when they get sick or injured? Who will grow food and repair buildings? Who will mediate disputes? Perhaps in a radical shift toward interdisciplinary living, these functions will be considered new artforms. Perhaps the growth of artificial intelligence will, in fact, have rendered these functions obsolete, freeing people to focus on artistic pursuits if they wanted. In our 21st century reality, though, not everyone who envisions an arts career can follow through on that dream. The option to make one’s living as a pro artist is bestowed upon a small portion of the people who desire it.

Which begs the question: who should those people be?

Photo by Flickr user, hollyannephotog7

As we at Createquity perceive it, they should be the artists whose work offers the greatest benefit to others. That can mean engaging an unusually large audience. It can mean winning disproportionate respect from experts. It can mean adding something unique to the cultural diet of humanity. Or it can mean improving lives in other concrete and meaningful ways.

Those criteria should have little, if anything, to do with an artist’s family tax bracket. And yet we see troubling signs that socioeconomic status does correlate with access to a professional arts career. Logically, it makes sense: if an occupation is attractive but probably low-paying, and then there are socioeconomic inequalities in the road to becoming a professional, inevitably that line of work would beckon more people from affluent backgrounds.

Empirically, reliable data is hard to come by, but what we have found tends to support the suspicion. One U.K. study finds that artists there are predominantly middle class, and a U.S. report declared that average household income during the childhood of artists (in 1979) was the same as those who went on to become chief executives, general managers, and engineers—above the 60th percentile of family income. Our own analysis of the 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts via the National Archive of Data on Arts & Culture reveals that professionals in “Arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media occupations” were about 60% more likely than average to have a father who attended at least some college (55.9% vs. 34.5%), and 70% more likely to have a mother who attended college (55.9% vs. 32.6%). That is the most extreme skew of any of 23 occupation categories for mother’s education; for fathers, it’s exceeded only by mathematics and computer science occupations.

Artist by Flickr user, Esther Simpson

What’s behind these trends? Last month, our article on The BFA’s Dance with Inequality explored whether the cost of an arts agree poses a barrier to individuals in the U.S. from financially disadvantaged backgrounds who may otherwise wish to pursue a career in the arts. The short answer is that it doesn’t – in fact, the vast majority of working artists in this country do not have arts degrees, although the importance of such a credential to an arts career does vary widely by artistic discipline and goals.

What about risk? Could poorer individuals be shying away from becoming artists because of what might happen if it doesn’t work out? Are the risks associated with an arts career disproportionately discouraging to economically disadvantaged individuals? Are there other sectors we can learn from?

Here’s what we do know about pursuing a career in the arts.

• The notion of “the day job” is very real. Artists tend to have other work to draw from to earn income. The day-job phenomenon is especially true for artists who support single-income households. For example, Australian artists who don’t rely on the income from a partner spend more time on non-arts work.

• Many artists are making backup plans. Although artists are possibly go-getters by getting out into the field sooner than other professionals (with fewer total years of education), nearly half of them in the U.S., according to BFAMFAPhD’s “Artists Report Back,” built a safety net by majoring in another subject. Arts students also pick up more minors and teaching certificates as part of their “backup” planning – one way to try to minimize the risk inherent in their choices.

• The artist’s path is fraught with risk. The professional arts career has a long gestation period with high opportunity costs. Artists face greater variability in their earnings than those working in other fields and are five times more likely to be self-employed. Some have hypothesized that this nature of the arts draws more risk-seeking individuals than the general labor market.

Inequality Across Sister Sectors

In many ways, artists have a lot in common with tech entrepreneurs. The early (and sometimes not so early) stages of their careers could be likened to the startup phase of companies, in which Mark Zuckerberg hopefuls pull ramen-fueled all-nighters for uncertain, uneven remuneration. Working artists interact with labor markets in ways that could be compared to small firms. The two fields have common controversies: for tech entrepreneurs the necessity of a college degree has likewise been called into question. There’s even a debt-free, direct path for emerging tech stars from all types of socioeconomic backgrounds. A prime example is the Thiel Fellowship; following in the footsteps of other dropouts such as Bill Gates, young tech entrepreneurs are receiving $100,000 if they leave or put off college to pursue their own Thiel projects.

Photo by ThielFellowship.org as well as LinkedIn user, Mike Olson

Unfortunately, in both fields, the risks involved in developing a career seemingly correlate with the underrepresentation of low-SES professionals. According to one U.S. survey, entrepreneurs skew toward affluence; by another account, tech entrepreneurs come mostly from middle-class backgrounds. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor found that “more than 80% of funding for new enterprises comes from personal savings, family and friends.”

We don’t know whether tech entrepreneurs try to mitigate the risks of their careers, but it seems like artists do. A question lingers: if artists can and do create backup plans and hold day jobs to lower their personal risk, how do we explain why aren’t there more low-SES professional artists? Perhaps it’s related to social and human capital. In order to be successful, artists need to be able to commit uncompensated time to a passion project, particularly over an extended period. They need to spend thousands of hours in training/practice, which are thousands of hours that they’re not earning a living.

No matter what entrepreneurial capacities we teach, push and support to prepare emerging artists for this uncertain economy, a person’s financial circumstances could matter quite a bit. Resources depend, at least partly, on a stable asset base, and the limited resources of low-SES populations might impact their ability to grow their new businesses and arts careers, demanding greater risk-taking. The National Bureau of Economic Research recently provided indications that risk tolerance relates much more to circumstances (behavior in relationship to environment) than to personality, pointing to evidence that individuals from poorer backgrounds have lower risk tolerance.

Risking It All, for What?

Like tech entrepreneurship, the arts are among the world’s “winner-take-all” industries; with the exception of a handful of superstars, most of the pack will struggle mightily toward public acclaim and financial stability. The risk artists face, though, is on another level: even when successful in establishing a career at all, they experience the biggest drop between income during childhood and income during adulthood among the 31 careers in the National Longitudinal Survey. Researcher Pierre-Michel Menger reports in the 1999 Annual Review of Sociology that “the skewed distribution of artists income is strongly biased to the lower end of the range.” In Canada, arts managers, directors, coordinators and government cultural workers have higher and rising salaries compared to the art-makers themselves, who in the U.S. are more likely than non-artist and technical professionals to live below the poverty line (6.9 percent vs. 4.2 percent according to data from the 2000 US Census).

Is it just the dream of fame and fortune that compels aspiring artists to take such gambles? Or is it expression and societal contribution? Financial benefit, interestingly, does not appear to be much of a motivator for good work. According to Menger, professional artists feel “zero or negative correlation between effort and earnings.” In a recent London study of cultural industry professionals, 88% reported that they have worked for free; individuals from low-SES backgrounds may not always have that luxury. Indeed, risk aversion might be a reason less affluent individuals in the United Kingdom are more likely to participate in the arts informally.

Photo by Flickr user, Samira

Looking Ahead

While we have yet to find solid evidence that risk dissuades individuals from economically disadvantaged backgrounds from pursuing arts careers, we know that if the arts and entrepreneurship remain enclaves for the privileged, we will all be the poorer for it. As much as our cultural and technological palettes have been enhanced by the likes of Nina Simone, Mark Rothko, Steve Jobs, J.K. Rowling, and Hamilton‘s Anthony Ramos, they shouldn’t be the exception that proves the rule.

One potentially promising area of investigation would be to examine alternate systems that could better support such professionals by decoupling success from an inequitable distribution of risk. Do we need more targeted support for less affluent artists? Germany, France, and Holland have been experimenting with social welfare programs for artists. The government of Sweden is offering lifetime pensions. With a more equitable socioeconomic grounding, the issue of risk for artists (as well as for tech entrepreneurs) might become moot. In our final article of this current series, we’ll explore that topic in greater depth.

In the latest Createquity podcast series, Createquity and Fractured Atlas team members illuminate the major factors that contribute to artists (or prevent artists from) establishing successful careers. We also focus on some of the tools Fractured Atlas has developed to support artists, with the larger goal of helping create a more navigable and equitable ecosystem for professional artists. 

Cover image: “Semana Alagoana de Hip Hop,” courtesy of Coletivo Popfuzz via Flickr Creative Commons license. 

In “the real world,” 84% of working artists—defined by BFAMFAPhD’s controversial “Artists Report Back” study as people who make their primary living from their artwork—do not have degrees in the arts, and 40% have no college degree at all. (It’s important to note that due to data limitations, these figures exclude artists with master’s degrees or beyond in any field; however, the number of artists affected is relatively small.) If arts training programs continue to climb in popularity while budding artists from less affluence are deciding against studying the arts in college, does that mean the college-to-career trajectory is a myth? Has the arts degree become a luxury, or are artists from less advantaged backgrounds missing out on something?

Graphic by Shawn Lent for Createquity. Source: Artists Report Back

An Incubator of Artistry or a Waste of Precious Prime Time?

What can we make of the implication that higher education is not the golden ticket to creating or performing art for a living? It would be overstepping to say that arts degree programs provide students with no value at all: for one thing, they offer important time to refine one’s craft within a supportive but highly disciplined and similarly-skilled community of peers, critical mentors, and potential networks. Such credentials can serve as a signal of high artistic quality and capacity, a prerequisite for certain grant funding. We should note, though, that artists move freely between the nonprofit and commercial sectors in their pursuit of paid work and the value of a degree likely varies by context. It looks like a person doesn’t necessarily need a BFA or MFA to become a professional artist, but the degree could help an artist reach a higher level of industry success or make a full-time living as an artist.

At the same time, arts students may not have this expectation of working as artists. Across the board, most graduates (73%) work in a field outside their major. Arts students, in particular, might be prepared to thrive in other sectors, and they seem fine by that; the ongoing Strategic National Arts Alumni Project survey (which likewise has its limitations) finds that arts graduates are generally satisfied with their experiences and would do it again if they had the chance.

B.A. and Arts Double-Majors at Commencement 2016, UMD School of Theatre Dance and Performance Studies | Photo by Karen Kohn Bradley

For pro artists, the necessity or desirability of arts degrees may vary considerably by discipline. Although full-time symphony orchestra musicians are selected by audition, it is hard to find one these days without a degree in music. On the other hand, from the Oregon Ballet to Bally’s Jubilee, dance artists often delay or skip college because of the early retirement age in most dance forms (90.5% of working dancers and choreographers are under age 40, compared to 39.6% of working musicians). Examples like these leave arts degree programs vulnerable to the charge that they are building up a profession (academia) that isn’t necessarily serving artists. Sarah Anne Austin questions, “If opportunities in American modern dance are disappearing, and if being a tenured faculty member at a university is the only stable job available for dancers and choreographers, and having this job depends on being able to attract students… does this make American modern dance a pyramid scheme?”

One Option in a Long Line of Pricey Career Strategies?

Such questions wouldn’t be so charged were it not for the very real concern that arts degrees perpetuate inequality in the sector. Professional artistry has a lengthy and complex gestation period that is slammed with socioeconomic obstacles. Factors that may make, or break, one’s professional success as an artist include personal networks, the prestige of the teacher, portfolio materials, membership in a union/guild, affordable housing in a city with available arts jobs, and a myriad of other opportunities such as showcases, apprenticeships and internships.

Graphic by Shawn Lent for Createquity. Source: Playbill

Like aspiring athletes, emerging professional artists benefit from school and community members who identify and develop their interest, regular and rigorous private lessons, and pre-professional training. These present quite the financial hurdle for families: a recent calculation estimates that it takes $100,000 to raise a professional ballerina. Against this backdrop, the cost of college may only exacerbate what is already a yawning opportunity gap.

The Greatest Risk or the Great Arts Equalizer?

We may not know definitively whether arts degrees provide added value to aspiring artists, but we do know that they pose quite a bit of risk, particularly for artists coming from low socioeconomic status (SES). Although artists with bachelor’s degrees in any major earn more than artists who went pro after high school, new BFA holders quickly face the reality that artists experience lower returns to formal education than they would in other professions. Anywhere from 10-20% of artists with bachelor’s degrees report a “major impact” on their career decisions due to debt from higher education; this debt load comes on top of a heavy earnings penalty across the board for artists (8.4 percent lower than the rest of the labor market, according to 2000 Census data).

Graphic by Shawn Lent for Createquity. Source: U.S. Department of Education IPEDS Survey

Particularly on a discipline-specific basis, the conditions leading up to the decision to pursue professional artistry may represent disparities of access. If it were the case that high school graduates who aspired to artistic careers couldn’t pursue their dreams because of the risk aversion associated with low SES, that would be a major failing of a healthy arts ecosystem.

Given that, it’s probably a blessing in disguise that you don’t need an arts degree to become an artist. In fact, the preponderance of upper-middle-class students in programs offering those degrees might well indicate that poorer, emerging artists are making informed decisions that are in their best interests. Everyone’s situation is different, and statistics can only tell us so much about an individual case. But if you’re worried that an expensive four-year degree is your only way to the top of the arts heap, you can take heart in the knowledge that many, many creators and performers have made it there without one.

In the latest Createquity podcast series, Createquity and Fractured Atlas team members illuminate the major factors that contribute to artists (or prevent artists from) establishing successful careers. We also focus on some of the tools Fractured Atlas has developed to support artists, with the larger goal of helping create a more navigable and equitable ecosystem for professional artists. 

Cover image: “Hiram College Commencement 2015,” courtesy of Kasey-Samuel Adams via Flickr Creative Commons license. 

“Few and Far” photo taken by Bill Dickinson

Title: Artists Report Back: A National Study on the Lives of Arts Graduates and Working Artists

Author(s): Susan Jahoda, Blair Murphy, Vicky Virgin, Caroline Woolard

Publisher: BFAMFAPhD

Year: 2014

URL: http://bfamfaphd.com/

Topics: arts degrees, debt from arts degrees, the lives of working artists

Methods: Summary statistics from data from US Census’ 2012 American Community Survey (ACS) Public Use Micro Sample (PUMS).

What it says: Only 16% of working artists in the United States have arts-related bachelor’s degrees. Forty percent of working artists over the age of 25 do not have bachelor’s degrees in any field, and the remaining 44 percent have bachelor’s degrees in other fields. Of the two million annual arts graduates, two hundred thousand make their primary living as an artist. The median income of working artists is $30,621, but those with bachelor’s degrees have median earnings that are higher at $36,105. Arts grads’ debt loads tend to be higher than non-arts grads, and some of the best arts schools in the country have shockingly high student loan default rates. Those pursuing arts bachelor’s degrees are largely white and female, and the majority (54 percent) of working artists are male. The report makes three recommendations for the art schools and the field:

• While the majority of working artists do not have arts degrees, formal arts education is still a valuable way of building critical thinking, skill building, and other competencies that would be difficult to gain outside of formal school. The authors encourage those seeking arts degrees to seek low-cost or free options instead of expensive schools.

• Philanthropic and cultural institutions should look beyond higher education for emerging talent.

• Encourage groups of working artists without degrees and those with arts degrees to share and learn from one another.

What I think about it: These statistics do not include those with Master’s degrees or higher in the arts because of the way the Census collects data about educational attainment, and the methodology on earnings does not include those who make their livings as designers or architects. I wonder how many of those who do not have bachelor’s degrees in arts-related subjects went on to get MFAs. The choice to exclude architects and designers also seems like it would exclude some high earners in fields that typically require or heavily favor those with formal arts education.

Additionally, I wonder about how the statistics on the probability of artists attaining degrees compares to the rest of the labor market. In the United States, just about a third of people over the age of 25 have a bachelor’s degree, and in the labor market, a proportion of 60% of people with a bachelor’s degree puts it on the higher end of educational attainment in terms of professions. Further, I wonder how often people in other professions tend to stay in the same field as their college major, which would contextualize the other figures they cite in the report about the educational background of artists. I recognize that this is meant to be a critique of the conventional wisdom of a particular group of people about pursuing arts in higher education, but without some context about earnings and degrees in the United States, I think the findings and the interpretation can be distorted.

What it all means: The findings on the relatively high debt load for arts graduates combined with the seemingly low probability that those graduates will go on to become working artists presents troubling evidence for those considering higher education in the arts. Further, that seven of the ten most expensive colleges in the country after financial aid are art schools is evidence that arts students are over paying for their degrees. However, without additional context to compare these findings to the rest of the labor market, it’s hard to really understand whether we should think the proportions of holding an arts job or an arts degree in the arts profession are high or low.