Something I’m very proud of and honoured to be involved in launched yesterday. It’s a project called DACS Open. Its name harks back to events such as the Whitechapel Open which was an annual event which was renowned for supporting the local community of artists, many of who moved to East London because of the low rents for both housing and studio space.
It’s important to mention money early on. Very few artists make work that command the enormous numbers often associated with the art world. Many artists struggle to be artists. Many have to teach and in the current cuts to education, teaching jobs are harder to find. Many work to public commission, but these are being reduced. Many make work thanks to the support of fellowships, however these are in decline. It’s not just the public sector in a recent essay at the start of their annual booklet Alan Christea talks about the challenging climate for commercial organisations too. The arts and artists are getting squeezed from every direction at the moment. It’s always the first thing to go, but definitely not the first thing to be missed.
DACS, the Design and Artists Copyright Society, has recently been studying artist’s wages. The results are shocking as the statement above shows. With the current financial climate and squeeze on funding for the Arts it’s hard to see it changing any time soon. The DACS Open project hopes to help this problem by working with artists on ways that they can engage audiences online and then hopefully find new funding models such as micro-philanthropy.
The whole process is a set of co-creation exercises where we explore with artists what is possible in terms of stitching together bits of technology and how they want to be in digital spaces. We’re looking with them for the places where they feel they they can be open without changing how they are as artists. We’re looking with them for tools which make their lives easier, places where everyday devices and software can be transformed into things that help them to concentrate on making work while at the same time helping them to take advantage of all of the opportunities that digital holds for engaging audiences. The co-creation is key. We’re two workshops in and I now know so much more about artists and in particular what it is to be one and the process of being one that the prototypes we’re making with them are very different to anything I’ve made before in direction. We’ll be sharing all that we do on the DACS Open blog and Twitter account, with videos on Vimeo and photos on Flickr. Please follow along, I’ve written my first diary entry about the first two weeks of workshops and making.
For me personally there’s a strong reason to do this. It’s about giving back. The visual arts have been one of the greatest passions in my life. Visiting galleries and seeing art is one of my major pleasures in life but for a long while now I’ve wanted to find a way to say thank you for all the joy it brings. This is a small part of that thank you.
