Plenary Discussion (+ bio guests)
In the afternoon we all get back together and discuss the proposals on the table. What did we learn from the morning session and what can we do? What are the snags when it comes to fair practice? How broad are the spectres in different art practices and fields and should we develop different, specific parameters? Would these then be conflicting? Or can we come up with tools that count for the whole spectrum? Which are concrete proposals that could be translated into points of immediate action? Can we compose a checklist of parameters for good practices? What goals can we set for ourselves in the longer term? And which tools would we need for that?
The worktables of the morning session focus on practices of individual actors. In the afternoon, three international guests will introduce models for collective action towards fairer practices in the arts. We explore how their experiences can be translated into the Belgian or Flemish context and how we can pick them up in our future initiatives.
Below: more background information on the three guests and what they represent. In the following order: Lise Soskolne (W.A.G.E, London/NY), Peter van den Bunder (FNV/ Kiem, Amsterdam) and Joseph Young (a-n, London).
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Lise Soskolne
artist
W.A.G.E.
Lise Soskolne is an artist and core organizer of W.A.G.E., an activist
organization focused on regulating the payment of artist fees by
nonprofit art institutions. An organizer within W.A.G.E. since its
founding in 2008 and its core organizer since 2012, she has worked in
nonprofit arts presenting and development in New York since 1998 at
venues that have included: Anthology Film Archives, Artists Space,
Diapason Gallery for Sound, Meredith Monk/The House Foundation for the
Arts, Participant Inc, and Roulette Intermedium. In 2007 she was hired
to jumpstart the redevelopment of Industry City, a 6 million sq ft
industrial complex on the South Brooklyn waterfront by using artists to
raise the property value. There she introduced and managed a program
that openly leveraged the cultural capital of a community of artists in
financial need in exchange for long term affordable work space and
greater control over the means of their own production.
Founded in 2008, Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) is a
New York-based activist organization focused on regulating the payment
of artist fees by nonprofit art institutions, and establishing a
sustainable labor relation between artists and the institutions that
contract them. In 2014 W.A.G.E. launched a national certification
program that publicly recognizes those institutions demonstrating a
history of, and commitment to, voluntarily paying artist fees. W.A.G.E.
Certification is the only model of its kind—and the first in the U.S.
to establish a sector-wide minimum standard for compensation, as well as
a clear set of guidelines and standards for the conditions under which
artistic labor is contracted.
Joseph Young
artist and activist
a-n
As an artist Young’s work has been exhibited and performed at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Whitechapel Gallery, Jerwood Hastings, Seoul Museum of Art, Conflux NYC and Berlin MPA. An edition of my work The Ballad of Skinny Lattes and Vintage Clothing is held in the permanent collection of the Estorick Collection in London.
He is a member of a-n’s advisory AIR Council and its Joint Secretariat, as well as a core member of the Paying Artists campaign team. Joseph has recently launched a personal campaign in support of Britain’s continuing membership of the European Union in the forthcoming referendum (Twitter: @artsforeu).
a-n AIR was established by a-n The Artists Information Company as an integral part of its Artist membership offer for the visual arts sector. Open to all practicing, professional visual and applied artists there are currently over 19,000 Artist members who together make a diverse and extensive professional community of practicing artists working across all types of visual arts practice in the UK.
AIR Council is an advisory group to the management and Board of a-n The Artists Information Company.
AIR Council representatives are drawn from the a-n AIR artist membership and aim to collectively embody and reflect the diversity of UK contemporary visual arts practitioners in terms of artform, career stage, gender, cultural background and geography.
Peter van den Bunder
Responsible for the freelancers-lobby and policy
FNV/ Kiem
FNV KIEM is a labour union for everyone who works – including employees and freelancers. People should be able to choose freely. In its interest representation, FNV KIEM also strives for colllective agreements for the self-employed, including cao and social plan agreements.
Peter van den Bunder has focussed mainly on pensions and union work during his career. He worked as an account manager for the pension fund Cultuur and for a commercial insurance company. Since 2010 Peter has been working for FNV KIEM, first as a union advisor and now as a manager for the self-employed.
In this context he focuses on collective interests representation for freelancers in the creative industry. “What is fascinating about this the freelancer cannot be generalized, there are so many differences. Freelancers make for a varied vanguard of a labour market in transition, which necessitate new solutions.” There for there are many facets to be reckoned with when it comes to the business, pension and juridical advice that Peter gives to freelancers in the creative industry.
Remuneration of artists in Netherlands
A conversation about the art label, a fee directive reward in the arts in general, and the fight for better remuneration for visual artists in particular.
Director Peter van den Bunder of the Union FNV Kiem, the union for the creative sector, outlines the situation in the Netherlands. Peter collaborated with Rune Peitersen Platform BK in the recent studies of the practice fee for visual artists in the steering committee. He tells how the meagre remuneration of artists is on the agenda in the Netherlands, and about what is happening now. FNV KIEM has developed an art label in the past, how does it work and what are the experiences? At present, the lobby for the development of a fee guideline is topical. What does that process look like? And which way should and can it go? The lobby by artists is often fragmented. Union FNV GERM collaborates closely with the professional organization Platform for Visual Arts. How is this collaboration? And in a broader sense: where do the interests of other disciplines such as the arts run parallel to those of employees and self-employed persons, and where does the friction occur?
http://www.sirm.nl/kunstenaars-en-kunstinstellingen-willen-een-honorariumrichtlijn/
