Making A Living: Artistic Survival in 2009
Join me at the Making a Living workshop. Turn up and pitch in! A chance to share different approaches and ideas to sustain critical art practices before, during and after the recession.
MAKING A LIVING: Artistic Survival in 2009
Date: Saturday 26 September 2009, 1400h-1700h
Location: Austrian Cultural Forum, 28 Rutland Gate, London SW7 1PQ
This event is free! Tea, coffee and snacks will be served.
RSVP*
MAKING A LIVING aims to highlight and discuss diverse ideologies underlying how we support and sustain ‘critical art practices’. How do our conceptual and pragmatic assertions impact on the way we choose to make a living and vice versa? We will investigate and invent a range of economic and conceptual models of artistic survival that move beyond the knee-jerk reaction to become ‘culturpreneurs’ in the creative industries.
As well as the issue of aiming to make a living through art we will ask ourselves what are the side-effects of such a career path, what are the alternatives and how do we negotiate the cultural production line we inevitably are a part of?
As a playful exercise in opening up the debate around these issues, attendees will be asked to decide how to spend the funding received for this event – £500 from the Austrian Cultural Forum. There will also be an opportunity on the day for anyone present to tell us their ideas, experiences, ruminations, convictions and strategies of sustaining a critical art practice during 5 minute soapbox sessions followed by discussion on these proposals.
MAKING A LIVING is a follow-up event to the FUNding FACTORY, a project initiated by Sophie Hope at Open Space Zentrum für Kunstprojeckte in Vienna in May 2009. It is convened by Sophie Hope and co-facilitated with Veronica Restreppo and The Carrot Worker’s Collective. Attendees include: myself, Aladin, Sonya Dyer , Alasdair Hopwood, Shonagh Manson , Peter Moertenboeck and Helge Mooshammer, Frances Williams and students of the Applied Arts Academy, Vienna.
*RSVP to sophiehope-at-mac.com. If you would like to contribute but can’t physically be there – email her with a suggestion, comment, anecdote and/or any relevant weblinks by 21 September and she will endeavour to include them on the day.