The arts are notoriously badly paid. If you’re an artist working on your own you don’t expect payroll services to send you a slip every month. Unless you’re a famous actor or actress with a regular source of income, it is very unlikely. From the outset it appears being ‘imaginative and creative’ are traits we don’t cherish in our society as much as we maybe once did. Indeed it is estimated only about 9% of 2009 and 2010 art and design graduates found jobs in their chosen career. However in 2008 a publication by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport reported that the ‘creative industries employ 2 million people in Britain and contribute £60 billion to the economy each year, 7.3 percent of UK GDP’ (Creative Britain, New Talents for the New Economy, DCMS, 2008). Therefore it appears the arts do make us money, but how much do we spend on them?
Our relationship with the arts is co-dependent with our spending on them. In 2010 the government cut the Arts Council England’s budget by 30% however a significant amount of arts funding already comes via the Department for Culture, Media and Sport; an estimated £900m via taxes means museums, galleries and community projects get our funding. Our love of pop culture and television in the UK also means we all contribute our TV licence to the BBC (a tax of sorts for our entertainment).
In 2007 a report claimed the entertainment industry was as valuable to the British economy as the finance sector. This was mainly due to the creative industries such as music, gaming, television and fashion. It primarily highlighted industry sectors which were very much a 21st century phenomenon and not the traditional art sectors of old, these included; advertising, radio and TV, design, film, music, software and computer services and computer games.
In these times of tough spending cuts, from the powers that be and on our own purse strings, maybe we need to remind ourselves of the best of human endeavor and go to escape the mundane and humdrum and contribute to an artist’s payroll somewhere.
