After 30 years, what has UNESCO’s Recommendation concerning the Status of the Artist achieved?

CCA Bul­letin 27/10

Octo­ber 26, 2010

 

Just the Facts

This year marks the 30th anniver­sary of the UNESCO Rec­om­men­da­tion con­cern­ing the Sta­tus of the Artist. With the sup­port of the Cana­dian Artists and Pro­duc­ers Pro­fes­sional Rela­tions Tri­bunal, the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA) has con­ducted a crit­i­cal review of this ini­tia­tive in Canada.  After 30 years of efforts, what exactly has been achieved for artists and cre­ators in this coun­try and abroad? The ques­tion is par­tic­u­larly rel­e­vant as we pre­pare for the CCA’s upcom­ing con­fer­ence Artists: Pow­er­ing the Cre­ative Econ­omy? Many of the issues ana­lyzed in Sta­tus of the Artist in Canada will frame the pan­els, debates and con­ver­sa­tions held on Novem­ber 2 and 3 at the National Arts Cen­tre in Ottawa.

The paper ana­lyzes how Cana­dian artists fare at social, eco­nomic and cul­tural lev­els. By explor­ing key issues like tax­a­tion, social ben­e­fits, train­ing and pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment, health and safety, col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing and other issues, the main con­cerns of artists in Canada’s cur­rent envi­ron­ment are estab­lished. Sta­tus of the Artist in Canada takes a look at fed­eral ini­tia­tives used to bol­ster the abil­ity of the artis­tic work­force fol­lowed by a break­down of provin­cial initiatives.

After exam­in­ing Cana­dian stan­dards for artists, the doc­u­ment includes a brief analy­sis of inter­na­tional stan­dards and best prac­tices. This leads to a dis­cus­sion regard­ing the rel­e­vance of sta­tus of the artist today and to the spe­cific rec­om­men­da­tion that states that the first $10,000 of net income earned from artis­tic activ­ity be free from fed­eral income tax lia­bil­ity. This spe­cial exemp­tion would be added on top of the uni­ver­sal basic exemption.

Tell me more

Sta­tus of the Artist in Canada describes a cat­e­gory of leg­is­la­tion and other pub­lic poli­cies directed at improv­ing the eco­nomic and social sta­tus of pro­fes­sional artists. The con­cept has two com­po­nents: the impor­tant role that artists play in every human soci­ety should be acknowl­edged, and gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tion and pro­grams should encour­age cre­ative expres­sion and ensure equi­table treat­ment for artists by respond­ing to the atyp­i­cal man­ner in which they work.

The UNESCO Rec­om­men­da­tion addresses issues and rec­om­mends gov­ern­ment actions on the following:

• Employ­ment, work­ing and liv­ing con­di­tions of artists.
• Recog­ni­tion of the rights of their pro­fes­sional and union organizations.
• Social sta­tus, includ­ing mea­sures to ensure equiv­a­lent sta­tus to other work­ers in areas such as health and insurance.
• Pro­tec­tion of free­dom of expres­sion and pro­tec­tion of intel­lec­tual prop­erty rights.
• The edu­ca­tion and train­ing of artists.
• The impor­tance of arts education.
• Mea­sures related to income, sup­port dur­ing peri­ods of unem­ploy­ment and retire­ment issues.

In Canada, there are many spe­cific issues that have an impact on the social and eco­nomic cir­cum­stances of pro­fes­sional artists. The work of artists has cer­tain defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics and each artist will com­bine a few or many depend­ing on the nature of their art. While some of the indi­vid­ual char­ac­ter­is­tics are shared by other pro­fes­sions, taken as a whole, for all artists, they cre­ate a pat­tern of work very dif­fer­ent from most oth­ers in the labour force.

• Most become an artist because of their love for the art form. A per­son must love to dance, paint, write, sing, act or play a musi­cal instru­ment, and they often do so for many years before becom­ing a professional.

• They can spend a sub­stan­tial amount of time prepar­ing to earn income, in train­ing, rehearsal, study, research or in cre­at­ing a fin­ished product.

• They some­times work for a num­ber of engagers simul­ta­ne­ously, or for none at all. They may sell noth­ing for long peri­ods and then sud­denly secure a great deal.

• They often have to train and rehearse even when they are work­ing, either as an artist or out­side their art.

• Expe­ri­ence and skills do not guar­an­tee mar­ket­place suc­cess. The cre­ative ele­ment of the work is dif­fi­cult to define and per­haps impos­si­ble to teach.

• Many pro­fes­sional artists must sup­ple­ment their income with rev­enue gen­er­ated from part-time work out­side their area of pro­fes­sional exper­tise, in order to sur­vive eco­nom­i­cally. For some, this may come to rep­re­sent the bulk of their income.

• Because of the cre­ative nature of the work, they often have an ongo­ing eco­nomic inter­est in their com­pleted work, either through copy­right law or con­tracts, and they can receive income from it long after the work is finished.

There is a dis­tinc­tion between cre­ative artists (such as authors, visual artists, com­posers and design­ers) and inter­pre­tive artists (such as actors, dancers and musi­cians) since the artists in these cat­e­gories gen­er­ally have dif­fer­ent work­ing rela­tion­ships and engage dif­fer­ent meth­ods to earn artis­tic income.

Accord­ing to cen­sus data and stud­ies on the cul­tural labour force, the num­ber of pro­fes­sional artists is grow­ing rapidly; a high pro­por­tion of artists are self-employed; artists are highly edu­cated but their earn­ings are low com­pared to that of other Cana­di­ans; and their income can fluc­tu­ate dra­mat­i­cally from year to year. Most artists do not have access to the social ben­e­fits gen­er­ally enjoyed by other Cana­dian work­ers, such as paid vaca­tions and hol­i­days; income main­te­nance when there is no work or when they are sick; maternity/paternity and adop­tion leave; med­ical, den­tal and life insur­ance; and retirement/pension plans.

What can I do?

This paper, along with our con­fer­ence on Novem­ber 2 and 3 will help out­line a pol­icy roadmap nec­es­sary to ben­e­fit artists in Canada. Read this paper and then join in the con­ver­sa­tion by attend­ing our con­fer­ence.