GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017
general background to why we set up the trade union, where we are at now
and a bit of background to why we put forward this motion to our first
conference. We launched back in 2014, so we are about three years old now,
a group of ten artists from around the country in England. We were very much
inspired by our Scottish comrades, Scottish Artists Union, who have been
going for at least over ten years. A number of the artists in this group of ten
had made contact with Scottish Artists Union, gone to their conference and just
thought, “Why aren’t we doing this in England? Why don’t we get ourselves
organised?” We also went and spoke, of course, to our cultural trade unions
and got a lot of confidence and support and solidarity from there.
Just to give you a bit of background on artists, we are kind of a hidden work
force really. We are not all in the big galleries with our names spread all over
the building, having these big exhibitions. We are a hidden work force. Most of
our members in our last survey earned less than ten grand a year. That is what
we live on. The kind of range of work we do is really varied, it is not just gallery
exhibitions, it is not just commissions, it is not just doing big festival one off
projects. A lot of us do community engagement, social engagement,
community art, old school stuff. We work in schools, Sure Starts, youth
offending teams, loads of different things. Like the Musicians Union talking
yesterday, we have got a very precarious lifestyle. Jobs come in. It is feast or
famine. If you get the work you do it and then you have a few weeks, months
sometimes, without any work coming in at all.
Many of our members have part time jobs supporting their practice. Sometimes
these jobs are completely disconnected with their art practice. Often if you do
go to galleries and museums and you are walking round a lot of the invigilators
are our members, often un-unionised, zero hour contracts, minimum wage and
this is what they are living on. So as freelancers it does make membership
recruitment quite difficult. It is like herding cats sometimes trying to work with
artists. It is not always like that, because I am lucky enough to be in a co-
operative of artist studios where we are quite a unionised co-operative, whether
it is with Equity, Musicians Union, BECTU and Artists Union England, but that
is really, really unusual. We rely on other trade unions like yourselves
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