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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