GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

trying to spread the word, but it is slow. It is slow, because we are all

volunteers. There are ten of us. We are all volunteers. We are trying to get

work in as artists, people have got family life going on and we are in a trade

union and we are lucky that we have got a part time lass who does ten hours a

week, the most boring, mundane jobs that have got to be done. I have started

meeting with NPOs, so I am going around the big national portfolio

organisations. These are the ones that get guaranteed funding for a limited

period of time from the Arts Council and have huge conditions of getting that

money. Some of those conditions are about working with the trade unions. It

is listed there on the website. So I am going to speak to them. I am saying,

“These are our members’ issues”. I have to spell it out very clearly that our

members are getting pushed on to universal credit. Universal credit means if

your business is not making gainful employment, why should the taxpayer

subsidise your business? If they got proper wages to begin with then they

would not have to get universal credit. I am saying this to these NPOs who

have no idea. They have never heard of universal credit. There are very few

who know about it. It is only the artist led, artist run organisations that have got

some kind of idea.

So this is the kind of thing we are doing now. We are aiming to have codes of

practice set up for these organisations so they know how to treat artists,

because they do not know half the time how artists earn their money. They are

not really that bothered, as long as they get the work in the gallery, as long as

they get the project done. So they need to know that. We are also getting a lot

of responses round the country from members saying, “I want to be a regional

rep. What can I do? How do I do it?” so we are kind of finding our feet and

seeing what members can do and going out and talking to them, skyping them

and that is brilliant and I am learning the geography of England. I am learning

about places I have never even heard about! (Laughter) However, it is all

good stuff, but we do need to politicise our artists, because we have kind of

missed the boat a bit on becoming a trade union. I do not know why artists

have not done it before, but they have not. We have kind of been seduced by

that very self-centred, individual Thatcherite 1980s, so all the kids come out of

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