The creative sector’s workforce problem 🖌️

or, universal basic income for everyone

In my part of Vermont, the trees are newly laden with powdery snow. When taking the backroads to the office this morning, I saw a deer emerge from the edge of the trees on the left, hop into the road and then canter into the field on the other side. It’s easier to spot them when the snow is new and white like this.

I’m often alone in the car when I encounter deer or turkey on the side of the road and therefore have no one to share the experience with. So here I am telling you about it. The roads shone with sunlight reflecting off the snowmelt and I was driving slowly behind a truck with a trailer bed attached to it. The trailer had many odd pieces of furniture and tools loosely covered in a tarp. I wanted to pass. But then the deer came out of the woods in front of this truck and both of us slowed to let it cross. So I guess I shared this experience with that driver, whoever they were.

Though I haven’t posted much, I have written. The topics I’ve chosen have been too nuanced to rush through. So the writings have been fermenting in the cloud while I think about them some more. In the meanwhile, I am also mired in computer work for all my projects. Me, as I plug away on another punch list today:

When creatives leave the sector

Last month, I started my work as zone agent for Washington and Lamoille Counties for the Vermont Creative Network. Most of this consists of meeting with folks within the creative sector to understand their work and what challenges they may have. The zone agents meet monthly and our groundwork helps to inform the steering committee and their legislative agenda.

One challenge I encountered that I was previously unaware of was how many experienced people are leaving the creative sector for financial reasons. I can relate, as my paying gigs are very small and inflation has hit in every corner of our household budget. I’m staying the course for now because I have some projects I am committed to. But the allure of a healthy paycheck with benefits like health insurance, they flash in the alleyways of my conscience. I at least have no dependents for whom I’m responsible.

Creatives leaving the sector look like this: a dance instructor takes a 9-5 office job, leaving their restaurant tipped work. They give up some or all of the classes they were previously teaching. If they were the only tap teacher in the county, then this practice also likely ceases in this community.

This also means the restaurant has less help. Here in Montpelier, some restaurants have had to close because they were not staffed enough to open on certain shifts. In a foodie town like ours, that is lost revenue that is not circulating in the local economy.

What this also looks like is a writer who organized local readings shifts from part-time bookselling to full time office administration. This leaves her with less time to write and less readings organized for the community. Even though publication is few and far between, the creative practice that produced publishable work has shrunk. And their reading habits have also changed.

That was me, thirteen years ago when I decided to take a professional job. The opportunity was exciting and I enjoyed the work. I knew it would affect my creative life, but I made a pact with myself to put it aside only for a time. I would come back to writing. I don’t regret my choices, but I did sometimes hope there was another strand in the multiverse where I hadn’t shelved my practice.

The situation that my colleague was facing was a lack of qualified teaching artists for her programs. Teaching artists are a unique subset of artists in that they are not only adept in their discipline but also in meaningful instruction. Many of her previous hires were gig workers she used to be able to count on.

Funding creativity as a values statement

This is not to say that there are no creatives left. I am fortunate to spend my days surrounded by them here at The Center for Arts and Learning where I am executive director. It does mean a widening gap between those who can afford to spend their days in their creative pursuits and those who cannot. Because this is a workforce problem with an economic solution, it becomes an issue of equity.

For professional artists, there are writers guilds, actors guilds, and other labor groups who can advocate for fair wages and practices. These help to keep these artists in business and sustain their work. For the many self-employed artists that abound in Vermont’s hills and valleys, we are without an organizing body, save for the Vermont Creative Network, which is not a labor union, but which advocates for the sector at large.

We know that there is a tremendous need for skilled workers in high paying jobs in the construction trades and in healthcare. There is no question about that. But I’d like to argue that creative sector work belongs in the categories of “well-paying” and “necessary” work as well.

After a long day at the office and back to back meetings, I’d like to unwind with a book or watch a show. I have friends traveling up to Montpelier today partly because they enjoy listening to live music here. Creatives make the food we eat and produce the greeting cards we send. They dance their way through our Independence Day parades, give us stories and songs that allow us to feel, think, and experience the world in new and different ways.

Treating the sector as a collective workforce

I was heartily dismayed to see a series of Facebook ads from CCV’s tech bootcamps over the holiday break that, in no uncertain terms, suggested that prospective students trade in their creative pursuits for careers in tech, software development specifically. Arguably, software development does cross sectors and can support creative work, the employers highlighted by the program are tech companies. Below are my screenshots (I don’t know if the campaign is still active). They look like get-rich-quick scams or MLM schemes.

These ads are insulting to those of us who would like to make a career in the arts. They imply that even though you may have mastery, may be talented, and may care greatly about the community, a well-paying software job is the better life choice. Doulas are necessary! As are photographers, potters, and violinists! Artists who have a level of mastery equal to that of an entry-level software developer should also be paid as much. Gah. I’m so steamed about this. 😤The message leans square into American individualism and bootstraps mindset. 

It must obviously be the creative’s fault if they can’t make enough money. They must not be any good. Or the trope of laziness that is often circulated about those on welfare or who are unhoused. They could just get a job, right? I’ll save debunking those fallacies for another time.

 

For now: if we value creatives, who pays for their living? The capitalist question would be: who benefits from their work? Sure, the couple buying tickets to the theater pay their way. The trickle-down for community players is a small stipend if any once all the bills are paid. 

Universal Basic Income, or an artist’s minimum wage

The truth is that the culture benefits from the artists within our midst. Creative outputs surround us in our daily lives such that we might not recognize them when we encounter them: a poster advertising an event, a screen printed logo on a shirt, handmade jewelry, a song on the car radio. A perfect little madeleine. 

In the nonprofit world (and let’s view government as the nonprofit it should be), our budget reflects our values. We plan our expenses based on the important work we do. The government, charged with taking care of our people, should do that. The most fair way to do to ensure everyone has some income is to provide it. Administering a UBI program would be complex, but it’s not a new idea. Imagine, at the tipped wage minimum, a full-time equivalent UBI would be about $14,000 per person, or a little over $1,000 per month. It’s not entirely enough to live on, but helpful. 

According to the Create VT Action Plan, Vermont creatives make about half of what their national counterparts earn. Unmet and important needs include affordable healthcare, capital, earned income and retirement and savings plans. In short, things that money can solve.

For now, under-financed creatives make do with individual Patreon, Substack, or Kickstarter campaigns. They will schlep their paintings to craft fairs and expos. We will write many, many drafts before we let you read them. 

For my paying subscribers, following is a little update on Montpelier’s restaurant scene, I can’t wait to share!

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