Sick Leave
In 2022 I was Artist in Residence at Vitalstatistix, working on issues of art and labour. This is the text of a grant application I submitted to the Australia Council for the Arts in 2022, proposing to distribute a single $50,000 arts grant to 90 artists in the form of sick leave. Unsurprisingly, the application was not successful.
Project Summary: Summarise your project here, noting you can provide more detail later in the application. Use no more than 800 characters.
Sick Leave is an experimental performance work which will distribute $500 to 90 working artists, an amount equivalent to two days’ sick leave. The project will be documented in an essay and/or lecture that draws attention to the precarity of labour in the arts and interrogates the structures of institutional support, raising questions about care, rest, accessibility and sustainability, and the value of art and culture.
Sick Leave is a performance, intervention, and inquiry into the nature of art as labour and the relationship between creativity, economics and rest. This project asks: how do we care for and support working artists during a time of funding scarcity and the structural devaluation of art as labour?
About you: Outline your artistic practice as relevant to this application, focusing on career highlights and key achievements in no more than 2,400 characters.
I am the author of five books, most recently The Airways (2021) which was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award and shortlisted for the Aurealis Awards for horror; my previous novel Dyschronia was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin, Aurealis (for science fiction) and Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature. I was the fiction editor at Overland for six years and my short fiction, essays and criticism have appeared in Australian Book Review, Meanjin, The Monthly, Overland, The Saturday Paper, and the Sydney Review of Books, among other publications.
I have been a full-time writer for fifteen years, supporting myself by freelancing. In 2022 I have been working as Artist in Residence at Vitalstatistix in a salaried role two days a week, researching, writing about and engaging in activism around the precarity of work in the arts.
I have a long-term interest in art as labour, through my advocacy for writers’ pay with #paythewriters and campaign work with MEAA and the ASA, as a member of Reset Arts and Culture collective, and in my own fiction and non-fiction. Participating in Vitalstatistix’ present multi-year initiative Bodies of Work has enabled me to collaboratively investigate concerns around precarity and creative work alongside other artists and to engage deeply with the many ways that precarity inflects our wellbeing, social position, public value, and the kinds of art we make.
To me, these concerns are profoundly connected to access and equity, and open into a deeper conversation about climate and the future, not just through examining the unsustainable and precarious conditions of our own artistic labour, but by exploring how we work and for whom; ideas and beliefs about productivity, surplus, and growth; questions of time and value; and the role art plays in reciprocity, care work and mutual aid. Sick Leave continues this inquiry, and will extend my very enriching and sustaining relationship with Vitalstatistix into 2023. The essay I write about the project will fit with my existing body of work on these subjects and further what I consider to be an urgent public discussion.
About your project: Tell us about your project, outlining what you want to do, the creative rationale, the activity involved, and the key steps you will undertake to deliver this in no more than 5,600 characters.
Current trends in arts advocacy often situate the arts as a vector of wellbeing. We see increasing recognition of the benefits to mental and physical health and positive social and emotional outcomes for those participating in arts and culture. However, this trend rarely embraces the wellbeing of artists themselves, the conditions of whose labour are characterised by low pay, low security, overwork, underpayment, and the hustle of chasing scarce opportunities.
In 2022, I have been working as a salaried Artist in Residence two days a week at Vitalstatistix in Yerta Bulti (Port Adelaide). As part of this role, I am engaging in research, writing and activism around art as labour, looking at the limitations of the models we currently have and finding ways to do better. As a full-time freelancer since 2007, this is the first time in fifteen years that I have received a regular paycheck, including superannuation and leave entitlements. The feeling of security and care that adheres to a ‘real job’ as an artist has been a shock to the system. Along with the compounded crises of climate change and the pandemic, it has made me rethink the way that I and other artists and writers are working.
As I wrote in my submission to the National Cultural Policy, which I have attached to this application:
‘The flawed ‘creative industries’ model has failed to deliver anything but poverty for working artists and writers. Built-in precarity and low pay make working in the arts a form of sacrifice, creating impossible barriers for people without other sources of income or support. Artists and writers are forced to adopt a small business, fee-for-service model, negotiating every contract individually. We have no minimum wage, no access to superannuation or sick leave, and no capacity to bargain collectively. Exploitation is rife and underpayment is the norm. This has devastating consequences for access to culture as well as for culture itself.’
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The pandemic exacerbated these issues, but it has also provided us with opportunities to rethink the structure of our labour. Sick Leave is a simple intervention that seeks to shift the discourse around art as work.
This grant will distribute $500 to 90 working artists/writers based in Australia, to the total value of $45,000. The remaining $5000 will be used to cover administrative costs, organising time, materials, and documentation. Vitalstatistix will auspice this grant, ensuring transparency and fairness in the process.
To apply for Sick Leave, artists must provide a one-page CV to show that they are an artist residing in Australia with a track record of at least one year of practice. Applications will be open to those who are not full-time students or employed in a salaried role. They can have casual or contract work, but cannot be eligible for sick leave elsewhere for the duration of this project.
The callout will be distributed through social media and via professional arts organisations. The 90 places will be filled on a ‘first come, first served’ basis to minimise the burden of applying. Artists won’t have to mount an argument about their worth to apply for Sick Leave. All art forms are eligible.
Sick Leave is not a commissioning process and there will be no obligation to make art in exchange for the $500 fee. The fee is equivalent to two days of sick leave at an annual wage of $65,000 (slightly less than the average arts administrator). Permanent full-time employees are entitled to 10 days of leave per year under the Fair Work Act 2009. I have chosen to distribute a smaller amount in order to reach a larger number of artists.
Artists may use the money however they wish. They do not have to be ill, though artists with chronic pain, disabilities, or other conditions will be strongly encouraged to apply. Participating artists will be asked to state their reasons for taking sick leave, and I will incorporate these statements into an essay about the project.
As part of my documentation of the project, I will survey the practical, emotional and creative effects of sick leave on working artists. By writing an essay about this project for publication, I will share these insights and the ideas they generate with the wider public.
Sick Leave is a piece of public performance art about the value of art and culture, the structure of arts funding, and the precarity of artists’ working lives. On a practical level, it will directly assist 90 artists. More broadly, I wish to empower artists to speak honestly about the conditions of their labour and dream of better ways to work. This project will provoke discussion, improve access, and help create a community which cares for its working artists and writers into the future.
Choose from one of four project outcomes:
- Arts and creativity are thriving — for projects supporting creation, capabilities, distribution and reach.
Tell us how your project meets the outcome you selected above in no more than 2,400 characters.
Arts and creativity are not thriving, or if they are, it is on the back of unpaid and underpaid labour.
Making Art Work, the 2017 report by D. Throsby and K. Petetskaya, identified a slow decay in artists’ incomes even before the pandemic. According to the Australia Council’s response to the report, ‘it is increasingly difficult for artists to make a living from their creative work.’
Recent data released by the Australian Taxation Office confirms that most artists earn less than the minimum wage. Throsby’s study shows that artists’ incomes tend to be a mix of creative work, other art-related work, and non-art-related work; in 2014/15, median creative income was $5,767 for visual artists and $7,764 for craft practitioners. A 2020 survey by the Australian Society of Authors found that 53% of full-time writers earn less than $15,000 per year from their creative practice, with 23% earning less than $1,999 per year. Most artists and writers are self-employed and not eligible for superannuation, sick leave, carer’s leave, and the other entitlements that ordinary workers have won.
The burden on artists to constantly produce and churn through fundable projects structures their practice and leads to cycles of overwork and burnout. We are losing a generation of artists, particularly artists with chronic illness or disability, working class artists, and artists from the regions, who are already under-supported and undervalued.
In order for arts and creativity to thrive, Australia urgently needs to rethink the structures of support we can offer artists and writers. How can we create the conditions that make it possible to have a sustainable career as a working artist? Sick Leave proposes a simple change to the conditions of our work that might improve access while valuing cultural labour fairly. The public elements of this project will provoke discussion and help create a community which cares for its working artists and writers.
