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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowAs a working musician in Indianapolis, Richard “Sleepy” Floyd is well aware that creative work in the city frequently means cobbling together multiple gigs and relying on non-artistic jobs to stay afloat financially.
But Floyd said he didn’t expect to see survey results in which local musicians, visual artists and other cultural practitioners said they possess no emergency funds if faced by a financial crisis.
“Our art is not sustaining us,” said Floyd, a drummer who’s the executive director of Inspire Music Collective.
In a survey of 148 artists, more than one-third said they have no emergency funds and more than half of respondents said they have funds to cover less than one month of hardship.
Inspire Music Collective served as the nonprofit client organization for a capstone project completed this spring by eight graduate students at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University. The students collaborated with Indy Arts Council to develop and administer an 80-question survey to assess the economic well-being of artists in Indianapolis.
Floyd said he suggested this topic because he’s an advocate for transparency on the topic of compensation in the arts.
“I know a lot of us are struggling financially,” he said. “I wanted to quantify that in a way to be able to share with city officials, arts curators and promoters in this market to understand what it takes to support and what support looks like for the artist.”
More than half of the survey’s respondents reported earning less than $10,000 from arts work during the past 12 months. The median gross income from arts work: $8,824.
Among respondents, the median household gross income was $48,437. The median household gross income in Indianapolis: $66,447.
IU economics professor Ashlyn Aiko Nelson served as faculty mentor for the project. She said the survey’s data on food security is particularly worrisome. More than 30% of respondents said they couldn’t afford a balanced meal at times during the past 12 months.
“That speaks to the level of economic disadvantage experienced by this group,” Nelson said.
Among the respondents, 55 were musicians and 53 were visual artists. Forty people in other disciplines rounded out the survey. During an online presentation of the survey’s results, the students said the numbers aren’t necessarily representative of the full population of Indianapolis-based artists and cultural practitioners.
Floyd said he encourages fellow artists to talk about their paydays.
“Say what you get paid at these art festivals,” he said. “Let everybody know what you’re getting paid and see if it checks out, if it’s commensurate. I think we’re getting better at communicating through our internal channels as to what to expect when you work with an organization. And there are some organizations that really want to get it right and they do a great job of compensating artists fairly—but that’s not the general rule.”
Nelson said Indianapolis lags behind other cities in the realm of public support for the arts.
“A huge part of the problem is that the venues that support these artists are also struggling post-COVID,” Nelson said. “It’s a chicken-or-egg problem. It’s hard to demand higher pay when you know this venue might not survive unless artists accept lower pay. You have to think about, ‘What are the conditions in other cities that allow venues and artists to thrive?’ The reality of the situation is that in 100% of the cities with thriving arts communities that we interviewed, they have far more support from public sources than Indianapolis does.”
As part of the capstone project, the students also explored a social justice aspect for Inspire, specifically in terms of opportunities to provide music education and therapy programs to K-12 students as well as to juveniles and adults who are incarcerated or in diversion or reentry programs.
The capstone group’s formal report on the survey is expected this summer, and Floyd said he plans to share that document at inspiremusiccollective.org.
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My advice to all artists is pursue your passion while you’re young and it’s acceptable to grift off family and friends. If it’s not happening by the late 20’s, then it means you really ain’t that good. Just knowing when to begin practicing your art as a hobby rather than a profession will undoubtedly improve your life.
Exactly. The reality is that most artists simply are not all that good. Being able to make a decent living from artistic output alone is akin to becoming a pro athlete – there are plenty of people whose natural ability is good, but not in the top few percent that it stands apart enough to make a living at it.
These artist groups basically argue that society should subsidize them, but the market is sending you a big hint.
There’s a lotta things I would rather have done in life but they didn’t pay the bills so I had to do other things to live. And at times 2-3 things to make finances work out till 1 would cover.
Time for a new career? Not city leaders job.
What on God’s earth are “cultural practitioners?” Those that prefer to be provided for by the state while they pursue some hobby that will not support a living?