LUX Artists' Moving Image Survey 2010 - Summary Findings

LUX, 3rd Floor, Shacklewell Studios, 18 Shacklewell Lane, London, E8 2EZ

Introduction

This paper summarises findings from an online survey LUX ran for twomonths from March - April 2010 aimed at professional artists working with themoving image. The survey was publicised solely online through LUX mailinglists, facebook and twitter as well as specialist lists aimed at artists' workingwith the moving image such as Film London Artists Moving Image Network,Artquest and the mailing lists of organisations which had studios or associateartists. A competition prize was offered to encourage people to complete thesurvey and they were also asked to put their names forward if they would beinterested in taking part in more detailed focus based research which willexplore further some of the themes of this survey.The purpose of the survey was to attempt to take a snapshot of the currentstate of moving image practice in the UK, primarily for LUX to use for in termsof thinking about how it might serve the sector better, but also to share thedata with peer organisations to generally create a better understanding of thearea as a whole.The questions were devised mainly by LUX staff with some input fromexternal colleagues, for example some of the financial section was devised tomirror similar micro-finance research undertaken by Artquest into artists'income in 2009.This report presents summary data collected from the survey with the toppercentages rounded out to the nearest full number, with some accompanyinganalysis of the data

About respondents

In total 267 responses were received, of these 168 completed the financesection fully (incomplete surveys were discounted in this section), in terms ofamount of time as practicing artist the largest group have been practicing 5-10years (26%) followed by 2-5 years (25%) then more than 15 years (21%). Thelargest area of respondents by far was London (70%) followed by South Eastand South West England (both 7%) then Scotland and Wales (both 3%).Respondents from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland made up 7%.

Finances

58% of respondents earned less than £15,000 per year, followed by 18%earning £15-£25,000 and 11% earning between the £25-£35,000.

The largest part by far of that income came from non-arts related salary (31%of respondents total income came from that source). For 70% of respondentsonly 10-20% of their income came from sales or commissions. Similarly 59%of respondents' received only 10-20% of their income from bursaries andawards. However 30% of respondents said 80-100% of their income camefrom arts-related salaries. The largest majority of arts-related income camefrom teaching in higher education (44%) followed by working in moving imageproduction (arts sector) (32%) and then arts administration (23%).When asked what the production cost of their last moving image work was20% had production costs of between £1000-£5000, 18% costs of between£5000-£20000 with 7% having production costs in excess of £20,000.The next question asked what artists' fee was received for the last productionand for what period worked, the responses here varied wildly. The highest feewas £20,000 but for 200 days work, the best fee in terms of hours worked was£7,000 for 25 days work. The average fee was between £1-3,000, howeverthe majority of responds suggested a great disparity between fees and hoursworked, for example one of the worst being £500 for 150 days work.In terms of funding sources the largest number of respondents (44%) haveapplied to Arts Council England with 40% reporting success, 35% have neverconsidered applying. The next most popular funder was the Film LondonArtists Film and Video Awards (now called FLAMIN Productions) with 43%applying and a success rate of 14% of respondents (although this is a farmore limited fund than grants for arts). Trusts/ foundations were the next mostsignificant funding source (33% with success rate of 28% of respondents),with The Elephant Trust and the Wellcome Trust being the most popularsources. University research funding was also fairly significant at 26% with asuccess rate of 21% of respondents.The majority of respondents (66%) had never sold work, of those who hadsold work the main way this happened was directly with the buyer (18%)followed by a sale as part of a commission (11%), while sales through arepresenting gallery being the smallest percentage (7%). 81% of respondentsdid not feel confident about how moving image works are brought and sold.

Production

Image CaptureFilm remains a significant production medium with 52% of those surveyedusing it as a capture format (with 16mm being the most popular). Standarddefinition video is still more widely used than HD, and is generally the mostpopular image capture format.Cameras