Friday 23 September 2016

Lost (middle) Ground, Lost Opportunities

Who’d Be a Working Actor? It’s Not Even a Dog’s Life by actor Neil Pigot is a must-read lament for the diminishing opportunities for paid work, the loss of the artistic middle ground, radio drama … and so much else.

Read it here.

Where once were dollars, now are cents.


I (Noëlle) fear we’re heading towards a hugely polarised arts environment. Apart from a small number of people with salaried positions, we'll have a tiny number of writers and artists able to make a passable living from their work, and the vast majority of us entirely reliant on second careers to survive. Making occasional forays into the cop-op and indie sector and picking up the odd funded crumb. And I fear this will be doubly true for anyone whose work is unfashionable, niche, or at the more experimental or feral end of the arts spectrum.

As for the internet, well it’s been around for long enough for us to realise that a lot of that early talk about new platforms and opportunities for writers and artists is just that—talk. In an interview, the late, lamented Prince pointed out that while we couldn’t name one musician who made a decent living from downloads, Apple was doing very nicely, thank you.

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