On Monday I wrote a post in which I mentioned an observation a person made about how having their state arts council organized under their state’s business development division made it difficult to disentangle the economic impact numbers of creative activities in advocacy efforts.

Artsjournal.com featured an article from Prospect Magazine (UK) that runs along similar lines, positing that an emphasis on the economic benefit of creative industries runs counter to artist’s best interests by valuing marketability over creative risk taking.

Whereas before artists and cultural practitioners could engage in art for art’s sake, now they are judged, ranked and scored on how much private investment they can secure. So film students are taught how to budget at the expense of how to create a mise-en-scène. Sculptors learn about the cost efficiency of materials rather than the work of da Vinci. Children do art classes because they are seen as investments in their future career rather than simply nurturing their well-being.

The article’s author, Oli Mould, also mentions the re-classification of creative industries to encompass a greater scope of activities in order to bolster economic output numbers.

For example, the “software” subsector—which consisted mainly of accountancy and administration staff—was augmented in 2005 which added £4.7bn to the creative industries’ overall contribution overnight.

Mould points out that despite all this economic impact artists and cultural practitioners apparently bring to the table, it hasn’t improved the collective bargaining power of these people. They are still being paid low wages or being asked to donate their goods and services for exposure.

(Slight aside: It will probably come as no surprise to many that a couple weeks ago someone at a meeting I attended mentioned a company which had recently completed a multi-million dollar wing to their corporate HQ was asking artists to donate art for their walls. )

A few weeks ago I listened to an interview Erik Gensler at Capacity Interactive conducted with Diane Ragsdale. Gensler made repeated reference to the negative impacts of neo-liberalism and capitalism on the arts. At the time,  I thought he was strangely fixated on neo-liberalism.

It took me a couple of weeks to recognize bringing up the term wasn’t that strange at all.  I often take issue in my posts with the utilitarian view of arts and culture as a solution to problems. That utilitarian view is a by-product of neo-liberalism.  Mould links to an article on neo-liberalism and the arts as applied to the UK in the Prospect piece.

Over on The Baffler, Kate Wagner, takes a look at the tenuous state in which classically trained musicians operate in the face of income threatening conditions like the lock-out/strike currently occurring at Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

I came across the link on Arts and Letter Daily which introduced it with, “Classical music is a high-water mark for culture. Being a classical musician, however, is a job — a crappy job.”

Reading Wagner’s account, I would have to agree. In addition to the cost of formal training with private instructors, universities and conservatories, she also lists the myriad other costs involved including summer intensives, festivals, competitions, internships, memberships, certifications and the choice of buying or renting instruments.

Last week Drew McManus pointed out the rising cost of strings his wife buys and analyzed the lifetime cost of maintaining a string instrument. His broader analysis of instrument costs, with nifty infographics, is worth a look. It is something to whip out when people say musicians shouldn’t be paid to do something they love.

Wagner had initially trained to be a violinist and she expresses some bitterness upon realizing that the ability to access the brand name training experiences that will provide access to the next tier of prestigious training was out reach of her family’s finances. She expresses anger at being encouraged onward and further into debt by teachers who knew that the path to an orchestra didn’t lay through the training she received.

One composer who currently works as an adjunct professor at a small Midwestern college decried classical music’s entrenched reputational economy. “I feel like we’re witnessing the development . . . of a two-tiered system,” he said, “with musicians who went to non-famous and poorly endowed schools on the bottom, with musicians who went to the Ivy Leagues of music on top…. What’s more, he argued, this uneven system of class and reputational privilege leads to more and more exploitation:

There’s a very strong sense of identity shame for a lot of musicians who went to non-famous schools, who got perfectly wonderful educations, but who didn’t have the grace of some famous asshole to notarize their work. Basically, it creates opportunities for exploitation. Students are told to go to these famous places to get a good degree. They live beyond their means . . . they open themselves up to labor, sexual, emotional, and physical abuse, depending on which monster they’re assigned to work with.

She mentions another colleague teaching middle school in Texas who has felt her opportunities have been limited because she doesn’t have the resources to gain the imprimatur accorded by participation in Drum Corps International competitions and workshops.

She notes that in this environment, it is pretty difficult to bring greater diversity to the industry, even with scholarships facilitating the process, due to the high debt one will accrue and low wages pretty much everyone will receive upon securing a performance position.

She ends the piece with a bit of solidarity for the striking musicians.

Sure, I may have been a failure in classical music, but as my colleagues and comrades schlep their instruments around in substitute gigs from orchestra to orchestra, unable to get a full-time job, teaching their students, paying off their debts with poverty wages from performing or adjuncting, and walking the picket line, the least I can do is write about it.