Exeunt Magazine: The recent debate on no pay, low pay, and the merits of boycotting work by unpaid creatives has largely revolved around actors. However, discussions on how other theatre creatives are undervalued are gathering speed. From Tom Scutt on Twitter demanding credit for designers in press photos, to the Society of British Theatre Designers (SBTD) consistently reporting below minimum wage Arts Jobs listings to Arts Council England, designers are speaking out. Ahead of open meeting ‘The Value of Design’ (more info below), we spoke to eight SBTD member designers to get a snapshot of the industry and some of the issues they face at all levels of the profession.
5 comments:
This is sadly an ongoing conversation that I feel might be going on for a long time to come. I was glad to read about how this article acknowledges how usually the conversation talks only about actors but that pretty much is my joy left. It is sad that how even now people fear that their speaking about an issue could jeopardize their future employment. This is a horrible culture that needs to be changed. I am surprised that the union doesn’t have a standard designer fee or pay rate. I understand that it is hard to erasure what a design can be paid for, as their design time isn’t done in a strict 9 to 5 job setting. However, I feel that there should still be standard pay rates to make sure people are being paid fairly. What is probably saddest to hear is that theaters designers can’t afford to pay union memberships and that these memberships do little to ensure that designers are paid a fair amount. These unions are meant to protect its designers and it sounds like they do a pretty crappy job of it. Overall this article is a sad report about how designers need to be represented better, which is pretty sad this day in age.
America has such a large importance placed on intellectual property and this is mostly because of businesses. However, freelance artists fall into this category as it is their ideas that get put into the piece, it is their design. Although they may not be worried about someone stealing their ideas, having that intellectual property in business is what allows them to make so much money. So, one would think that designers would to but instead they get the short end of the stick. This sort of baffles me because how can intellectual property be so valued in one industry and not valued much in another when arguably the latter should be the one worth more. I don’t really have an answer to this problem but what I do now is that artists, including designers, typically get the short end of the stick. So, we should work to fix this. This is what this article is looking at and has a pretty good idea of how to do it but it doesn’t cover all artists and it doesn’t cover all designers. Although a good idea, it is only just a starting point in my mind.
I found this article to be extremely informational. It is hard to thing about the logistics and reality of working as a designer for theater. I have definitely learned some important facts from this article about asking questions and learning to say no. What was very interesting was that one person said to reject a job that pays so little when you know it is going to demand more time than it is worth it at such a low cost, which makes sense. However, another person said they would actually usually agree to even jobs like that because building up your portfolio is important as well. I think finding a balance between maintaining an updated, well-versed portfolio and a budget that you can survive off of and some is very important to find. I also really like to read the advice of being able to lean on people in your life. It is going to be hard working in the real world after school, so we should take as much as we can from resources here about business.
First thing’s first. The paint floor at the National Theater in London is the coolest. They have a space to hang three full stage backdrops and have a window washer type thing that travels up and across the drops. But now for the point of the article. It really sucks that pay for designers is so terrible. I suppose that is the same for a lot of the theater industry. I thought about applying to the National Theater, but they put salaries online and they were remarkably low. I think it is hard to get higher wages when people are so happy to work for so little. It’s not like other jobs that you do because of the pay and if the pay is bad you do something else. People do theater stuff because they love it and don’t care enough about how little they are paid because they can’t survive without it.
This article provided great insist through multiple different perspectives of what we should do in the design field. It's simply not right that designers get paid so little in the world of art and in particularly in the world of theatre. A lot of this issue thought I think comes from what someone in the article put so very clear as the "fire triangle" of theatre being money, people, and time. All three are resources that theatre struggles with in a large capacity and for some reason the gap between people and money is always the one that gets stretched the thinnest because those people looking for work and looking to make it in the industry become willing to work for whatever they are able to get and that sometimes means working for less then they should get in a certain situation, which then of course causes and industry wide shift if one person is willing to take this and do a great job then everyone should be able to take that.
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