Monday, June 29, 2015
The idea for creating this blog came about after years of grappling with a desire to change a perception; the tired, old notion that artists can’t get jobs. How many times has one heard aspersions cast about getting “an art history degree,” or heard, as well, that pursuit in some other discipline of the humanities was a waste of time in regards to gainful employment?
As an artist and an art educator at Westmoreland County Community College, I am charged with the task of teaching about my field in a rural, historically working class economic area. Let’s be honest, the cliché of the “starving artist” has some merit – but I would argue not any more than other fields and perhaps less. Just take a look at this Employment Projections table compiled by the U.S. Job Census Bureau through 2018. Independent artists, writers and performers are listed under fastest growing industries. And what is not seen are the potential visual art skill sets imbedded in industries that use the term “design,” “development,” and “other.” After all, creative industries are problem-solving industries, and they don’t always have a clear, traditional path to a sustainable lifestyle.
A useful social media tool is Google trends. This tracks the popularity of any query and adds informational charts that give one a sense of what interests are rising. If you scroll to the bottom, you will see a chart that lists “jobs with art” among other art careers. To me this might indicate the growing mix of art skill sets in a wide range of industries.
I take my charge as an art educator seriously, and from a critical perspective, my educational journey, common to many art majors across the country, rarely addressed financial literacy or career options. We are no doubt in the midst of a paradigm shift in academia that is asking questions to bridge the altruistic need for humanities in our culture to the reality of making a living once out in the workforce. The care and feeding of the humanities in culture at large has demanded that the altruistic vision become integrated in the everyday consciousness of making a living – meaningfully— in whatever one chooses.
The function of this blog is to document my process of integrating financial literacy and career options into our art program. I will document the pursuit of educational grants, the development of certificates, and the full disclosure of hurdles and roadblocks encountered, in order to carve out an educational plan that works for students.
As the director of our program, I frequently ask students, “how do you want to spend the hours of your life?” Embedded in this question is a pondering of a creative life as a vocation, and the necessity of a career with an income to sustain it. Wages and art have to straddle both.
WagingArt 