Across the world, things are happening that no prayers or pieties can undo, events so terrible they make the dysfunctional nation I call home appear normal. Here on the periphery of Europe, I have the luxury of thinking about writing and filmmaking. On a good day it’s my highest aspiration. On a bad day, it’s a lost cause. I’m not alone. Many in Scotland share the same thought – how can I have a career in the arts or creative industries and not die of disappointment?
For the working classes today there’s no route to becoming a professional anything in the arts, not when the portal to free higher education was slammed in our faces last century. Whether through creativity or patronage, art is once again restored as the plaything of the moneyed, the unpaid interns able to work for free at the expense of those who can’t. In this context and in the absence of a living wage, who gets to make art?
~ continue…...