The largest artists’ membership organisation in the UK—The Artists Information Company (a-n)— has been revamped and rebranded, changing its name to Artists Now. The move helps “ensure that artists’ voices are heard and shaping policy at the highest levels”, says its chief executive officer, Julie Lomax. A new “Green Manifesto”, conceived for artists, forms part of the rebrand.
The organisation was launched in 1980 as a grassroots, artist-run newsletter. “We’ve been supporting artists for over 45 years and were set up by artists, growing from a 500-copy a month newsletter—there was no internet in 1980—to a professional membership organisation with over 36,000 members,” Lomax tells The Art Newspaper. Annual membership for artists and other self-employed arts professionals costs £38 annually; membership includes insurance coverage and access to an advice helpline, among other benefits.
The membership organisation campaigns on crucial issues for UK artists, from fair pay to intellectual property. “We make the case for investment in artists and the visual arts through the All Party Parliamentary Group for Visual Arts and Arts and we’re looking forward to what the new changes in government in the UK [led by the new Prime Minister Andy Burnham] will bring for culture,” adds Lomax.
Artists Now also offers guidance on budgeting, contracts, rates of pay and exhibition payments, bursaries and other legal and tax matters. “There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t hear about the murkier practices of the artworld, consignments going missing or not returned, major galleries and museums not paying artists properly for their labour, commercial galleries owing artists money and late payments and more,” Lomax says.
The new Green Manifesto—developed through a collaborative research process led by the artists Tom Pope, Alys Scott Hawkins, and Melanie Wheeler—aims to “help you to take active steps towards an environmentally responsible practice”. The manifesto offers advice for artists divided into “easy”, “medium” and “hard” environmentally-conscious changes.
Lomax adds: “We have our own environmental policy and practices and wanted to rise to the challenge of how we support artists to make changes, without taking a top-down approach. The Green Manifesto is a call to action developed by artists for artists, you could say A2A, which makes it different, rooted in the reality of everyday artists’ practice, realistic and achievable.”
The new campaign keeps environmental issues in the spotlight. Other high-profile bodies raising ecological issues include the Gallery Climate Coalition which launched a new consultancy earlier this year called Climate Action Services International (Casi).