Approved by IAA Europe Executive Committee on 7 February 2023
IAA Europe believes that art has a central and overarching role in society, and that all citizens should have the opportunity to experience art and that they are to be able to practice as a professional artist regardless of place of residence, social and economic background.
IAA Europe urges the decision makers to develop the visual arts by:
1. Providing equal rights
A flourishing art field requires diversity. We need to ensure equal access to resources for all artists and ensure that artists are prescribed the same rights as in other professions.
We want:
- Equal and equitable opportunities for arts practice and participation for artists of intersecting identities.
- Afirmative action to be promoted and implemented by institutions, organisations and funders to futher include those who have been marginalized and underserved.
- Equal accrual of social benefits, health benefits, insurance and pensions, regardless of whether you are an employee, freelancer or self-employed person.
- Funding and legal conditions that promote and ensure diversity within the artworld, where freedom of expression is safeguarded, regardless of geography, ethnicity, age and gender and where existing gaps are actively diminished.
2. Strengthening working conditions and a fair payment for artistic practices
The arts require professional artists who can live by what they create and who can work freely. Remunerating visual artists and reducing barriers to mobility is an investment into the future of our societies, and into the social, cultural and economic development of countries.
We want:
- An increase in scholarships and grants, because they are important for ensuring innovation, freedom of expression and democratic participation in the artistic profession and contributes to a rich and diverse arts and cultural offering. Grants are the most cost-efficient way of funding the arts.
- Grant and scholarship systems in the arts to be based on peer-review, as is the norm in science. Peer-review system — with regular rotation of the peers — is best way to secure high quality and diversity in the judging contemporary artworks and art practices.
- Grant and scholarship systems to promote equity and equality within artists.
- Implementing inclusive policies in grant and scholarships to provide
- Easy mobility for art and artists between borders; consolidating existing mobility funding programs and information points and reducing mobility obstacles allowing easier access to visas.
- Visual artists to receive fair remuneration for exhibiting their work in publicly funded exhibition spaces (with a corresponding increase in budgets to publicly-funded exhibiting institutions).
- Structural change in how the museums and equivalent exhibition spaces are run and how they spend their budgets. Artists should have more say in what is exhibited and artists should be paid better for their work in and for the museums.ii
- Fair remuneration to mean both an Exhibition Participation Fee as compensation to visual artists for the work and administration invested in creating content for exhibitions, as well as an Exhibition Rights Remuneration for the display of artworks in the artist’s possession, while the artist is not able to dispose of the artwork during the exhibition period – be it through copyright or soft law agreements.
- The right to collective bargaining strengthened and the inclusion of artists’ associations, Arts Councils and/or collecting societies in the decision processes that are relevant for artistic income.iii
- Jobs for visual artists.
- Copyright laws to protect the material and intellectual rights of artists.
- Visual artists to receive fair remuneration also for the digital distribution and sharing of their works.
3. Creating public access to the visual arts in Europe
We want:
- The arts to be accessible to all people and a culturally diverse art world.
- Free access to publicly funded arts.
- To increase the number of public visual arts assignments on all administrative levels.
- Equal opportunities of procurement, exhibitions and public art projects.
- Freedom of artistic expression and the right to cultural diversity safeguarded.
- 2% of state government budgets spent on arts and cultureiv
4. Ensuring aesthetic competence for all
There is a human right to create art, to admire it, critique it, challenge it, be provoked by it, respond to it, and to ignore it. All persons have rights to enjoy and have access to art and access to cultural institutions. Children must train to experience art and to express themselves artistically.
We want:
- To strengthen the aesthetic subjects in the school and secure fair payment and working conditions.
- Teacher competence requirements to also be an essential element in aesthetic subjects, with compulsory education in these subjects integrated as a feature of teacher education.
- Article 13v 1. The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child’s choice.
5. Showing solidarity with artists at risk and in exile
We want:
- A vision and strategy of European decision makers with regards to support of artists at risk in their home countries.
- Safe havens for persecuted visual artists.
- Permanent support programs for artists at risk.