On Saturday 12 March, we were pleased to host New Generation Space led by Anna Francis with speakers Emily Speed and Rich White.

We heard an honest account of artist, Emily Speed and her experiences of getting “paid” and the choices you make as an artist about how you get paid. Emily writes a blog for a-n, which you can visit here.

I met Rich White late last year when I took part in Interrogation: West Bromwich, and his talk at the conference had particular resonance with me. Although I’m not an artist in the obvious sense, I too had found myself in a weird place in writing myself into a bid/application for money and had written about feeling guilty about charging a fee. This all feeds into the idea that artists aren’t professionals or that artists/arts professionals should be somehow on the breadline. His paper for his talk on Saturday can be found here.

After hearing from the speakers and we were posed a number of questions to get us thinking about what the future might hold for the arts and for artists, and any impact we might be already be experiencing.

Following the group work we all came together to create the below Manifesto. I intend to live and work by the manifesto, and that means The Exchange will – I hope you will too.

MANIFESTO:

1. Be Active: Support each others’ endeavours
2. Be Active: Be Political
3. Be Active: Keep making art
4. Value Yourself, your time and your skills
5. Share resources and knowledge
6. Focus/Strategise/Plan
7. Be Critical: Quality Assure
8. Know your rights

Anna, Emily and Rich will be making posters, and we’ll share them too. See Anna’s blog for the full event coverage.

Images by Glen Stoker.