Abstract

Artquest has collected data on professional visual artists working conditions, income sources, barriers and demographics since 2017, adding questions about the cost of living in mid-2023. We use it to build projects, join campaigns, and produce research supporting a more equitable art world, but imagine colleagues around UAL could find it useful too. How can UAL colleagues use our data to generate insights in support of their own work, in education and supporting social purpose?

Session and activities

The session will include a short introduction to the wider work of Artquest, an Arts Council England funded, public professional development programme for visual artists in England. We will explore how we plan, collect and analyse our data to produce research and insight into the art world, focussing on promoting more equitable practices in artists working conditions through our wider programme and partnerships. Drilling down, we will introduce the Applied data partnership: 6 arts organisations led by Artquest who gathers and share this artist data, with time to outline our data sharing, access, GDPR and IP arrangements. Finally, we will show an overview of the data, including our data dashboards. We seek an active, challenging discussion (around half the session) on how UAL colleagues can work with us to use the data in campaigning, advocacy, and aligning with UAL KE and research to further social purpose and equity in the arts. Participants will be provided in advance with visualisations to illustrate the kind of data we collect.