A&DE Employability

Fusion 2 28/01/15

What is Self – Employment?

Pip Spoerry

Employability Coordinator

ContextUK's creative economy

•great national strength

•accounting for around one-tenth of the UK economy

•provides jobs for 2.5 million people

•grown four times faster than the workforce as a whole in recent years

•credible claim to be world–leading industrial sector

•government bodies are actively driving creative industry growth forward

Creative Industries Sector• Economic recession = fall in full time employment = increased ‐competition for jobs = shift to short contracts and reliance on freelance workers.

• Growth in business start up and fixed‐ ‐term/temporary contracts,  drift away from work in medium sized ‐enterprises to micro businesses

• Larger proportions of graduates now working in creative and cultural industries in work related to their subject than a decade ago.

• Project-based working and contract economy continues to draw on a pool of creative, skilled and adaptable workers who rely on multiple income streams.  

• Creatives are willing to acquire new learning to respond to specific niche needs of contracts and clients.  

• Rise of self-employment, portfolio working and rapid networking between graduates as free agents, and the shrinkage of opportunities in medium-sized enterprises all make traditional employment patterns less relevant.   

What do Creative Graduates do?

Self-employment or freelancing is central to employment within key areas such as arts, design and media.

Graduates 2013

•Self-employed graduates working as arts, design and media professionals made up 42.1% of all self-employed graduates. 

•The DLHE data supports this; 55.2% of 2011/12 graduates who were in employment as artists were self-employed, as were 60.9% of all set designers, and 46.3% of graduates working as jewellery designers. 

•Reasons for self-employment and portfolio careers based on lifestyle choices = active career choice

What do Creative Graduates do? - Fine arts

• Graduates from fine arts degrees reported being artists more than any other job title.

• The high rate of part-time work (32%) is increasing

• Retail, catering, waiting and bar staff roles are quite common (27.0%) and suggest portfolio working styles to sustain art practice. 

What do Creative Graduates do?

• Many of those working in the creative and cultural industries adopt portfolio work styles for flexibility, creative freedom or to enable them to develop and use a range of different skills, especially earlier in their career.

• Self-employment working patterns benefit artists, designers, crafts people, design makers and art and design organisations by providing flexibility for creatives to work in many different ways, for different people and allows creative organisations to ‘employ’ creative appropriate to the relevant project.

• Self-employment/freelancing is an appropriate, and probable career choice for the creative graduate.

What does it mean to be self-employed?

A mix of income from:-

• Sales of work

• Commissions

• Residencies

• Running workshops

• Teaching

• Arts administration

• Funding pots

• Part-time job

Views of creative freelancers"Well, I don't just have one business. I produce speculative work for galleries. I work to commission. I teach. I am in partnership with another maker making buttons for the couture market." (Jeweller)

"It's important for people starting up to realise that it doesn't happen overnight. It takes time to build up skills to make and market your work to a high standard. You have to be a maker, book-keeper, PR, photographer, technician, cleaner and it tends to take over your life". (Designer Maker)

“They keep me on a rolling contract. This job is quite rich because it involves a lot of visual effects stuff and design as well. Sometimes the jobs are so big I can’t really do them all by myself so I get other people in to help and I oversee what they’re doing.” (Freelance Motion Design Director)

Summary

•To succeed as a self-employed creative you will need to be flexible and manage a diverse working practice that allows you to respond to markets, demand and the changing landscape of the creative industry.

•Being self-employed means you are running a business and as a creative freelancer you need to see yourself as the business.