As many of you know, I’m in the process of wrapping up a Bachelor’s Degree in Public Policy and Nonprofit Management. One of my last classes requires me to write a capstone paper, which I have almost complete. (Whew!) The subject is about recommending nonprofit programs that can abate comic artist precarity. In a week I need to give a presentation about my paper to the class and I found myself really diving into it. Here is what will be the first part of the power-point in which I describe the problem of financial precarity:
Slide One: I will provide a definition of precarity for creative laborers (A state of ongoing uncertainty and risk caused by a highly competitive field and exacerbated by a history of exploitative practices, an industry reliance on work-for-hire and part-time contract labor, technological changes to the work environment, corporate consolidation of employers, and self-exploitation triggered by the positive externalities artists see to their work outside of any economic benefit.) as well as provide a graph showing the impact on artists as pay comes in inconsistently but expenses grow steadily. I’ll transition to slide 2 by stating that one problem with the definition and graph are that they are very abstract and somewhat anodyne when compared to the reality of life lived as a precarious laborer.
Slide Two: Slide two changes the graph from a flat academic/economic point of view to a three dimensional vision of how an artist views the condition of precarity. The flat red line of expenses becomes a giant red sea to be crossed, and the green line of income becomes a monkey bars like structure that provides the only means of getting across. The dips below the red line become more ominous as you can no longer see how deep the dips in income actually are.
Slide Three: Slide three shows the hard work of getting to the top of a single economic peak on the monkey bars. I’ll note that it’s slippery work!
Slide Four: Slide four highlights that the peaks are very small and are almost immediately followed by a steep drop off that the precarious artist must navigate. Going down the apparatus can be done slowly and deliberately, quickly and hazardously, or accidently via slipping.
Slide Five: Slide five is meant to show the true dangers of precarity. The precarious artist can’t get to the upward swing of the monkey bars without getting wet… or worse. The red water hides sharks and difficult currents.
Slide Six: Slide six shows that one of the possible consequences is that the artist can wipe out and be dragged back to shore, requiring them to start over from scratch.
Slide Seven: Slide Seven shows that the consequences can be much more dire.
Slide Eight: Slide Eight wraps up my definition/examination of precarity by showing that often the best case outcome is being able to stay on the path, the artist navigating uncertainty and risk for as far they can see going forward.