By: Drew Simpson
The Division of Labour exhibit portrays sustainable ways of creating art while also looking at the difficulties of creating a sustainable art career. Housed in the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre’s main gallery space until April 20 and accompanied by a panel discussion, Division of Labour warns of the scarcity of resources, labour rights and living wages of artists.
Division of Labour also serves as an educational tool to communicate and start discourse around the issues regarding sustainability. The Socio-Economic Status of Artists in the greater Toronto and Hamilton area discussion, which was facilitated by Divisions of Labour curator, Suzanne Carte, and included panelists Sally Lee, Michael Maranda and Angela Orasch, encouraged artists to be vocal and seek action.
“People want to be around artists, but they really don’t. If they were living in the reality that a lot of artists are living in, it would not be favourable. What they want is the pseudo creative lifestyle. They want to be around beautiful things and smart people, but they don’t really want to be assisting with making sure artists are making a living wage and that artists are being supported financially,” explained Carte.
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For emerging artists, this exhibits presents a valuable learning experience as it informs them of community issues. This topic is particularly important since emerging artists are often asked to work for free, often under a pretense that the work will add to their portfolios or lead to exposure. However, Carte argues that asking artists to work for free devalues the work they do.
“Because you are emerging, and because you’re new to the practice does not mean that any institution, organization or individual business, whatever it might be, can take advantage of you and use it as exposure… it’s not about gaining experience — I can gain experience on the job. I can gain experience while being compensated for what I do,” explained Carte.
While Carte encourages individuals to stand up for themselves, she understands that many artists may not be in a position to be able to reject sparse opportunities. She, alongside the panelists at the discussions, further discussed ways emerging and established artists can fight for their rights.
Lee gave an overview of organizations and advocacy groups that focus on bettering labour and housing situations and are making communities aware of gentrification and the living experiences of artists in Hamilton and Toronto.
Maranda added that lobbying for bigger grants or funding is not enough. The community also needs to be advocating for the improvement of artists’ economic status through establishing a basic or minimum hourly wage, affordable rent and transportation.
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Recently, Maranda was a quantitative researcher for the Waging Culture survey. The survey investigated home ownership in Hamilton compared to Toronto. Maranda concluded that Hamilton artists are less reliant on the private market and contribute more to the public art community.
The survey also suggested an artist migration from Toronto to Hamilton due to Hamilton’s lower rent and higher artist home ownership. This leads to a domino effect as real estate agents and developers follow the migration and aid gentrification.
Orasch stated that real estate agents and developers have secretly attended similar panel discussions. The panelists speculated they do so to learn how to market housing to artists. However, the overall sentiment was that they crossed into an artist-designated space to further exploit artists.
“Developers are taking advantage of the language that we have been able to construct for ourselves, to be able to be attractive to other artists or other individuals who feel as though they want an “artsy” experience out of life,” explained Carte.
Lee emphasized how all these surveys and discussions need to reach key decision makers. The Division of Labour exhibit and the panelists at the discussion have repeatedly stressed that talk is merely educational, the true goal is action and change.
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Every so often, students walking through the McMaster University Student Centre are met with faces of The Beatles, large maps of the world and even prints of Banksy’s most popular works.
The Imaginus poster sale, which has been touring Canadian university and college campuses since 1975, is a staple of the university experience. It is not uncommon to see their posters plastered over the walls of dorms and off-campus housing.
The Imaginus poster sale is happening right now in MUSC!
Make sure to check it out before they leave tomorrow 🙂#McSU pic.twitter.com/FfDqEesAgc
— MSU Campus Events (@msucampusevents) January 31, 2019
At first glance, the poster sales seem innocent enough. For under $10, you can get away with two good-sized posters of your favourite band or quote — what could be wrong with that?
A lot, actually. The Imaginus poster sale has been critiqued in the past for selling posters that promote cultural appropriation, and poster sales in general have been scrutinized for the ethics of selling reproduced and borderline copyright-infringement artwork. This can especially raise eyebrows as it is rare that the collected profits ever reach the original artists.
But beyond the possible problematic nature of the content of their posters, the Imaginus poster sales take away opportunities from student artists. As it stands, McMaster University students cannot sell their artwork on campus for a profit.
According to the Policy on Student Groups, student groups on campus “may not engage in activities that are essentially commercial in nature.”
This policy is what caused the shutdown of an art sale by McMaster’s Starving Artists Society last year. The club is made up of student artists and creatives that are looking to expand their portfolio and reach a wider audience.
The event that was shut down was meant to be an opportunity for student artists to market their artwork to their peers and even profit off of their hard work. Many of Mac’s student artist community are involved with SAS and were negatively affected by the university’s decision to shut the event down.
Essentially, the university has allowed Imaginus to have an unfair monopoly on selling art on campus. For a university that already arguably disvalues the arts, to dissuade student artists from profiting from their work is a serious matter.
This brings to light a larger issue at hand. Why should any students be disallowed to sell their products on campus — especially when outside companies are given space in our student centre to sell their products?
This situation unfortunately reflects the situation of many non-student local artists within the community. In our corporate world, it is extremely difficult to establish a reliable clientele and profit off of one’s work. Mass commercialized products inherently cost less and as a result, this drives away sales from local artists.
As the university makes a profit from the poster sales, and in general from any vendors on campus, it is unlikely that this issue will be addressed anytime soon.
Until it is, you can support local and student artists through sharing their work, reaching out to them and contributing towards their sales. The SAS also runs art crawls and other events where students can get in contact with student artists!
Everyone has a Friends poster in their house. When you buy local and student, not only are you supporting your peers, but you’re likely acquiring higher quality and truly unique works of art.
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With the start of the new school year, McMaster has begun the process of phasing out the old Learning Portfolio platform. Just before the start of the classes, the university completed the purchase of licenses for a new system run by PebblePad, a company based in the United Kingdom.
The Learning Portfolio is designed to be a virtual scrapbook for students to collect achievements, reflections, and goals and share them with friends, professors, and employers.
Historically, the Learning Portfolio has had a negative reputation, with students complaining about the tool’s clunky interface. However, with the purchase of the PebblePad platform, the university is hoping to change that.
“Over the last couple of years we’ve been collecting information, [by] asking faculty what they like and don’t like about the portfolio,” said Catherine Swanson, Learning Portfolio Program Manager at the McMaster Institute for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching and Learning.
Swanson explained that over the course of several months, students and staff from all of McMaster’s faculties tested different portfolio tools and eventually agreed on PebblePad. “It has so much more flexibility and it’s much easier [to use] and the students who tested it for us absolutely loved it,” she said.
Unlike the old portfolio system, which was run by Desire2Learn (D2L), the company that also runs Avenue to Learn, PebblePad’s specialty is its e-learning portfolio system.
Swanson is eager to see how the change affects both students and faculty. Once the system is fully up and running, students will be able to access PebblePad directly through Avenue to Learn just like the D2L platform. She emphasized the fact that unlike D2L, PebblePad is constantly releasing new versions so the system remains up to date with developments in web design.
The PebblePad platform certainly looks more polished than D2L’s design. It features built-in help videos and pop-ups to guide students through an online reflection. Its design is intuitive and streamlined. In the past, many students struggled with sharing their portfolios with professors who were using the system for assignments, but the new platform has clearer sharing instructions to ensure only those marking the Learning Portfolio can access it.
Despite the change in platform, the number of students who will be engaged by the Learning Portfolio is still uncertain.
Patricia Kousoulas, a third year Life Sciences student and President of the McMaster Science Society, has conflicting thoughts on the tool. She has used the Learning Portfolio in her studies at McMaster to explore specific skills such as leadership and communication in tutorials.
“The tool was a good way to capture my thoughts, however because it was for marks, people didn’t appreciate it […] the academic factor honestly scares people away—it scared me away too,” she said.
Kousoulas said that in addition to the PebblePad help videos, she would love to see a student testimonial to promote extra-curricular uses for the portfolio.
“The problem is that the first time students hear about [the portfolio] is during class time, and then it doesn’t excite them.”
She thinks that it will likely take a long time to find students who genuinely want to use the platform. “If someone like me who is involved with the project [...] isn’t really jumping up and down to do it, I don’t know how other students will feel about it,” she said.
PebblePad will be gradually implemented over the course of the year, and while the system’s features look modern, it may still have a long way to develop.
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