Why parents in the art world are fighting for a fairer future
The Art Working Parents Alliance was formed to tackle the challenges faced by non-artist caregivers in this sector. We chatted to founders Hettie Judah and Jo Harrison.
In October 2022, the Art Working Parents Alliance (AWP) was founded by Hettie Judah and Jo Harrison. The UK-wide network, which is open to all salaried and freelance (non-artist) parents and caregivers, is dedicated to making the art world a better place for people with children in their lives to work.
Judah, an art critic and writer, and Harrison, a curator and gallery worker, sat down with Critical Edge to discuss the genesis of the project – plus what the response has been like so far and what their future plans are for the AWP. Visit their website to register and find out more.
How and why did you embark on your research into the impact of parenthood on careers in the art world?
Hettie Judah: I was interested in this evident dropping-off that was happening to women artists in their thirties. At art school, and in early and mid-career, there is a roughly 50/50 split of male versus female and non-binary artists, but at the point when people are being represented by commercial galleries there is a sudden shift. In the Freelands Foundation’s 2019 report on representation of women artists in the UK, they found that 68% of artists represented by galleries in the UK are male. Of course, one thing that often happens to people in their thirties is that they start a family.
I started talking to the report’s then-editor, Dr Kate McMillan, and she commissioned me to write an essay on the experience of artist mothers. I started working on it in March 2020 as the pandemic hit. I put out an open call on Instagram and got an unbelievable response. I had time because of the lockdown so I ended up interviewing everyone who replied. I didn’t do any gatekeeping – if you self-identified as an artist and a mother that was good enough for me. All the interviewees were based in the UK although they had roots all over, from Peru through to South and East Asia. The picture that the essay painted was quite horrifying. Mothers felt extremely isolated, and that if they took any time out of the art world for caregiving, there was no route back in. You can read the essay, which was titled ‘Full, Messy and Beautiful’, on the Freelands website.
If you see something that’s going badly wrong, you start thinking about what you can do to make a difference. I started working co-operatively with a group of 30 artists on a manifesto called ‘How not to exclude artist parents’. We used a Google Doc so people could add suggestions and chime in if they agreed with other people’s contributions. From that I scrambled together 10 manifesto points, which we all worked on to reword until everyone was happy. It was released in spring 2021. Again, it really blossomed and ended up being translated into 16 languages. It’s freely available and open source, so you can republish it in any way you want: people have been using it as a supporting document in funding applications, it’s been cited in all kinds of cases. And then it turned into a book, and then Jo and I started talking…
Jo Harrison: My area of research as a curator has always been feminism, gender and work. I was interested in social reproduction theory and the work of Silvia Federici before I became a parent. During the pandemic I co-curated an online platform called Almanaccare, which explored questions of care and community and ecology. Out of that spawned my current ongoing research project, Repronomics, which looks at the intersection of reproduction and economics through the lens of the visual arts. I’m thinking about the overlaps between social reproduction and cultural reproduction as exploitable labours of love. There’s this idea that if something is your passion, if you love it and care about it, there is an expectation that you should be willing to do that work for little or no pay.
I’ve also worked in commercial galleries for 10 years and I have a kid. Theory is one thing but when you’re actually living it, it becomes much more urgent. When I returned to work I started seeing how the demands of working in the art world were at odds with childcare. There’s the lack of flexibility with your time, the frequent travelling for art fairs. I just thought, ‘How has everyone been doing this so far? I’m not alone in this: there are other parents in the art world who are somehow making this work. But are they making it work? Or are they struggling?’ I realised how valuable a peer network would be for people in the same situation as me. Hettie and I were already speaking over Instagram about some of these issues and we came together and decided to launch the AWP.
HJ: At this stage we hadn’t met in person! But when I was doing my work with artists I was fielding all these messages from people in considerable distress who were working in other sectors of the art world – in galleries, in academia and so on. There’s a serious problem across the board.
So how did you go about setting up the Art Working Parents Alliance?
JH: We started out by selecting around 20 ambassadors who were parents we knew in the art world based across the UK, who could make sure the message about the alliance was received. Then we put a call out on social media and via email and asked people to sign up as members, so we could form a mailing list where we could contact people. We also hosted an initial meet-up that Hettie organised with Hannah Watson at TJ Boulting. The idea was to find out what kind of grievances people had and what sort of thing they wanted us to do.
What are your main activities at the moment?
JH: We organise meet-ups, send out newsletters, and have a series of sector-based WhatsApp groups. The point is to allow people the space to meet with one another and talk about their day-to-day experiences. We also facilitate a mentoring scheme for people across different sectors and stages of their careers. And we’re working towards a symposium. I’m proud to say that we’re an activist organisation. We’re a proxy union in a way, it’s very solutions-oriented. One of our goals is to create a set of best practice guidelines for different sectors within the art world, that both individuals and organisations can use to help improve inclusivity for parents and caregivers.
HJ: At the moment we’re focused on getting a sense of what people are going through, what the current practices are within the art world and in different sectors. There are specific issues that vary from sector to sector – in auction houses there will be different issues to those in comms agencies, or art schools. But even just the fact of making ourselves visible to one another has been so important. Caregivers in the art world are the least visible people to one another because they're the people least likely to be going to the networking and social events: the after-hours private views, the lovely dinners, the press trips. They’re more likely having to dash home to do homework and dinner. I went through my whole active parenting span not knowing anybody else in my position.
There are times that Jo and I worry that things are a bit silent on the networks and then I’ll bump into someone and they’ll say they heard about someone else negotiating her maternity leave, and it made them feel so empowered and has completely changed their attitude towards dealing with their employer. If you’re on the outside of that, it might sound insignificant, but if you’re feeling very isolated then realising there are all these other people also going through it can have a huge impact.
JH: I’m in a couple of the WhatsApp groups. When it’s active I see people troubleshooting with each other. Someone might ask the group, ‘How do you use your holiday pay? Do you use it to cover days when your child is sick?’ And another person will respond by sharing the agreement they have with their employer, which is so helpful.
How have institutions and people in the art world responded so far?
JH: So far the response has been overwhelmingly positive; people have been keen to sign up as members and institutions have been coming forward to host events. Part of the reason we set up AWP is to challenge the hypocrisy that exists at the core of the art world: that it sets itself out as a very liberal and progressive industry, which is extremely inclusive, but the reality is quite the opposite.
HJ: We haven’t got to stage of challenging specific institutions at this point. I’m not going to name names, but at this stage we’re actually more concerned about care-washing. There are institutions that are associated with bad practice who have said they are interested in supporting AWP, but it feels like more of a gesture than a meaningful relationship. We have to be quite vigilant about who we align ourselves with. As Jo says, the art world is brilliant at talking the talk but not walking the walk.
We’ve also had interest internationally. Looking to the future there’s a likelihood that AWP networks will be started in places like Germany and the US. We’ve had lots of people from those countries try to join and we’re not able to accept then as we will be dealing with British contract law. But there’s no reason why people shouldn’t set up a sibling network.
How would you say the art world compares to other industries in terms of treatment of parents?
HJ: I think it’s pretty bad because it’s unregulated. And I’m afraid to say women aren’t necessarily always brilliant allies to one another or to parents. It does vary by sector, though: the public sector is mindful about things like parental leave. It goes back to what Jo was saying about the forms of labour that we are expected to do. There’s this overriding belief in the art world that we’re meant to feel special, and it’s a very competitive industry, so it gets away with things like unpaid labour. People feel that if they don’t accept bad treatment there is somebody else who is going to snap up their job.
I would also add that a lot of the issues that affect working parents indicate a much wider structural issue in the art world. Really bad pay in museums, for example, has a massive impact on anybody who’s a caregiver and supporting other people – but then it also indicates the fact that there’s going to be a lack of social mobility. There’s a canary in the coalmine aspect to what we’re doing.
JH: Even if you’re the most well-meaning director of an institution, you know you’re up against a board of trustees and criminally tight budgets. Trying to include access costs can seem impossible. But there are people who are speaking up against these kinds of oppressions. Scotland is leading the way in a lot of ways. People like Beth Bate at Dundee Contemporary have made lots of positive changes. I do feel optimistic, especially given how well AWP has been received so far.