Our Arts in the North

Description

Delivered Keynote talk at the conference.
Title: ‘Visual Arts and Copyright: Artists’ voices from the field’
Abstract: Is copyright relevant to the everyday lives of visual artists? Is it valuable to them? With an emphasis on artists’ relationship with copyright, this paper focusses on visual arts, and presents thematic findings from a new empirical study examining the role of copyright in visual artists’ practices. The study comprised qualitative indepth interviews with 70 visual artists coupled with ethnographic fieldwork at visual arts events and festivals, to capture changing economic and social contexts of the creative practices of a range of visual artists as well as their perspectives and experiences in relation to copyright. The study demonstrates that the relevance of the internal aspect of copyright (the ability to exploit rights for monetary return) can vary significantly both across creative disciplines and individual practices, as visual artists continue to experiment to sustain precarious portfolio-based careers. More significantly, it shows that creators' relationships with copyright are complex, and highlights the role of the external aspect of copyright (the ability of artists to exclude others from use of their works, both when the artists are themselves exploiting copyright but also when they are not), an aspect that is often ignored.

Period	5 Jul 2018
Event type	Conference
Location	NewcastleShow on map
Degree of Recognition	National