22 Jun Liz Holmes: ‘Keep Calm and Leave it to your Administrator’
This week it is our formidable administrator Liz Holmes, who keeps us all organised, engaged and simply makes the stuff we need happen, happen.
From your Administrator:
There’s the parapet.
There’s my big old ginger head peeping out above it.
Saying “Hiiiiii, I know I’m part of the problem!”
For you see, I GET it. I get that Arts Administrators are part and parcel of why Directors aren’t getting paid enough. I get that some directors and makers are doing away with admin entirely and running the show themselves. I get that there’s even an artists’ movement publicly rebelling against admin (https://www.facebook.com/ARTISTSAGAINSTADMIN/), and I don’t blame them. Admin costs.
Employers’ tax contributions, annual leave, sick pay, (I won’t mention pensions cos my compulsory one doesn’t kick in until 2017, which SUCKS, cos my crow’s feet ain’t getting any shallower…), these are all costs that could be marvellously, lovingly applied to Directors’ fees instead. And the cost is not just monetary: The necessary paper pushing for NPOs and project funded organisations, the bureaucratic excess required to prove your worth in terms of bums on seats, sorry, Audience Development, “reach”, “legacy” and other such bobbins that pays scant attention to ART, is monstrously frustrating. It’s what sees heads of marketing and development paid more in a year than most Directors could earn in four. An ugly Catch 22 for those companies over a barrel: They can’t function without the funding, they can’t get the funding without the incessant statistical data, they can’t crunch the incessant statistical data without experienced personnel to do so, and so the salaries rise.
The Director, the poor flower, who, lest we forget, actually CREATES the work that’s having its statistical data crunched about, is very low down the list of priorities for sufficient payment, when there hasn’t been an industry body fit, willing and able to fight for them. So yeah, I GET IT.
But consider this: I could earn a hellalot more than I do now if I had the same experience managing an architectural practice, or running a law firm, or even a call centre at Transport for London (Truth, AND all my immediate family would get completely free, all-zone travelcards – amazing, eh?) I could have chosen a much more lucrative career, but I didn’t. And it’s not because I’m a frustrated artist, ok?
I trained as a musician. I trained as an actor. I dabbled in costume design. Voice work. DIRECTING.
I still sing. I create pretty things out of carded wool. I DO ART. I’m a freaking BUTTERFLY, yeah?
I do not want to DO ART for a living. So I support it, while making a (ho ho ho) living. I help make it happen. I pay the bills that mean the rehearsal rooms are heated in winter. I file the Arts Council returns that release the funds. I book the piano tuner for the auditions. I order extra toilet rolls for the open casting calls (seriously, I could do a thesis on how much toilet roll musical theatre auditionees go through…) I arrange the press nights and read the reviews and feel every bit as invested as the actors and creatives that made the work. Even when I’ve not been allowed to step foot in the rehearsal studio.
And now I send the emails and arrange the workshops and process the bank transactions that mean SDUK members know there’s someone else in their shoes, walking their journey; either following in their footsteps or blazing the trail ahead. I push paper and take home my salary and holiday pay to ensure that Directors feel a sense of community where before they felt isolation.
I suspect the answer lies in value. We must value the creation of work as highly as the statistics that emerge from it. Only then can we banish the ‘us and them’ of admin and creativity. It’s not about paying administrators less, it’s about valuing artists more, and that I fear is still a long way off. But know that we’re on the same team. Know we could all be pushing paper on something much more lucrative (and much more soul destroying, hehehe). Know that my overdraft and opportunities now I’m a mother are as pitiful as yours, know that I’ve got your back, that I value creativity almost as much as spreadsheets. Know that I.Get.It.
Liz behind the scenes for SDUK promo shoot. Also in picture Board Member Jonathan Carr & SDUK member Robert Awosusi