The Impossible Arts Conundrum

Su Jones worked as the director of a-n The Artists Information Company from 1980 to 2014. Her doctoral thesis Artists livelihoods: the artists in arts policy conundrum, Manchester Metropolitan University 2015-2019, exposed baseline flaws in the interrelationship between arts policies and artists’ livelihoods over the last 30 years and articulated a unique new rationale for better support to artists that could enable many more to pursue livelihoods through art practices over a life cycle.

She now works as an independent arts researcher and writer who holds specialist knowledge and insight about the social and political environment for artists and contemporary visual arts.

Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly talk with Susan Jones about the relationships between the visual arts, arts policies, and the nature of artists’ livelihoods. They discuss these issues in relationship to the discussion about these and other related topics at the Aberdeen Summit held in June 2023.