Wealth

Fortunately, much is being done to bring artists' incomes up to some level, through the Fair Practice Code, the Artists' Fees Directive, and through the introduction of a minimum hourly rate for self-employed artists, but for many artists, their income continues to involve a daily exercise of fits and starts.

Well most artists are pretty good at that fitting and measuring. Artists are creative and know how to apply that creativity not only in their work but also in their daily lives. Many artists live modestly and know how to organize a good life with few resources and a lot of creativity. Artists may be poor, but they are not poor. They know how to make a lot out of little, both in their work and in their personal lives. Finding a place to live, furnishing it, doing the daily shopping, transportation, preparing a good meal, wardrobe, vacations: with a lot of imagination and few resources they manage to organize a life that is not so much luxurious, but rich. A life that is simple with a clever distribution of what is available.

So there are a lot of people who have very little wealth, and chances are that among those people, not everyone has an equal amount of creative wealth. How do they design a good life?

Artists are not the only ones with low incomes. For some time now, income inequality has been rising sharply worldwide. Early last year, research by Oxfam Novib showed that the richest 1 percent of the world population owns more than half of all the wealth and that the richest 42 people in the world have as much money as the poorest 3.7 billion people, which is more than half of the world population. So there are a lot of people who have very little wealth, and chances are that among those people, not everyone has an equal amount of creative wealth. How do they set up a good life? In a world where most things can only be arranged if you have enough money, that is not easy of course.

... a society in which artists influence not only what our world looks like, but also how we use and distribute our available resources....

They would benefit from more creativity in everyday life, from a society in which artists influence not only what our world looks like, but also how we use and distribute our available resources - in this context, of course, art education deserves due consideration. One can easily imagine that the distribution of wealth would then be very different and that much more time and space would be freed up for artists to influence and shape our daily lives, living, working and consuming. A world that is simple with a smart distribution of what is available. For everyone.