The Canadian Artists’ Representation/Le Front des artistes canadiens (CARFAC), sets a fee schedule that is meant for a minimum wage for various artist engagements.
It has been a long time since I’ve written an “Artrepreneur” article! For those of you who may not have seen them, this was a series of articles I wrote about the business side of art for What’s Up Yukon, for a number of years. They were mostly directed to artists and aimed to share my years of experience, as a self-employed artist, with my colleagues.
This article has a wider intended audience, though I’m hoping information here might be useful to artists too. I’m writing for people or organizations that might want to hire an artist to perform a service. I will write one, soon, as a guide for commissioning and renting artworks.
Artists can offer many services—some interacting with the public, including demonstrations of their artwork and hands-on workshops. Often artists can tailor a workshop or demonstration of a topic or project you might be working on. This might be worth considering for trade shows and fairs. You can give away water bottles, but what if an artist could hold people at their booth longer?
This will likely begin with a brainstorming meeting. Please remember, at this kind of meeting, that if you are employed by your organization, you are paid for the time, and the artist is not yet. If you proceed, it’s worth taking this time into consideration in the fee that you agree to.
The Canadian Artists’ Representation/Le Front des artistes canadiens (CARFAC), sets a fee schedule that is meant for a minimum wage for various artist engagements. Visit www.carfac.ca to see their pay scale. If you are applying for funding to do a project, or if you are a professional business or organization, this is your reference point. Funders in the Yukon like to see artists treated with respect, and CARFAC’s fee schedule lays out a structure for that.
It is important to understand that the project requires the artist to do a lot more work than just the public-facing hours. CARFAC rarely breaks artists’ time into hours. It sets rates for up to half a day, and up to a whole day. It’s best to set a fee for the project and not jealously count the hours.
I understand that many smaller organizations cannot meet CARFAC fees. I will sometimes work for less than CARFAC fees. I feel that this is an artistic choice I can make, a choice I can make as an artist in my community, knowing that not everything can receive funding. There are still ways to make this kind of lower fee better.
One way is to make sure the cheque is there at the event or, even better, before it. Or as soon afterwards as possible. Don’t make the artist chase you for the cheque. If the artist has to buy materials for the event, at least part of the fee should be in their hands ahead of time.
If funding for the event is registration-dependent, it is important to decide how far ahead of time you will decide to call off the event. You might want to set it up so the artist is paid for the planning time whether the event runs or not.
Self-employed people generally do their taxes as a business, as a sole proprietorship. If all of the money coming in adds up to $30,000, even before the cost of materials and other expenses are taken out, they are required to charge GST. That doesn’t leave much for the bookkeeping involved, let alone much to live on.
Pay artists GST on the fee you can offer. Make clear to artists that you will. People have been poorly educated about GST for a long time. Stop making artists fight you for the GST. Then they will have more time and energy to make the event wonderful, which is what both of you want. The Yukon government is the only entity that doesn’t pay GST. Just because you are funded by YG doesn’t mean you are exempt. The artist isn’t.
I will note that What’s Up Yukon has cheerfully paid GST on my fees for decades.
Let’s talk about commissions and art rentals soon!
