Hello. I’m a professional artist, writer, arts worker, researcher, consultant, educator and producer who has been working for over thirty years, with a national and international portfolio of exhibited and published work. I’m mainly a freelancer and I have rational fees that relate to all of these types of work. I don’t work for free or for poverty pay except in some specific cases when it comes to matters of personal and social justice that I believe in. Here’s my guide to working with me, if you’re interested. You can also take it as a general guide to working with any freelance artist, creative, or consultant if you’re new to it or don’t think you’ve been doing it right up to this point.

What I do. Depending on my schedule and capacity, I am available for: exhibitions, commissions, lectures and talks, consultation, mentoring, discussion panels, teaching, studio visits, crits (i.e. a session where I give my professional opinion on your work), arts administration work, arts research, journalism, critical writing, and so on. I’ll talk incessantly sometimes – this is a known bug that is not getting fixed any time soon – but please note that informal discussions like “having a quick coffee” or “hopping on a video call” are also work because I’m not dating you, I’m probably not your friend (yet) and I’m definitely not on a salary, as people who say these things often are. So if these things are taking more than 15 minutes out of my day or out of my way, I will expect you to pay for them.

Payment. In general, don’t ask me or any other artist or professional in any field to work for free. I have absolutely no need of exposure, work experience (reminder: I have three decades of it) or anybody owing me a favour. My rates can vary according to any number of factors including but not limited to your ability to pay, the size and scope of your organisation, what I think of you and the work you’ve done in the past, how quickly you want the work turned around, if it’s pushing my current capacity (i.e. am I really busy right now or do I have head space and time to take on more), and literally how much work I realistically think is involved.

There may be mates rates, there may be whatever the opposite of mates rates is. At the very least my rates will always be based on agreed industry standards laid down by our sector’s membership organisations and unions in the UK. Artists Union England offers some guidance. a-n The Artists Information Company’s latest rates of pay available to non-subscribers is from 2021 but is online. I actually worked on the latter scheme, so you’re literally dealing with one of the people who wrote these rules. If you’re a member of a-n you should log in to see up to date figures.

I emphasise again that these are meant to be minimums. Please do your bit to keep up with inflation and ever-rising living costs by offering more if you can. If everybody in the UK was unionised so their pay matched the cost of living then even people in mid-range jobs like an arts administrator would be getting what the average train driver does: £48,500 per year, £58,795 in London, with experienced/veteran professionals getting £69,000. And this is not a bitch at frequent strikers like train workers, or union people in general. We should (and could) all be on this kind of money, at least. Join a union if you can afford to.

Practicalities. Being physically present is more time consuming, expensive, and uses much more of my limited energy than working remotely, so I’ll charge accordingly. I can’t and won’t silently absorb costs relating to my accessibility requirements and essential subsistence unless you’re paying me so much that I’ve stopped worrying about money, which is highly unlikely. Likewise, I absolutely will not use credit cards, overdrafts, or other forms of debt to front up large sums of my own money for work-related things. This is another common and egregious way for finance departments to balance their books and shirk labour. Travelling to work and preparing for meetings is also work.

Our mutual responsibilities. We will have a contract or formal letter of agreement in place before I start doing any work. This will include a payment schedule, with a tranche of payment on signature unless there’s an extremely good reason why not. I’ll always do my best to deliver the work on time and to the best of my ability. I’m well known as a reliable, practical, sociable and non-flakey co-worker, as people who’ve employed me repeatedly will confirm. I retain my own insurance, including public liability insurance, usually in sums up to £5 million of liability. You will also be committed to and professional about looking after the rights, health and access requirements of me and anyone else involved in my work. I take physical and mental health and safety extremely seriously and have never had an in-work accident, mishap or any form of harm or distress to an audience member or participant. I intend to keep it that way.

Payment terms. I’ll do everything I can to make invoicing and payment easy for you, including complying with any purchase order numbers or similar that you require. You just need to tell me what your procedures are, in good time. Normal payment terms are thirty days from date of invoice, not your receipt or processing of them. You can probably pay me much sooner than that, because most places do. I don’t know what your working days are or what your payment cycle is, unless you tell me. Don’t make me chase you, as UK SMEs waste 56 million hours of their time doing every year. Payment is officially late if it’s not in my account as cleared funds by day 31 after invoicing, so I’ll expect you to take that seriously. This isn’t me being uppity or demanding. It’s actually the law, which allows a self employed person or business to charge 8%+current Bank of England base interest rate on late payments, plus recovery costs of £40 on debts up to £999.99, or £70 on debts over £10,000. Don’t ever make it more economical for me to do this instead.

The Shitlist. I will boycott people and places based on my own experiences and those of my friends and peers. Currently this includes certain borough councils and universities, who are notorious offenders against the self employed and small businesses in general anyway. I encourage others to blacklist and share privately with their colleagues. Your approach to paying people and your attitude towards their wellbeing are very revealing of your moral landscape in general.

Finally. Let’s all remember that if you’re looking at this page then you and I are both in the business of bringing magic to other people’s lives, which is one of the holiest and most necessary things in the world after the basics of life. Not to mention one that few have the privilege or the ability to do. So let’s not fuck it up by disrespecting each other and making each other miserable so we’re not able to do our work. The vast majority of people I’ve worked with have been delighted with our collaboration, as have I, and 90% of those I’ve worked with get most or all of what I’ve written here without being told because they’re good people who know their jobs.

(Last updated: October 2025)