About the SAU
What is the SAU?
The Scottish Artists Union lobbies on behalf of visual artists working in Scotland, defending their rights, expanding their benefits and fighting to make their professional practice a means to support a better quality of life.
What artists in Scotland are seeing at the present time is a proliferation of top down control, endless validation systems in the form of surveys and audits that soak up much-needed funding and a culture that values the economic and social benefits of art but not the artists that produce it.
Statistically, visual artists remain at the bottom of the income ladder for all art forms. An estimated 5,000 artists are practicing in Scotland. The Scottish Arts Council Audit 2003 showed that 82% of visual artists in Scotland earn under £5,000 per annum and 28% are earning nothing at all from their arts practice while contributing an extrapolated £22 million to the Scottish economy primarily through purchase of materials.
Scottish Arts Councils Visual Arts Audit 2004
Ensure that you have a voice and support the Scottish Artists Union by joining now! The Scottish Artists Union is the pre-eminent representative body for practicing visual and applied artists in Scotland. Registered as an official Scottish Trade Union it is run by a voluntary committee and is supported entirely by membership subscriptions.
Politically the SAU lobbies for the rights and values of artists within Scottish culture through regular meetings and contacts with Scottish Government Ministers, opposition MSPs and senior officials at the Scottish Arts Council/Creative Scotland. Increasingly the SAU is being recognised by such organisations as Voluntary Arts Scotland, VAGA and COSLA as the leading authority on Scottish artists’ working lives. Whilst not formally affiliated with any other trade union or political party, the SAU enjoys a cordial relationship with unions representing our colleagues in other art forms such as Equity and the Musicians Union.
Members are visual and applied artists and arts administrators working in Scotland. They can request assistance from the SAU in their dealings with studios, galleries and employers, and the SAU offers advice on matters of best practice.
The SAU also conducts research into issues affecting artists working lives such as rates of pay, tax and contracts.
Members receive a raft of other Benefits after joining, most notably Free Public Liability Insurance, but also discounts from leading suppliers of materials and services for artists.
