FAQ

…and FREQUENTLY ENTERTAINED MYTHS…

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  • ‘I LIKE MY INTERNSHIP—SO WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL?’

You may like your internship, but this doesn’t mean that others aren’t being exploited. Nor does it mean that everyone is lucky enough to be living under conditions that will allow them to work for free. Good internship experiences shouldn’t just be for isolated individuals, nor should it only be the lucky few who are able to find paid employment in the field. That said, if you do in fact like your internship, then we welcome you to share your experiences with us to help us to develop a model of good practice.

  • ‘HEY, IT’S ONLY FOR 3 MONTHS’

This is perhaps the most over-used phrase in the internship world. During those three months, which are often extended, some of the adverts claim the successful candidate will carry out duties in either a single department or across the board, gaining an array of different skills. It will just be a little doddle, a great way to get your foot on the ladder. However, three months can sometimes stretch out into a year as interns do not tend to get a job after their internship finishes. On the contrary they move horizontally on the career path accepting more internships. The prospect of getting a job which is related to the intern’s field of study becomes more and more distant.

  • ‘INTERN AS MUCH AS YOU CAN—COMMITMENT SHOWS YOU’RE THE BEST!’

This statement assumes that being able to complete a stint interning (or many) for little or no money, for long periods is an option available to everyone. It brushes the intern’s real way of life under the carpet. Yes there are people who can afford to work without pay, most however, cannot do this without difficulty (for themselves or their family). Also, interning for long periods in no way relates to the quality of a candidate’s experience and skills, as in reality interns often spend six months carrying out the most menial of tasks that paid employees are happy to offload onto them. This results in them gaining few skills or experience that would make them ‘the best’ candidate for future employment.

  • THE RITES OF PASSAGE #1

You have to work for free—it’s part of a quaint little initiation ritual that has been going on, we are told, for an eternity. How about a little stint in purgatory, perhaps some days might seem more like a minor ring of hell, before progressing on to the real thing. But come to think of it, it’s actually closer to the humanist drama of the master-slave relationship. As the story goes: The boss had to go through this, so the intern will too. Instead of acting in solidarity with the specific conditions of the contemporary intern, bosses feel they have paid their dues (and in truth their formative years were completely different), and are absolved from the struggles of the next generation.

  • ‘THAT’S JUST THE WAY IT IS.’

Nothing goes better with exploitation than fatalism! How many times do we have to hear it: stop your moaning and get on with it. This quip is based on the assumption that the present situation is unchangeable, a product of human nature or perhaps a celestial occurrence; but in reality specific changes in policy and labour practices have created the norms of the cultural field. It hasn’t always been this way and it doesn’t have to be this way. Our position is that there are a mass of problems, inequities, failures and myths in the current creative labour situation that need to be acknowledged and reworked. Can things be different? Resignation is a coping strategy for dealing with the inevitable. But this isn’t about a cold winter or the heat death of the universe. The cultural field is full of resourceful, imaginative and determined people—it’s all about transformation and moving beyond what already exists.

  • ‘AN INTERNSHIP IS YOUR ONLY WAY INTO A JOB.’

This is something that is stated over and over in career advice from parents, tutors and the like, and also a myth that those applying for internships have internalised. In reality developing your own projects and being active in an arts communities are in many ways more effective in developing skills and making connections. This ‘only way’ thinking leads to the other myth that a job, the one at the end of the rainbow, is the ultimate reward that they can give you for your hard work and unstoppable dedication (the ever-dangling, sparkling carrot), and after that it’s smooth sailing. The reality of a life in the arts in not a simple, linear progression down a ‘talent pathway’ leading from school, to internship, to job.
Experience, they say, is ‘golden’ in the creative sector, and becomes an occupation in itself. The intern might believe they can sustain themselves on this gold until they get the promised [paid] job. This fiction produces and maintains the ‘perpetual intern’ who may become trapped in a vicious cycle of continual internships, with the only breaks being the unemployment in which they continue to look for internships, perhaps believing that the fact they did not receive a job at the end of their last internship was because they haven’t yet acquired enough of a range of impressive skills for the creative sector. Even if the intern knows that internships aren’t that great, the prospect of maybe, just maybe getting their desired job at some point and being able to actually earn something keeps them going.

  • THE RITES OF PASSAGE #2

The idea that one just has to pass through a period of minor exploitation and austerity perpetuates an inter-generational myth that has no basis in the material or economic realities of our time. The current generation entering into the art field is the most heavily indebted (average of £20000 per graduate in UK currently), and is now facing 15% unemployment. The abolition of university grants, the privatisation of student debt and the impossibility of staying ‘on the dole’ for extended periods of time have made an enormous generational difference. The ‘rite of passage’ approach to hardships in the cultural sphere  covers up the real changes that have taken place in the economy in the name of a heroic narrative of everyone having to serve their time.

  • ‘CULTURE IS FUN, WHY SHOULD YOU GET PAID FOR IT?’

Well sometimes it’s really not that much fun, it depends. The extension of ‘if something is fun it is therefore worthless’ is that economic value should be linked with misery. Radical proposition! Since when has this ever been the case? In fact it’s just the opposite. We don’t wonder why, if medicine is a labour of love, doctors should be paid, or whether   professional athletes should work for free. The question is really ‘aren’t economic values confused and cruel and shouldn’t they be revalued to permit dignity in all areas of society?’ The need for self-direction, pleasure and meaningful work cannot for a moment be seen as frivolous, and cannot be the excuse for exploitation. Labour struggles don’t end at wages and conditions, they begin there.
It seems that art is so much fun it has become, in fact, the future of the British economy. According to numerous government policies and think tank reports, creative industries are seen as one of the most important sectors in the British economy, the solution to the current economic crisis, and so much more. But we’re not really interesting in putting culture in the service of that kind of recreation, because it really doesn’t sound like that much fun any more. And if any of this hype is actually true then it sounds like pretty serious business, in which case working for free cannot be justified.

  • ‘THIS IS JUST A MIDDLE CLASS ISSUE…’

To begin with, the cultural field encompasses a much more varied class background than people assume–in fact many of the class divisions in general society are reproduced within the symbolic economy of free work. Irrespective of one’s class background, interning is frequently little more than unpaid service work. In spite of the high class surroundings, the intern finds her or himself in exploitative labour relations. Then the response is—’but this is chosen.’ But shouldn’t everyone be able to choose how to lead their lives? The exploitation of the ‘middle class intern’ is the visible face of the exclusion of vast swathes of people from fostering ambitions in the arts.

  • ‘IT’S A FREE WORLD!’

Probably the most powerful factor which sustains working conditions in the arts is the sense that it’s a choice, and this implies freedom. But exactly whose freedom? Internships that don’t pay or train are a form of free labour—free for the employer. Rather than gaining a sense of freedom, internships, along with juggling jobs and art projects, entails a hyper-productivity that all too often produces exhaustion, anxiety and endless precariousness. So, how can we disentangle aspirations and the desire for freedom, from the free labour  invested in markets, organisations, institutions that nurture and exploit it?