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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Letters

Recognising the value of visual artists

Millicent Fawcett, founder of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage, speaks in Hyde Park
Millicent Fawcett, founder of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage, speaks in Hyde Park. Pam Foley suspects Ms Fawcett would have approved of the newly created Artists’ Union England. Photograph: PA Archive/PA Images

I concur with Martin Jennings (Letters, 17 April) that Millicent Fawcett is the right feminist for a new statue and with Amelia Rowcroft (Letters, 19 April), when she makes the valid point about “big name artists” employing other artists to do the unacknowledged and often woefully underpaid donkey work. The world of visual art and the art workers within it often do not benefit from employment regulations that other workers would expect to be in place in their sectors. This is why the newly created Artists’ Union England, a trade union for visual, applied and socially engaged artists, is long overdue. Those of us who work with our hands as well as our heads need the value of that work to be recognised and remunerated. It’s what Millicent would have wanted.
Pam Foley
Oxford

 

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