Developed from knowledge and insights gathered through organising as part of Industria and Artists’ Union England, this session will combine practical advice on artists’ pay and working conditions with space to discuss the issues they face as artists and imagine alternatives together. The session will build an overview of the possibilities of artists’ unions and broader artist and art worker organising.
This session will be led by Maddy Pledge and Maxi Smith, joint secretaries of Artists’ Union England and co-organisers of Industria.
Artists’ Union England is a trade union for visual and applied artists, and artists with a socially engaged practice who are working in England. Launched in 2014, AUE gained its formal status as a trade union in 2016, and has been a member of the TUC and GFTU since then. AUE started as the idea of three artists, launched with 12 founding members, and as of June 2025 has over 2000 members.
Industria is an artist-run organisation, examining and challenging the current conditions of the ‘art world’. Recent work includes Structurally F–cked, an inquiry into Artists pay and conditions in the public sector that was commissioned by a-n and published in 2023, and most recently From ‘Hand to Mouth’ to Bread and Roses, an inquiry into the lives of the Artists’ Union England membership and the role of contemporary artists’ unions in building grassroots power in the arts, published by Artists’ Union England in 2025.
Getting there
This session is taking place in The Lab. When you arrive at FACT, please let a member of their Front of House team know that you’re there for this session. They’ll accompany you to the lift and help you enter the code that will whisk you up to the third floor of the building.