Established Artists Meet: Summary Report
Photo: Antonia Grove
Just a heads up that this blog will be a bit different in tone from my others.
This is an informal summary report from a discussion between established artists that took place at South East Dance on Thursday 30th April 2026. That conversation was recorded and any quotes have been extracted from a transcript generated through the AI platform Sonix. I’ve tried to prioritise the inclusion of these extracts to ensure the voices of those who attended, and those who took the time to email me their thoughts can be heard here.
The conversation reflected on the current state of the contemporary dance and wider arts sector, addressing the shifting landscape of an increasingly unsustainable profession and personal survival modes.
The feeling is that this isn't just about a financial crisis, but a "silent travesty" where decades of specialised intelligence is disappearing in a broken system.
In reading this summary, it may be difficult to grasp the tone and energy in the room. The conversation was calm, spacious, thoughtful, pragmatic, open, generous and impassioned but not overly emotional. The focus was not on finding immediate solutions, but on listening, reflecting and sharing experiences.
The following themes and topics were identified:
Survival Mode and the "Burrow" Mentality
Financial and professional instability has forced artists into isolation. Participants described retreating into silos or "burrows” to manage daily survival, resulting in a community that feels fragile and fractured.
"There’s a tension between community and the siloed survival stuff... what’s at risk?... the community aspect or collective thinking and collective problem solving."
"I often feel like I'm in a little burrow, and occasionally I come out of the burrow and want to be with the community, but it feels like the community is a bit disparate and feeling broken or damaged at the moment", with everyone adopting their own “modes of survival and unsure about the new terms for connection and whether they can face the feelings that arise from being part of a fractured community”.
The Erosion of "Place" and Organic Connection
Participants reflected on the loss of informal gathering spaces and support structures that once enabled connection, experimentation and collaboration to flourish organically.
"I feel it's so important. You have to be in the room together and share the space... there used to be social gatherings [live shows with socials afterwards, supper clubs etc]... that would get conversations, ideas or connections going."
There was also the ability to bring those ideas and collaborations to fruition. In the current landscape, without the infrastructure to get projects off the ground and a system that fails to meet their capacity for action, artists risk being reduced to the cliché of indulging in whimsy.
Participants noted that their sense of what they "could" do has diminished because smaller, flexible organisations (The Nightingale, Basement etc in Brighton) that once provided "free space, money, mentoring, and experimental opportunities" have disappeared one by one.
One speaker noted the need for spaces to be together "without an aim" or specific "output," resisting a system where even gathering together feels like a "creative workshop" or another task to rise to.
The Slow Disintegration of Infrastructure
There was shared grief over the gradual, almost imperceptible loss of support structures- venues, organisations, and funding- that once allowed dance careers to flourish and provided a clear "lineage" or "progression”.
"It's a slow disintegration... how things erode over time because they happen so slowly...almost imperceptibly. And suddenly you look back and [ask] what’s happened? Where has everything gone?”
Participants reflected that in their early careers they had seen multiple viable models of progression in the arts through the careers of their predecessors or forerunners.
"I was seeing people who were well into their 40s, 50s and beyond presenting work... it felt like there was a lineage of progression... and I just don't see that now."
The arts once felt sustainable for those with open and adaptable practices. Alongside making work, there were pathways through academia and research, opportunities to cross between artforms, and routes into artistic direction, arts programming, and sector leadership.
Participants described how the loss of infrastructure has occurred through the gradual erosion of arts development support within councils, venues and organisations. This has left artists isolated, professionally and personally. Work that was once shared across producing teams, development staff, programmers or local partners is now carried by individual artists who are required to build audiences, undertake research, initiate partnerships and respond to funding priorities such as community engagement or place-making.
Contributors reflected on the diminishing presence of experienced champions, mentors and advocates within the sector. While many established figures remain committed to supporting artists, ongoing precarity and institutional strain mean they often lack the capacity to create opportunities in the ways previous generations experienced.
Other factors include: The reduction in British Council and European funding opportunities which historically enabled UK artists to build international partnerships and receive recognition abroad. The loss of in-kind support, developmental partnerships and international exchange.
Systemic Stagnation and Wasted Resource
We see the departure of mid-career artists to be often invisible and unintentional.
"I feel like we are just wasting resource. And I'm finding that really challenging... the amount of people that are slowly quitting...silently out the door without choosing that. It just feels like such a travesty".
Participants spoke about losing friends, collaborators, and role models amongst their contemporaries, and the wider arts community.
They expressed deep frustration that their extensive "knowledge and experience" is not being met by a landscape capable of bringing quality work to fruition.
Participants also rejected the stereotype that artists are simply daydreamers, instead emphasising their industriousness and "professional foresight to know that it should and can be different" based on what they had experienced from forerunners within the profession.
Struggle for Robustness
One speaker noted the frightening disconnect between their personal experience of growing companies and projects, and the sector's decline:
“We are all highly experienced artists and producers. We have a track record of doing the impossible and shifting a dream into a reality. Over the years we have each developed a ‘road map’ that has proven to work. But we are now in a place where we apply these techniques and knowledge but it’s just not sticking. I can’t predict grant outcomes like I used to. The sector is fractured, disillusionment is high, the infrastructure is just not there any more which means not only are you building a project, crafting your work, developing your practice, but you are also having to take on the arts development work to build the application, find and grow your own audience with no resources and limited partnerships, or willing partners who have no capacity.”
“I recognise that nothing is sticking. I can’t get traction. And if XX is struggling with all the track record [they] have, what hope is there for the rest of us”
"I’m shouting my articulate application into a void" in a climate where even highly robust projects simply "cannot get off the ground" despite having every element a funder would typically want.
And as a freelance artist who might be juggling a diverse range of part-time and adhoc work, it becomes hard to maintain momentum, rigor and confidence when it comes to continuing to produce and/or perform work so sporadically.
"I don’t have a sense of like, this isn't working because I'm not good enough at it. I have a sense of like, this system is f**ked and I’m in that soupy mess"
Rejecting the "Naive Idiot" Trope
Participants powerfully rejected the reductive cliché that dancers are flighty or unbusiness-minded, describing the intelligence and "industrious thinking" required to sustain an arts career, with a number of those present having set up successful touring companies. They emphasised that their current struggle is the result of a broken system, not a lack of personal pragmatism.
"The idea that because you are artistic and passionate and creative, does not mean that you're not pragmatic and sensible”
"I would say that I'm quite pragmatic... brought up in the 80s when the economy was really bad... watching your money, making sure everything you do is financially viable... really industrious about making a career in the arts and realistic about what that lifestyle might be"
"I’m really struck by this idea of how we're all a load of naive idiots bobbing along... the idea that there's a total naivety or like a lack of informed [practice] is not true"
“Since as an artist I’m going to make work anyway, I have adapted my life accordingly so that I am independent of funding. Being a soloist is fiscally wise.”
“I’ve tried to find work outside of dance initially, then outside of the arts, as a way of keeping going…I’m permanently in a process of re-invention, it’s not been easy sometimes but I’m a very pragmatic person and that helps”.
Hope and Enthusiasm as Survival Strategies
Speakers argued that professional enthusiasm is about strength and survival, not naivety, but a deliberate choice to maintain the capacity for action.
"If you're hopeful and enthusiastic, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're naive or silly... I think these are good things to hold on to... and not sort of whimsical"
Economic Realities and the "Shame" of Survival
Participants described the necessity to take "real world" jobs and alternative employment (supermarket shelf-stacking, parcel delivery companies, local sauna host, secretarial/admin, teaching assistants, PA work).
This often brings a sense of professional grief and might be perceived as "silent quitting". Many choose to hide their survival strategies from professional peers, not wanting to ‘out’ their need to take certain jobs for fear of judgement, pity, or perceived failure, and because it can deepen feelings of shame around not being able to earn a living from their craft or immediately channel their expertise elsewhere.
"I definitely think there's a shame attached to it too... I didn't tell anyone. And it's not in my LinkedIn and I don't talk about it in the arts sector"
“This time last year I was applying for jobs in the library and as a registrar of marriages and anything that I could get my hands on.”
“I’ve retrained in wellbeing - reflexology, various massage styles and am about to start Acupuncture training. I am really enjoying this but it came from being forced out of my arts career”.
The Financial Stability Paradox
Participants reflected on the growing tension between financial stability in mid-career and sustaining the time commitment, energy, community connection and exploratory work needed to maintain a fulsome artistic practice.
"The fear that we have about dying alone without money is real when you get to mid-career, it feels okay in your 20s and 30s because you're living the dream... Then we all go siloed because we have to carve out our own futures."
"At 46, I feel like a grown up [having a salary]... And the flip side of that, I find it really challenging to fit in an artistic practice"
Professional Grief and "Existential" Loss
For dance artists, leaving the sector is not a simple career change; it is an existential crisis because the work is "vocational" and "embodied."
"The grief is not like leaving others jobs... there are so many existential questions about your relationship to dance."
“I’ve had to put an exit plan in place to support my own physical and mental health which has really deteriorated over the past few years. I’ve spent my whole career supporting artists and trying to find solutions to make the sector a better, more supportive place. But now I have no more solutions”.
Reclaiming Identity, Integrity and Questioning Productivity as a Measure of Worth
Despite the exhaustion, many speakers discussed reclaiming their identity as dancers, not as an "output" for a market, but as a core state of being. They spoke of hoping for a "return" or "rebirth" later in life when the time and climate is right, acknowledging that they are never f "done" being an artist.
“Increasingly I'm just having to be like, f***king back yourself for f**ks sake. Come on. Because no-one else is.”
"I've decided I’m just going to keep referring to myself as a dancer and I'm not going to stop... even if I get to 80 or 90... because that's who you are in your core."
Participants questioned whether the sector can reject "measurable" success as the only metric of being an artist.
"I’m a dancer... in whatever way that manifests, whether that's something that you're earning money from or not."
They discussed finding ways to reclaim identity and maintain integrity as artists, rather than feeling weighed down by shame because they need to take work shelf-stacking.
Alongside grief, exhaustion and uncertainty, participants also described acts of resilience, reinvention and self-preservation. Many spoke about reclaiming agency through self-led practices, redefining success on their own terms, and finding ways to sustain identity and wellbeing outside traditional funding structures.
Artists described initiating projects that serve no external funder or audience, focusing instead on reclaiming self-worth, autonomy and creative integrity.
One artist described starting a monthly blog as a way of channelling creativity into something with a useful output, “something achievable and somewhere in my control... supporting my sense of integrity, artistry and self-worth"
Creating personal archives or websites became a way to acknowledge and celebrate a body of work during fallow periods: "It was like an archive of celebration".
Participants described these acts as reminders of the value, depth and continuity of their careers, even during periods when external recognition or opportunity feels absent.
Retraining, Transferable Skills and The Struggle to Pivot
One participant noted that the constant cycle of survival work is problematic because "if you don't build up other skills, you're not very employable above minimum wage to do anything else".
Artists are retraining in areas such as massage, craniosacral therapy or personal training, seeking ways to bridge financial survival with embodied forms of care and knowledge alongside maintaining an arts practice.
While these shifts were sometimes driven by necessity, they also reflected the adaptability and transferable intelligence developed through long-term artistic practice.
For some, working in administrative or part-time salaried roles revealed the value of boundaries, stability and care structures often absent in freelance arts work: "It was refreshing... to be in an environment where all the basic safeties were non-negotiable. You are expected to take holiday and the world doesn’t collapse when you take sick leave”.
A New and Open Playbook
"The contemporary dance field is really young... we don't have a playbook... we are part of what this next generation is."
There was growing recognition that mid-career artists may be pioneers of a new, non-linear career path, one that includes pauses, pivots, multiple identities and temporary exits from the sector. The rules around ageing, sustainability and longevity within it are still being written.
"There’s been one iteration of it basically... we are part of what this next one is."
Participants challenged the idea that artists inevitably “age out” of the sector or that there is little appetite for older voices and bodies in contemporary culture. One contributor from the theatre sector pointed to the success of the “grey pound” and phenomena such as cosy crime as evidence that audiences do want to hear from older generations, arguing that dance has yet to fully recognise this within its own structures and programming.
One participant reflected: “I am an artist. It’s what I do. And I still have work to do. Age does not diminish that itch.” Artistic identity was described as ongoing and evolving, rather than confined to youth or dependent on traditional “Age on Stage” models.
Rather than viewing the current moment as an ending, it was recurrently framed as a temporary or “wobbly” period.
"Maybe we’re just all trying to find our way, in and out and in and out... I’m personally really excited about my return... like a Phoenix from the ashes."
Positive Mental Mantras and Embodied Wellness
Participants shared techniques used to maintain mental and physical wellbeing while navigating professional uncertainty.
Some described using small daily observations and moments of connection with nature to interrupt isolation and remain grounded.
Others spoke about actively resisting the social and familial guilt attached to continuing an arts career, especially during the current crisis: "I’m allergic to guilt… or at least I try to be”. They spoke about the challenges of earning the money they and their family needs, and the dilemma of risking it to make artistic projects happen: “at what point do you decide this isn’t going to work?”.
Despite the precarity described throughout the discussion, participants repeatedly returned to the idea that artists are not simply disappearing. They are adapting, surviving, reimagining and continuing to carry embodied knowledge, creativity and cultural value into new forms.
I want to thank all those who attended the in person ‘Established Artists Meet’ on 30th April 2026, and to Cath James at South East Dance for supporting us through space and refreshments, Vicky Balaam for supporting me with the facilitation and to those who couldn’t attend but took the time to contribute their thoughts by email.
What next?
I will be reaching out to the arts community to ask if there is a desire to take this conversation further, and if so, what this next conversation might look like. Feel free to DM me if you have any thoughts.
