Pay Debate launched as IdeasTap survey reveals 91% of young artists have worked for free

London 14 JAN: Creative network IdeasTap today published the results of their annual survey, which reveal that 91% of the 2,167 IdeasTap members who responded have worked for free at some stage in their career. Nearly three quarters of those who’d worked for free said they’d do it again.

Despite the largely positive experience of respondents only 28% said that working for free had actually led to paid work. The majority also said they had to supplement the income they did earn from the creative industries with non-creative jobs. The 2,167 IdeasTap members who responded to the survey reflect a small but representative sample of the creative network’s 83,000 members, the large majority of whom are aged 18-30.

The publishing of the survey results marks the launch of The Pay Debate by the online network’s magazine IdeasMag, which will publish a series of interviews, opinion pieces and downloadable resources exploring the contentious issue of pay in the arts.

James Hopkirk, Editor of IdeasTap, said: “We’ve launched The Pay Debate because, as our survey results show, this is a complex issue that affects all of our members, from artists to employers, and we don’t believe there’s an easy answer. We want to hear from as many perspectives as possible. Our aim is to arm our members with the knowledge and resources to make the best decision for themselves, if faced with the zero-dollar question.”

IdeasTap are also currently offering to wipe £9,000 from the student debt of one of their members who has started an arts degree since the introduction of top-up-fees in autumn 2006. More details about the Uni Fee Fund can be found here.

IdeasTap was set up by philanthropist Peter De Haan in late 2008 to support young creative people at the start of their careers. As well as running an online magazine, the multidisciplinary creative network offers its members hundreds of thousands of pounds of funding for arts projects each year and creative opportunities with its leading arts partners.

IdeasTap offer £25k & mentoring from the Roundhouse, HighTide and Bush Theatre to young theatre companies

For the second year running IdeasTap are working with Underbelly and performing arts partners – including the Roundhouse, HighTide and The Bush Theatre - to take a season of IdeasTap members’ best work to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

£25k of cash will be given away altogether, as well as the in-kind support of Underbelly.

The budget for the whole project is fixed, but the number of shows IdeasTap will support with that budget is not – it will depend entirely on the quality, number and range of applications received.

This opportunity is open to anyone aged 18–30 with a “festival-friendly” new show. The shows can be for any size cast, be any genre, and for any audience.

Alongside Underbelly and a selection of our performing arts partners, IdeasTap will be providing artistic mentoring and bootcamps on production, marketing and press. The winners will also get a dedicated show operator and entry into the Edinburgh Comedy Festival brochure.

For full information click here

This brief closes at 5pm on Tuesday 29 January 2013 and is open to IdeasTap members aged 16 to 30 on the closing date.

Youth arts charity offers to wipe £11k from arts students’ debt 

Creative network IdeasTap, who are funded by the Peter De Haan Charitable Trust,  are offering to wipe £9,000 off the student debt of one of its members. IdeasTap will award the ‘Uni Fee Fund’ to the person who offers the best creative contribution to the IdeasTap network in exchange for the prize. Four runners up will each receive £500 towards their student loan.

IdeasTap is a charity that De Haan founded in late 2008 to support young creative people at the start of their careers.   The fund is targeted at creatives who have started or completed a Bachelor of Arts degree since the introduction of Top-Up-Fees for students in autumn 2006.

Recent UCAS figures show that applications from people in England to start bachelor degrees are at their lowest since 2009, down 6.3% on the same point in 2012 and 14.2% on 2011. Following the introduction of £9,000 a-year fees for students starting degrees in autumn 2012 applications to Creative Arts and Design degrees fell 16%.

Peter De Haan, philanthropist and IdeasTap Chairman, said:

“At IdeasTap our mission is to support creative young people at the start of their careers. Young people are being put off studying arts subjects by consecutive rises in student fees. We wanted to do something that lightens the burden of student debt for some of our members and sends an encouraging message to those considering to a career in the creative industries.”   

Applications for IdeasTap’s Uni Fee Fund are open until Friday 29 March at www.ideastap.com. All awards will be paid directly to the Student Loan Company. Applicants must have started their first degree after summer 2006 in the UK to apply and must have at least £9,000 of student debt associated with that degree. Full terms and conditions here

Through their funding programme IdeasTap is also currently offering £25,000 to young companies to take productions to the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

ENDS

Notes to Editors

For more information, interviews or images please contact Joe Duggan at IdeasTap on joed@ideastap.com / 020 7281 3863

IdeasTap

IdeasTap is a charity that funds, connects and nurtures new creative talent. Launched in December 2008 as the arts platform of The Peter De Haan Charitable Trust, the IdeasTap website currently has a membership of over 82,000 young creative people, predominantly aged under-30. It provides a platform for them to showcase their work and find jobs, advice, opportunities, funding and collaborators. IdeasTap has awarded over £1 million of funding and expert mentoring over the past four years and working with leading creative organisations has provided 18,000 creative opportunities to emerging artists. www.ideastap.com

Creative network IdeasTap reaches 80,000 members

Creative network IdeasTap, the online arts charity launched by PDHCT in late 2008, has reached 80,000 members. The milestone marks a year of growth for IdeasTap, which has added over 25,000 new members to its community over the year.

IdeasTap’s partner programme, which works with leading arts organisations to create opportunities for young creatives at the start of their careers has also expanded with six new partners.

The IdeasTap site also received a record number of weekly visitors in November, with 185,000 visitors in just one week.

You can read more information about IdeasTap activity over the last 18 months in the IdeasTap Annual Report for the year ended 5 April 2012, which is available to download here.

£1,500 Awarded to Six Finalists

Earlier this month IdeasTap, the arts charity principally funded by the Trust, announced the shortlist of the 2012 IdeasTap Photographic Award. The announcement was made at a private viewing of the longlists’ work at The Flower Cellars in London’s Covent Garden.

IdeasTap Chairman Peter De Haan chaired the judging panel, which included:

* Adrian Mott, Course Director for graduate diploma/certificate in Photography Practice at London University of the Arts

* Fiona Rogers, Cultural & Education Manager at Magnum Photos

* Olivia Arthur, Magnum photographer

* Olivier Laurent, British Journal of Photography News and Online Editor

* Maria Gruzdeva, winner of the IdeasTap Photographic Award 2011

The judges were hugely impressed with the quality and range of the shortlisted photographers’ work, but in the end there could only be six finalists.

The finalists for the 16-22 age group are:

Marco Kesseler 

Christian Schmeer 

David Severn 

The finalists for the 23-30 age group are:

Jordi Ruiz Cirera 

Will Hartley 

Alice Myers

They will now be awarded £1,500 to shoot their dream project, create a multimedia Magnum in Motion project and attend a mentoring session. Two of them – one from each age group – will ultimately win £5,000 and sought-after internships at Magnum.

Epidemic Wins RSPH Award

Old Vic New Voices’ community musical EPIDEMIC has been awarded a prestigious Royal Society for Public Health Arts Award. EPIDEMIC was supported by The Peter De Haan Charitable Trust as part of our Community Welfare and Arts Programmes.

Staged in May 2012, EPIDEMIC explored the themes of public health, mental health and obesity, engaging 350 community participants over a research and development period and performances. The community musical, played to sell-out audiences at Waterloo’s Old Vic Tunnels and reflecting on the production a community cast member, said:

“If I thought I would have as much fun, meet such a great crowd of people and be in another top quality production in the future – I would be there in a heartbeat.”

Read more about EPIDEMIC here http://www.ideastap.com/Partners/ovnv/community/community_current

UK Wildlife Trusts Recognise Peter De Haan for ‘outstanding contribution’ to nature conservation

Peter De Haan has been awarded The Rothschild Medal by The Wildlife Trusts in recognition of the outstanding contribution he has made to nature conservation over the last eight years.

The support provided by De Haan has enabled an extraordinary range of schemes to support the natural heritage of the UK and beyond, as well as bring people closer to nature. Highlights include investment in an innovative peatland restoration programme that is to be implemented around the world, pioneering marine conservation, as well as engaging thousands of young people in environmental issues through performances with the National Youth Theatre.

Through a philanthro-capitalism model, De Haan has provided UK Wildlife Trusts, included those of Kent, Leicestershire & Rutland, London and Yorkshire, with major focused financial support and strategic advice. Having donated £3.1 million, Peter De Haan and the Peter De Haan Charitable Trust is the largest individual donor to The Wildlife Trusts.

De Haan’s funding of the UK Peatlands Programme, for example, began in 2009. It has been an inspiring exemplar of bringing decision makers, land managers and scientists together to show how restoring these amazing wild places benefits both nature and makes a significant contribution to combating climate change. De Haan is credited with bringing the UK peatlands back from the brink.

Working under the IUCN umbrella through the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, De Haan identified that the main barrier to peatland restoration in the UK was co-ordinated action across different communities. The programme concludes this summer having produced a comprehensive report on the state of the UK’s peatlands, and calls for the complete restoration of this valuable habitat. Such has been the strength of the advocacy campaign, this ambitious call has been agreed by the devolved governments of the UK. The next step is to apply this exemplar across the world to reverse climate change, particularly in the peatlands of Indonesia, Russia and Canada.

In 2010 and 2011 De Haan’s Trust instigated a series of new projects with an Environment Challenge Match Fund that distributed £150,000 to a number of organisations in the UK, conserving or creating habitats that support bees and invertebrates, restoring fresh waters to good condition and assisting in the establishment of Marine Protected Areas.

About the Rothchild Medal

The medal is sponsored by Charlotte Lane, daughter of Miriam Rothschild and granddaughter of Charles Rothschild – it was created in the spirit of this remarkable father and daughter. Talking about her father Charles on Desert Island Discs in 1989, Miriam Rothschild said: “Before his time people thought you had to conserve rare species and he realised that it was the habitat you had to conserve not the species. You had to preserve the wood in which the animals lived or the meadows in which they lived.”

The medal in The Wildlife Trusts’ Centenary year

The second Rothschild medal was awarded at The Wildlife Trusts’ centenary celebration at the Natural History Museum on 16^th May. The Wildlife Trusts’ centenary has provided a focus for reflection on the generosity and leadership of founder Charles Rothschild and the need for philanthropy to support our work protecting wild places and bringing the natural world into people’s lives.

On 16 May 1912 a banker, landowner, naturalist and scientist named Charles Rothschild got together with like-minded enthusiasts to whip-up support for a radical idea: to identify and protect the very best of the UK’s wild places. Thus began the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves which would later become The Wildlife Trusts movement the first time that anyone had come up with a vision for nature conservation.

Age UK’s Disconnected Mind Campaign benefits from

Sidney De Haan Research Award from PDHCT

One of the most burdensome and feared aspects of old age is the threat of deterioration of cognitive skills, like memory, reasoning and other aspects of thinking. People who experience mental deterioration are less able to look after themselves and have a less rewarding old age.

In 2006 The Peter De Haan Charitable Trust (PDHCT) awarded The Sidney De Haan Research Award into Vascular Dementia to Age UK’s Disconnected Mind Campaign. The Disconnected Mind project is taking place at the University of Edinburgh. Its scientific investigations focus on the contribution to cognitive ageing of deterioration in the wiring between nerve cells in the brain (the white matter). The sample that is tested—the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 (LBC1936)—have such rich information that many other possible contributions to cognitive ageing are also being studied, including several vascular factors.

Funding from PDHCT has thus been key in enabling a major study of cognitive ageing in the unique LBC1936 group, composed of around 1000 people in their 70s living in the Edinburgh and Lothian area of Scotland. All of these people took a well-validated cognitive ability test at age 11. At age 70 they: took the same test again, and a large additional group of mental test to cover the main domains of thinking skills; underwent a detailed medical and health investigation; gave blood samples for geentifc testing and testing of ageing biomarkers and health; and provided much information on their lifestyles, wellbeing and social background. Our funding has helped to revaluate the group at age 73 with the most detailed examination so far, which included enhancement of the examination of vascular factors.

Evaluation at age 70 allowed a study of factors associated with cognitive change from childhood to old age. PDHCT funding for additional evaluation at age 73 has shed further light on this and, importantly, has enabled study of cognitive change within old age itself. PDHCT funding has supported demographic, medical, cognitive and other biological testing, and some genetic testing. Crucially, it allowed to addition of vascular factors such as ankle brachial index (associated with atherosclerotic status), carotid artery stenosis, and retinal vessel topography (allowing a series of proxy measures of the efficiency of the brain’s blood supply).

All the data gathering planned under the Award was completed on time, with an emphasis on the collection of information about vascular risk factors. This wave of testing at age 73 has led to a series of research papers that have already been published or are currently being prepared for publication in high quality scientific journals including: Neurobiology of Ageing, Psychosomatic Medicine, and BMC Blood Disorders.

These peer-reviewed scientific reports are ensuring that the results of the PDHCT Award are widely disseminated to collaborators in The Disconnected Mind project and other scientists worldwide, to Age UK. As studies accumulate from the LBC1936 the intention is to inform professionals in health and social care disciplines. The aim is to provide high quality scientific information that will ultimately help to improve the quality of life for older people in the UK and beyond.

Sky Arts Ignition Futures Fund: Round two winners announced

Sky Arts and IdeasTap have announced that Lawrence Payot, Drew Roper and Felix Mortimer are the latest winners of the Sky Arts Ignition Futures Fund. They each receive £30,000 to support their career and develop a creative project in the next year.

The second round of the fund, launched earlier this year, was judged by broadcaster Jo Wiley, artistic director of Soho Theatre Steve Marmion, Head of Exhibitions and Displays at Tate Liverpool, Gavin Delahunty; Artistic Director at Battersea Arts Centre, David Micklem; Manisha Ferdinand, Head of PR for Sky Arts and Sky Movies and Sky Arts Director of The Bigger Picture, Lucy Carver and round one winner Phoebe Boswell. Sky Arts and IdeasTap have awarded £150,000 to young creative through the Fund so far.

The three winners were selected out of 650 applicants and you can find out more about them and their projects below.

Laurence Payot, 30, is a performance artist, based in Liverpool, who has won £30,000 funding over an entire year for her project Backstaged, which will work with groups of spectators to create collective performances that infiltrate mainstream events.

Drew Roper, 24, is an animator and director from the West Midlands, who successfully pitched his project At-issue: a five-minute silent motion animation about a man who changes state from stop motion puppet, to 2D drawing, to CGI.

Felix Mortimer, 25, is the third winner of this round of the Sky Arts Ignition Futures Fund and has won a year’s worth of funding for his theatre project RETZ three productions titled Trial, Colony and Process, which lure participants into a desperate hunt through cyberspace across cities.

Magnum Photos and IdeasTap launch new opportunities for emerging photographers

• Magnum Photos and IdeasTap open annual £20k Photographic Award
• Magnum Showcase in association with IdeasTap provides new monthly competition
• IdeasTap offer more bursary places for Magnum Professional Practice seminars
• Winners of 2011 IdeasTap Photographic Award Announced

Internationally renowned photography agency Magnum Photos and leading creative network IdeasTap today opened their 2012 Photographic Award. The IdeasTap Photographic Award is open to 16-30-year-olds and is designed to help promote the careers of emerging photographers.

The award is split into two age categories, 16-22 and 23-30, with one winner from each winning a unique prize package including £5,000 cash to shoot their dream photography project. The two winners are also provided with a coveted paid internship with either the Magnum In Motion team in New York or Magnum Photos in London. 2012 also sees the prize package extended to include an exhibition of the finalists’ projects and an online editorial feature of the winners’ work through new Award Media Partners, the British Journal of Photography.

Applications can be made at www.ideastap.com and close on Friday 1 June.

Launched in 2009, The Award is one of a plethora of opportunities for young photographers delivered through the educational partnership between Magnum Photos and IdeasTap. Together, they today launched Magnum Showcase in association with IdeasTap; a new competition whereby Magnum photographers and staff will select the best photography uploaded to the IdeasTap site each month. The winning young photographer’s work will then be showcased on IdeasTap to its 135,000 monthly visitors, alongside feedback from the Magnum judge on the winning project.

IdeasTap will also continue to offer bursary places on Magnum’s Professional Practice weekends; a unique opportunity to network and obtain valuable industry advice from photography’s leading professionals, which in the last year have taken place in Liverpool, Birmingham and London.

The 2012 IdeasTap Photographic Award launches as the winners of the 2011 award are revealed. The younger age category was won by Maria Gruzdeva, now 23, who was born in Russia but is now based in London. Her project profiles the borders of her homeland and explores what national identity means in such isolated regions.

The older age category was won by 25-year-old Roman Sakovich, also based in London. His work examines how architecture in his native Lithuania tells the story of declining Soviet influence.

Maria and Roman were selected from six finalists, all of who were awarded £1,500 and mentored by Magnum photographers to complete a project for the final stage of the competition.

Peter De Haan, Chief Executive of IdeasTap, said:

“I’m delighted that as our community of emerging photography talent grows at IdeasTap, we’re able to offer more opportunities for young photographers to work with a world-leading agency like Magnum Photos”

Fiona Rogers, Cultural & Education Manager of Magnum Photos, commented:

“The opportunities available for young creatives through IdeasTap are unparalleled. Magnum Photos are delighted to be continuing and extending such a successful partnership with a charity that mirrors our own desires for promoting young photographers.”

ENDS

For further information / interviews

Joe Duggan (Public Affairs Manager) joed@ideastap.com 020 7036 9018 / 07748 988 930

About IdeasTap

IdeasTap is a not-for-profit creative network that funds, connects and nurtures new talent. It was launched in December 2008 as the arts platform of The Peter De Haan Charitable Trust and has since given over £650,000 in direct cash funding to young creative people. Its membership currently stands at more than 62,000 young creative practitioners and its partners are Old Vic New Voices, the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain, Magnum Photos, The British Film Institute, HighTide, The National Student Drama Festival, MAC Birmingham and The National Skills Academy for Creative and Cultural. The website provides a platform for young creative people to connect, showcase their work and skills, find jobs, and promote events and exhibitions, as well as access unique industry-led opportunities.

For more information about IdeasTap go to www.ideastap.com or view our press pack 

Kindly supported by: The British Journal of Photography and Blurb.