Not surprisingly, the first question to ask in any survey exercise is:What is the survey population? In this
case we are dealing with artists across all artforms, including writers, actors,musicians, painters, dancers
and so on. Even though the delineation of such occupations may seem obvious, the precise definition of
‘artist’ is not as straightforward as it seems.
Different government agencies and others use varying criteria for defining artists for the purposes of
collecting statistics, gathering taxes, assessing employment opportunities and extending grant assistance.
Similarly,membership groups such as artists’ representative organisations, unions and professional
associations may or may not require artists to meet a range of educational, training, employment and
experience qualifications. Further blurring of definitions occurs because the skills associated with art
practice contribute to many other industries.As we noted earlier, artists often straddle different artistic
and non-artistic professions either by choice or through necessity–and it is hard to say at what point being
an artist stops or starts.