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Joanna Woronkowicz, "Artists at Work: Rethinking Policy for Artistic Careers" (Stanford UP, 2025)
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- [00:00]
Marshall Poe
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Joanna Voronkovic
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- [01:18]
Marshall Poe
Hello everybody, this is Marshall Poe. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network and if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you prob probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many actors academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Dave
Welcome to New Books in Critical Theory. It's a podcast that's part of the New Books Network. On this episode, I'm talking to Joanna Voronkovic about artists at work rethinking policy for artistic careers. So welcome to the podcast.
- [02:39]
Joanna Voronkovic
Thank you, Dave, for having me. So happy to be here.
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Dave
This is a great book. I mean, partially it speaks to a lot of things that are kind of interesting for my work, but I think much more, kind of broadly, it speaks to a really important moment in North America, but more globally actually around this question of artists and their careers and how, I guess, the kind of support them and make them sustainable. And I'm kind of interested in what sort of inspired you to get into this question. Why did you write a book about artists and artistic careers?
- [03:16]
Joanna Voronkovic
Yeah, good question. I agree with you. I tried to make this book as interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary as I possibly could. I didn't want to just write it for economists or sociologists or a particular area. So I have been hearing from a lot of people in both practice, in both policy, in both academia saying that this has been something that has been of interest. So I'm happy to hear that it's being broadly relevant. I started to think about really the idea for this book, I mean, decades ago. So I am, I'm a former musical theater actor, professional musical theater actor. I was a childhood musical theater actor and then I went into that as a professional, as a profession in my early to mid-20s. And like many artists, I found it to be quite challenging, but mostly I actually found it to be quite puzzling. And so that's really the, the reason that I wanted to write a book like that, because I find the, the career trajectory and the career building process for artists to be quite puzzling. And my career right now as an economist that studies, that studies creative labor, as a social scientist, is trying to figure out those puzzles. So I was constantly thinking about both as an actor, but also as a social scientist. Now, how the career of an artist is supposed to work, I think for so many other careers, we have a methodical understanding of what you're supposed to do to achieve a certain career. So, for example, if you want to be a doctor, you go to medical school, you do your residency, and then you get ultimately a job in private practice or a hospital, and you are a doctor, an attorney works the same way but for creative careers, it doesn't work that way. And I always wanted to figure out why it doesn't, and perhaps if we could come up with a methodical way of it working. So that was really my motivation for writing this. And I think, honestly, looking around and seeing the conversations going on about artists, especially in this time period where we see a lot of unknowns. For example, the unknown about how AI and tech is affecting creative careers. A number of books have been written about that. The unknowns about public funding for arts for artists. I wanted to start to bring in the known and to start to bring in some evidence to say we actually know much more than were letting on in our policy conversations. So I think that was a number of motivations. But I think that sort of puts it in a nutshell.
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Dave
I mean, one thing that'd be kind of useful to know for the listeners is how you define an artist. I mean, you mentioned the, you know, acting, theater industries. You've kind of hinted towards the broader context of, you know, things like changes in tech, AI. But often when people hear the word artist, I guess they think of maybe a painter, you know, maybe a visual artist. So it'd be kind of useful, I think, to hear about how you're defining an artist before we get into, I guess, the question of, like, who they actually are.
- [06:38]
Joanna Voronkovic
Such a good question, because it's the number one question I get from anyone who picks up the book and sees what the title is, because that word artist is. So it's an enigma. I think the. The author, and I quote the author in the book, Marine Kusit. She wrote a book that I. I'm. The name of it is slipping me. Slipping my mind right now. But she has a great quote in there, and it's. The word artist is a dumpster. You can throw anything inside of it. And I always think about that because it is. It is definitionally something that's challenging to come up with an exact for. So the way I define artist is really for the specifics or for the purpose of this book, which is to talk about workforce policy. And so that might be disappointing to some of the readers of the book because I don't take a broad understanding of what an artist is, but that doesn't mean that I don't believe that there is a broader understanding of what an artist is compared to the definition I use in my book. So the definition I use in my book is the working artist. And so this is the person, the individual who chooses art in a variety of disciplines. And I define those disciplines in the book as an actual career choice. And so this is. I use the U.S. census Bureau types of definitions for occupations, and those are the best ones we have available, although they're not completely, I think, satisfying to many. But this includes your fine artist, your visual artist, but also your performing artist. This includes people who are also working in media industries. So it does have sort of a, a broad encompassing view. But these are people who are, according to the. The federal data, are working within artistic careers as the Census Bureau defines them. And the argument that I make in the book is that just because I'm using this definition doesn't mean we can't actually learn anything about the people who don't fall within this definition. Because ultimately I'm focusing on the behavior, the career behavior of these individuals that you could very easily argue could apply to somebody outside the definition who is also trying to make a career in the arts. So it is a specific definition, but it's also specific because of the purposes, because I'm looking at workforce policy. So I, you know, that might be not a very satisfying answer, but for the purposes of this book, you have to choose, or for the purposes of a book, I think you have to find a narrow and specific lens in order to, you know, ultimately have a thesis and an argument.
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Dave
Yeah. And the book kind of anchors it in, in a particular context as well, in the US Context. And I think it'd be useful, actually, to hear, I guess, about maybe some illustrations of the kind of, kind of key occupations you were talking about, the kind of who question, particularly as it, as it kind of manifests in, in the US So what are the, I guess, the kind of demographics of these artistic occupations in the US so ultimately.
- [10:09]
Joanna Voronkovic
There are 11 categories of artistic occupations defined by the federal data sets in the U.S. and so you can go to the book to see what those categories are. But all one of the points I make in the book is that even though I use this broad definition of artist and I use the term artist throughout the book, as opposed to the term photographer, as opposed to the term actor, these are. One of the points of the book was actually to go through and identify the commonalities between these different occupations such that I could make an overarching argument about this group as a whole. So, you know, one of the, I think the, the counter arguments to using this big, broad definition of artists might be, well, there are so many different types of artists, and so many different types of artists lead different careers. Well, I made it a point to actually do data analysis for this book. That said, here are the commonalities we see among all these 11 different occupations. So other commonalities have to do with who these people are in terms of demographics. Gender overall in the group is pretty evenly split. However, I go in the book, I provide the gender splits between among these 11 different occupations. So for example, among writers and authors, that's much more of a, of a female skew. And there are certain, certain occupations that are more of a male skew. So I do provide those statistics. Overall, the, the group of artists are very highly educated. We're looking at about 65% or so having at least a college degree and over 10% having at least a graduate. Degr is relatively very highly educated compared to other sectors of the workforce in the U.S. definitely the general workforce. But again, among these 11 different occupations, there are different education levels, but still fairly highly educated. I believe dancers and choreographers have the lowest rate of educational attainment and writers and authors have the highest rate of educational attainment. These are majority white. This does differ from the overall general US workforce, but also does not differ from many other professional workforces with similar education levels. And these individuals also tend to live in central cities. And so this points to the, I think, importance of networks and being close to people for many artistic careers. So what you ultimately see is a group of people that have very similar characteristics, that ultimately build careers in very similar ways. And what I'm trying to do in the book is tease that out to understand how that happens. One thing I will note is that the number one distinguishing factor between artists, between, among artists is their high educational levels. And once you take that out, their demographic characteristics vary a lot. However, if you keep that in and just look at artists among, among artists that have high educational levels, it's really kind of stunning to see how similar demographically they are.
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Dave
I mean, one thing that I guess we have to be careful about is kind of reading off demographics and then linking it directly to, you know, kind of funding systems, labor markets. But there are you know, really kind of close connections, I think, between what you've described as, you know, the sort of, I guess, kind of the importance of cities, the importance of education, gender balances in, in particular occupations, and the way that I guess the kind of cultural system works in the states. And I'm interested in I, I guess a snapshot really of that cultural system. How does I suppose the sort of markets and philanthropy rather than kind of state led artistic support work? And how is that related to some of the demographics?
- [14:20]
Joanna Voronkovic
Yeah, very good Question. And it is. So in the United States, you know, if you're familiar at all with U.S. cultural policy, we do have a very, what we call decentralized cultural policy, where much of the cultural policy functions within private institutions as opposed to the federal government. You know, in the current political climate, we're struggling to even keep a, you know, a slice, a small slice of federal cultural, cultural policy within the federal government, given that the two or three major institutions in the federal government are under threat right now with pulling, with not actually existing in the, in the new budget, which has not yet been approved in the United States. So, you know, I think that goes to show that because we don't have a strong federal system of cultural policy in the U.S. we, the arts and artists rely very much on the private sector. So this includes foundations, philanthropy, the commercial market. I talk a lot in the book about the different institutions, and I use that term quite broadly, not in terms of organization, but in terms of the systems in which artists work. The, the, the institutions that really matter to artists. And so the institution, for example, of the nonprofit sector really matters to the artist who is building a career. Because artists very often, and especially this is depending on discipline, artists very often interact with the nonprofit institution and nonprofit organizations and nonprofits are reliant on charitable deductions and receive huge tax benefits. So if anything like that goes away, then that has a very large implication and consequence for the sustainability of artistic careers. It's the same thing with foundations. So, you know, foundations are, I think, more and more under threat with what's. With the types of financial benefits they have. And again, artists receive a good portion, especially artists who are commissioned, especially artists who apply for grants and awards. They rely on foundations to fund. They do make up the gap between what the public sector doesn't offer and what they need to ultimately be sustainable. So I think, just going to your point that the market is quite important. And so, which is why I take this lens of actually looking at artists in the labor market, because this is not just a public, this is not a public, public policy issue. This is a policy issue that has to do with both private and, you know, private and public market questions. When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pinned messages so no one forgets mom 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more@WhatsApp.com this episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast Smart move Being financially savvy Smart move Another smart move having State Farm help you create a couple competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling. Just another way to save with the personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. The holidays have arrived at the Home.
- [18:15]
Dave
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Joanna Voronkovic
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- [18:38]
Dave
At the right prices this holiday season at the Home Depot. That blend, that kind of mix and that balance maybe obviously shapes the kind of broader sense of success, I guess, as kind of, you know, as, as making it. And I'm intrigued really as to how we, we sort of see people making it. What one of the things that the middle of the book does is engages and you've kind of touched on this already with educational pathways, kind of training pathways. But then it asked this question about kind of who ends up making it. And building on what you've been saying about the mix of funding or career opportunities. I mean, yeah, I'm intrigued to hear that story, I guess, of how artists end up training to be artists and then which ones end up kind of sticking in the labor market and intriguingly kind of which ones leave.
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Joanna Voronkovic
I am so intrigued by this question too. And this is probably because of my background. I have a BFA in theater and when I went into theater, well, I, you know, I was in theater, into theater for a long time before I received a bfa. But I did sort of think that that was the, you know, cherry on top that I needed to get in order to be a successful actor. And so I went and I got that BFA and I got out and I thought, okay, I'm here, I'm ready. This is my life. And then it didn't quite work out that way, which was why it was so puzzling, which is why ultimately I wrote this book. But you know, interestingly, and I've done a lot of my research is actually focused on the educational returns and not just financially, but in terms of career sustainability and longevity of Getting a degree to be an artist, because we know many artists don't get degrees. It's not. There are no formal accreditations, certifications, licensures, those types of things that many other career paths have in order to be this occupation. So it's such a good question to say, well, how does this actually work? And so we do now have research that says this is actually how it works. So the chapter on how do artists train? Focuses a lot on higher education and what artists get from that and what's the right path to take if you want to be an artist, do you go to college or do you not? And what we find is that. So like, first, like I mentioned, is many artists actually do have college degrees. Now, we don't know whether or not this is because you. These people think that they need to get a college degree or whether they're just more prone to getting college degrees, have certain backgrounds that make them more prone, but they also have graduate degrees at a high rate, like I mentioned. But not all artists get arts degrees, which suggests that training also happens outside of formal education. So a great statistic I bring into the book is that only 14% of working artists have an arts degree. So that brings up the question of if an arts degree was really necessary in order to be an artist, wouldn't that number be higher? And so it brings in these wonderful questions about whether or not you need a degree to be an artist. And what we find through a number of different studies is that if you go to art school, it's more likely that you will be. Your longevity, your occupational persistence as an artist will be longer, will be you'll be in the career field for a longer period of time than if you don't go to art school. But that's actually what we find from a lot of research in higher education that shows that when people are go and major in a certain degree program or go to school for a certain thing, they're much more likely to. To be. To sustain themselves in that chosen career. And it's probably partly psychological. There's a mindset. There's a mindset element there. But those who actually don't go to art school and get, let's say, some more liberal arts degree, a general degree, they're actually more likely to have higher salaries. Now, we don't know what type, why that's necessarily the case. But it also goes along with a lot of research in higher education that says if you get a degree, your lifetime earnings will be higher than if you don't get a degree. So we see the same sort of patterns happening in artistic careers. So we actually know some of the answers that I think we're going back and forth with. So, but it still raises this conundrum which is I want to be an artist, but I also want to be able to sustain myself financially. Do I go to art school to make sure that I achieve that first score, or do I go and get a broader liberal arts degree or some other degree in a different career field to make sure that I'm financially sustainable? And I think that's the balance that we're always trying to achieve when we're. When people are making the decision of can I be an artist?
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Dave
The other thing that kind of flows from what is an artist, who is an artist, how do they end up as an artist is what do they actually do? One of the things the book does, I think really, really brilliantly is interrogates what, I guess the kind of like working life, the sort of working practices are of artists and treats it really, you know, like a job, like an occupation, and tries to think through how it's, how it compares with and is different from other kind of jobs, but particularly professions. And that, I suppose, kind of question really sort of rounds off the story in a way of, you know, if we know what the demographics are, how entry happens, how, you know, a living is made, what actually is the story of the work artists do?
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Joanna Voronkovic
Yeah, this is the, I would say the sort of meat and potatoes. If I'm talking about using an American idiom of the book or the bread and butter, I think that's more of a European very much so. So in, you know, three of the chapters in the middle of the book, I go through and I essentially try to identify through data how the artist works. And I do this through training and education, through the different modes of work. And then also where, where the different places that they work. And I look at those three chapters as, okay, here's the formula for what we see for how an artist makes a career based on data. This was actually what the book was initially just, just going to be about. And then I started to add in all of these supplementary chapters, partly because the reviewers said so, but partly because, you know, you have to round out ultimately the argument with context. But the sort of. In the chapter where I talk about how artists work, a lot of what I talk about is the non standard form of work. And so this is probably very, this is probably very familiar to anybody who knows an artist or has worked as an artist. But you know, Generally when we think about artists, we probably think about the freelancer, the person who has multiple gigs, the person who has multiple contracts going on, maybe they have a day job, but they also have a moonlighting job. So overall there are very high rates of this type of work. So nonstandard employment among artists, multiple job holdings. So artists are more likely to hold more jobs than many other sectors of the workforce force high levels of contingent and contractual work. So we know that from, we have a survey in the United States called the Contingent Workforce Survey. So I've looked at these occupations through that data set and then we have very high rates of self employment among this occupation. So in the United States among probably about 35% of working artists are self employed, which is actually quite, quite high. The among the lowest self employed workers in the United States are I think are occupations like correctional officers. You don't know many self employed correctional officers. So but there are some, according to the data. So that was neat. But those are the types of work modes that we associate with being an artist. So Ann Marcuson in article a long time ago and in many articles talked about this, you know, the project based nature of artistic work. And so that's an increasingly important part of how an artist builds, builds a career. It is not a consistent type of career. Increasingly it's not a consistent type of work that builds a career as an artist. There are very few, for example, repertory theater companies where an actor is a part of and you know, acts in the six plays each each year in the series. I know of a few, but that's increasingly not being feasible for many theater organizations because of fiscal pressures. But I think there are also many caveats to understand this sort of inconsistent or this mode of work that the artist engages in. So for example, we think about the artist who has to take a second job in order to make ends meet so that they can have the passion to pursue their art. But now there's evidence that say, well, that's not only the case. There's a great article by Laura Adler that talks about bad jobs, for example. And this looks at why some occupations actually including artists, why they choose jobs that they don't have to pay as much attention to so that they can focus on the job that they really love. And so that's something that I think artists are, many artists are doing. So I, I want to choose the really easy job to, you know, let's say I deliver food on my bicycle and that doesn't require much thinking. I could just get to ride around and Then during the day and, or whenever I have time, I get to focus on the thing that I really want to invest in. So I think the idea that the struggling artist is always having to take on this, these, all of these different modes of work and all of these second jobs and third jobs, you know, that's still correct. There are definitely economic precarities to be concerned with, but there are also, I think, reasons, motivational reasons and psychological reasons that that's important to actually the artistic career. And this, this chapter goes into some of them.
- [29:55]
Dave
Early on you sort of mentioned that there's a place based dimension to this. And, and I think that kind of story of places is something that when people buy the book and read the book, they can get a really kind of detailed engagement with. Because obviously what you've just been saying about working patterns is as dependent on both where people live and the kind of access to particular sorts of local labor markets. But to close, I'd like to go right to the end of the book. The book has got, I guess, kind of recommendations and reflections for what both policymakers could be doing to kind of support some of these project based, precarious careers, to think about access and fairness and career sustainability. But I think beyond that, actually a lot of those kind of policy recommendations are things that people in society might think about when they think about the arts too. So what are your sort of five kind of key reflections? Five key recommendations?
- [31:00]
Joanna Voronkovic
Yeah, so the end of the book was something. It's funny, when you write a book, you think, you know, you start, you open up your. Well, I think you now open up your computer and you say, okay, page one, and I'm going to write the book and from start to finish. But then ultimately you get to the end of the writing process and then you say, oh my goodness, page one should really be page 300. And so that's sort of what happened with this. So what I wrote in chapter, in the last chapter of the book was some of the first things that I wrote for the book. And so it really, I think, framed my thinking throughout the entire writing process and everything else that went into the book. So what I try to do in the last chapter of the book is I actually try to provide a policy framework. So as opposed to giving specific policies that. And I do that in the book too. But at the end of the book, as opposed to giving specific policies that I think would really help build, help artists build sustainable careers or help individuals build sustainable careers in artists, I just say, here are the five principles that Every policy designed for the artistic workforce should actually abide to. And then throughout the book, there are examples of policies, and all of those policies sort of fit within this framework. So if you want examples of policies, you can sort of read early, read earlier chapters. So the policies I put forth are actually very, what I think are common sense. Policy of the policy framework is, I think, very common sense and would work for any type of workforce policy, not just for artists. But now knowing the. The uniqueness of artists, you see how these. This policy framework applies. So, for example, the first. The first principle of the framework is. And this one is a little controversial, so I always have to. I have to explain it a bit. It's design policy for societal benefit. So design policy for societal benefit as sometimes opposed to individual benefit. And so there's a little, you know, pushback all the time, which is, why shouldn't we be designing policy for the benefit of individuals? Well, my argument is that, well, when you focus on the individual, you miss out on so many others. And so this is what we've seen, I think, commonly with. With policy in the arts and policy for artists is that we're focusing on the struggling artists, for example, and so we're providing, we're creating subsidization programs for the struggling artists. But it's failing to recognize that many individuals are actually doing quite well being artists. So you have to think about what is that overall policy that can help the. The overall sort of environment and context in which those struggling artists work. And that's sometimes hard to do. And what you want to try to achieve, of course, is that the societal benefit also translates into the individual benefit. But sometimes it doesn't take place. And that's tough to take sometimes. But I think it's important. The second element, or the second principle in the framework is maybe common sense, but I think you have to say it sometimes is use evidence to design policy. So much of policy design actually happens because of gut feelings or because the lobbying group is quite strong. But we don't typically always use research. And I think in the arts and cultural sector, especially in the United States, we are much more prone to using advocacy as the motivation for policy design as opposed to evidence. And so I'm trying to change that with a number of different initiatives I'm working on right now. But part of that is writing this book. There's a lot of evidence, a lot of people are doing really hard work to try to figure out answers to these types of questions. And so we might as well use that work. The Third principle in the framework is to design workforce policy for, yes, you know, sustainable careers. But we also want to think about quality careers. And so this is something I think we can take from entrepreneurial workforce policy, where a lot of the policy is, yes, many policies for entrepreneurship are designed with the target of increasing the rate of entrepreneurship, but there is a very strong focus on increasing, improving the quality of entrepreneurial careers. And that's something I think that really needs to be a strong focus for artistic careers. It's not just we shouldn't be creating, again, public subsidization programs to create more artists. We should be making sure that those artists who are pursuing that art as their career can actually do it in a sustainable fashion. The fourth is, the fourth principle is the importance of networks for this particular career field. And I go, I think it's a common thread and theme throughout the book that networks are so integral for artistic careers. It's hard to work in isolation as an artist. Even if you are an isolated type of artist. For example, you work in your studio, you work as a writer. You still need all of those art worlds, which comes from Howie Becker's book, to build the career. To build the career as an artist. So I think that's how this workforce operates. And I think many policies would do well to just center that in the design. And then five, the fifth principle I focus on is change. So think of with policy, we should always be looking forward to change as opposed to preserving the status quo. And that's hard. We sometimes in the arts think about how do we preserve the large and, you know, formidable institutions that we're used to that have the reputations. But for any workforce policy, we need to be thinking about the emerging, the new, the innovative, the small, the medium sized, the young. So that's important and I think needs to be built right into the framework. So those are the five principles. And what I ultimately say at the end of the book, which is again my favorite part because I wrote it first and so I'm probably most familiar with it and also most comfortable with this argument, is that if we can just sort of shift the paradigm and think about using what we know, evidence in order to design effective policy, then we can stop looking at artists as tools, but we can actually start to look at them as individuals who have a choice in terms of the career choice they make in a lifetime. And that choice, that right to choose an occupation, I think is a fundamental right for any individual choosing an occupation. And so given that right, and given that we have people choosing this career field, we should be also be thinking about the types of policies that will support these individuals. So that's what I end the book on.
- [37:52]
Dave
I mean, you mentioned stuff you're working on, kind of following up some of those policy recommendations. And it sort of strikes me that this kind of book sets an agenda and has within it possibly a couple of sequels as well, both in terms of kind of tracking changes over time, but also, as you mentioned, actually, you know, kind of doing deeper dives into some of the things that both started the book and then some of the things you've been working on in response to the kind of reviewers ideas. At the same time, often academics kind of write stuff and then they find. Actually, you know, that was interesting. But I've got this new thing that I'm kind of more interested in, and I'm intrigued to know what you're doing, I guess, kind of next following this book.
- [38:41]
Joanna Voronkovic
Yeah, I think I'm still in the same mindset in terms of the research I'm doing that I was when I started writing this book. And actually I have been for quite a long time. And it's just trying to figure out the puzzles concerning artistic careers. That's been an ongoing thread for what I've been interested in, for what research I've done for ages. I mean, I wrote my master's thesis on a similar issue, which was. It was on, I believe, understanding why Richard Florida's creative class doesn't apply to artists. And so this came from one of Ann Marcuson's articles. And I tried to expand on it. And so that was, you know, 25 years ago I wrote that thesis. And then in. In during my Ph.D. i wrote. I wrote my. I wrote a paper in one of my classes on defining a utility function for artists. And so this was basically looking at, you know, where artists get. Where artists get their sort of satisfaction from and being able to model that through an economic lens. And so I've constantly had these types of project where I've been trying to work out these puzzles, and I continue along that trajectory. So I have a number of different projects I'm working on. For example, one that's trying to interrogate this idea of what we call sometimes psychic income, which is that intrinsic motivation that leads artists to choose careers that might not be as financially rewarding as other career fields. And I'm trying to work out the puzzle of what that term actually means and how we can even measure it and compare it to all of the other amenities and disamenities that artists get in their careers and maybe think about how other occupations do the same thing. I'm also increasingly looking at, and I think this is just, you know, if you study artists, you have to look at the effect of AI and technology. And so I have a number of projects right now that are doing just that. So understanding how both AI is a challenge and an opportunity in artistic careers. I just launched a survey yesterday for 2,500 ARTS alumni who understanding how they build or don't build AI into their work processes. So all these little puzzles I have going on in my mind, and I think I'm just trying to figure out one by one as I move forward. Sam.