Artists' education and training - Australia Council data

The Australia Council artists survey, Don't give up your day job, collected information relating to practising professional artists in Australia.

The survey included full-time and part-time artists; employed and self-employed artists; and artists regardless of whether all, some or none of their income was from art practice.

The survey did not include artists whose primary involvement was in design (furniture, interior, fashion, industrial, architectural or graphic); artists working primarily in the film industry; or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists working in remote Indigenous communities.

According to Don't give up your day job, about three-quarters of all practising professional artists have some formal training. Over 40 per cent also undertook private tuition.

Types of training undertaken to become an artist

Practising professional artists	Percentage of artists(a) who have ever undertaken:
	Formal training	Private training	Self-taught	Learning on the job	Other training
Writers	63	18	59	48	38
Visual artists	91	23	41	28	35
Craft practitioners	76	28	51	31	58
Actors	73	40	41	61	51
Dancers	94	50	19	47	45
Musicians	68	73	44	54	23
Composers	78	63	66	47	25
Community cultural development workers	89	39	55	73	61
Total	76	42	46	47	38

(a) Proportions are of artists who have undertaken one or more types of training in that training category. Rows do not sum to 100 per cent because artists may have undertaken training in more than one category.

Source: Australia Council, Don’t give up your day job: An Economic Study of Professional Artists in Australia (Throsby and Hollister 2003).

Survey participants were asked to rate which form of training they felt was the most important in becoming an artist. Forty-five percent of artists identified formal training by coursework at a tertiary or specialist institution as their most important training.

Some 67 per cent of visual artists and dancers deemed formal training to be their most important. Only 36 per cent of writers thought formal training was the most important form.