If you take on self-employed work as an artist or artworker, it can sometimes be difficult to know how much to charge for your work and time.
As part of the Being Really Good At Being Self Employed series, here are the tried and tested methods I use for working out how to price my self-employed work and/or time.
This guide gives you a quick overview of how to calculate your day rate & price for products
Pricing Your Work & Your Time (slides) – Rachel Dobbs
What should my Day Rate be as an artist?
When you are running workshops, activities, presentations or other ‘live’ sessions as a self-employed artist, organisations who would like to work with you might ask you what your ‘day rate’ is, or might offer you a flat fee for this work.
You’ll need to know and understand whether the rate you are offered or paid is reasonable or not. Sometimes, the flat-fee amount offered might seem really exciting – for example being paid £150 to deliver a 2-hour session could seem like you’re being paid £75 per hour.
EXAMPLE: In reality, the 2-hour session will involve a lot more work (and other costs) than just the 2-hours while you are delivering face-to-face. If it takes you 1 day to design and prep the session (including sourcing all materials and testing out techniques), and you’ll need to be there 30mins beforehand to setup, and 30mins afterwards to pack down, you are likely to have spent around 10 hours working on this for £150. That brings the hourly rate right down to ~£15 per hour.
Having a pre-prepared day rate will save you grief and hassle, and understanding how this rate is calculated will allow you to advocate for better pay and conditions for your self-employed work as an artist.
IMPORTANT NOTE: There are no legal protections for self-employed worker’s rates of pay in the UK (unlike PAYE employees, who benefit from a legally enforceable Minimum Wage hourly rate). This means that each of us have to be really careful about how we price our time, and create our own rules about this.
The current situation can lead to significant levels of exploitation – see Industria’s 2023 Structurally-F–cked report for more details.
Nationally recognised day rates for artists in the UK
Here are two great sources for pre-calculated day rates to use as a reference:
You’ll notice that these day rates range from ~£195 a day, all the way up to £365 a day (depending on your level of experience & the overheads you pay).
The Artists Union of England (AUE) rates also give a lot more nuance in their day rates – including different rates for different types of tasks you might be asked to do, and different levels of experience or responsibility involved.
Why are artists day rates so high?
Sometimes, when you are quoting your day rate to an organisation or potential new gig contact, they might feel that these rates are really high (or much higher than they expected).
This may be because they are used to thinking about payment for work at a per-hour rate (and don’t realise the true number of hours it would take for you to do the work they are asking for), or they are unused to working with self-employed practitioners.
It may also be because they have budgeted badly (guessing costs associated with freelance delivery rather than using nationally recognised rates to work out their budget) or are simply hoping to get something done very cheaply (or for free!).
The reason that self-employed artists day rates seem ‘high’ (when compared to hourly rates for PAYE staff) is based on a number of factors, including:
- self-employed workers have less total available work days per year (because they do all their own administration, accounting, pitching and tendering, and have to cover their own holiday/sick pay, pension contributions etc)
- self-employed workers take on all risks associated with generating work and securing contracts (which means they are not guaranteed to fill every available work day each year)
- the genuine cost of a payroll employee is more than the hourly or daily wage that appears in a job advert (so it is unrealistic to compare this with self-employed day rates)
- creative work is highly-skilled (and requires specialist training, studio, testing and research time) alongside time for professional development)
MATHS TRIGGER WARNING: In the rest of this post, I’m going to do some detailed maths calculations to attempt to work out a fairer comparison between the costs of a PAYE Employee’s rate of pay and a self-employed person’s rate of pay.
If you find number too much of a head-pain, just use the pre-calculated Day Rates from a-n & AUE listed above!
Worked example – PAYE Employee
Here’s a worked example, for a full-time employee aged 21+ on Minimum Wage (using 2024 rates) who works Mon-Fri from 9-5pm (37.5 hours per week).
Total potential Work Days per year = 260 (52 x 5 days per week)
– minus Holiday Allowance (legal minimum 28 days per year)
– minus potential Sick Days (eg 5 per year)
– minus Formal Training Days (eg 2 per year)
Actual no of attended Work Days per year = 225
Rate of pay = £11.44 per hour or £22,308 per year (legal minimum)
+ plus Employers National Insurance contributions @ £1,987.80 per year
+ plus 3% pension contribution (legal minimum) @ £669.24 per year
Total payroll cost of a Min Wage employee = £24,965.04 per year
Total payroll cost (£24,965.04) divided by no. of Work Days (225)
= £110.96 per day (or £14.79 per hour)
And thinking about Overheads…
This day rate does not take into account any of the on-going costs and expenses incurred by employers (these are called ‘overheads’) – for example, having to buy all work tools & equipment, renting workspace, insurance costs, buying materials & office supplies, extra travel costs (to deliver work off-site with organisations) etc.
We could estimate these costs like this:
+ £800 per year for tools & equipment (eg laptop or other work equipment)
+ £1380 per year for workspace (eg £6900 to cover rent/bills/rates for an office shared by 5 people)
+ £100 per year for insurance
+ £300 per year for materials & office supplies
+ £200 per year for extra travel costs
= £2780 per year Overheads (£12.35 per Work Day)
Worked example – Self Employed Worker
For comparison, here’s a worked example for a self-employed worker, who also works 37.5 hours per week
Total potential Work Days per year = 260 (52 x 5 days per week)
– minus Holiday Allowance (legal minimum 28 days per year)
– minus potential Sick Days (eg 5 per year)
– minus administration and accounting (eg 1/2 day per week or 26 days per year)
– minus pitching and tendering for work (eg 1 day per month or 12 days per year)
– minus general studio, research, testing & development time (eg less than 1 day per month or 10 days per year)
– minus Formal Training Days (eg 2 per year)
Actual no of attended / available Work Days per year = 177
Equivalent Min Wage payroll cost (£24,965.04) divided by no. of Work Days (177)
= £141.04 per day (or £18.80 per hour)
This day rate does not take into account any of the on-going costs and expenses incurred by self-employed people (overheads) – for example, having to buy all work tools & equipment, renting workspace, buying materials & office supplies, training costs, extra travel costs (to deliver work off-site with organisations) etc.
If we used the same estimated figures as the PAYE example above for Overheads (£2780 : note: your actual overheads might be higher or lower than this!), this gives us an additional cost we need to add to the basic day rate…
+£2780 annual Overheads divided by no. of Work Days (177)
= £15.71 per day (or £2.10 per hour)
So, that brings our comparison Minimum Wage version of the day rate to £156.75 (or £20.90 per hour).
Realistically, as a freelancer / self-employed person, if you are expected to work for less than this comparison Minimum Wage day rate amount (when including preparation time), you are being paid less than the current (legal) Minimum Wage. You should make this very clear to anyone you are negotiating a fee with – show them these working if you need a bit of support!!
Problems with these worked examples!
The example I have given above (attempting to work out a potential comparison Minimum Wage day rate) doesn’t take into account the reality of the nature of self-employed work as an artist. Because self-employed workers take on all risks associated with generating work and securing contracts, and this means they are not guaranteed to fill every available work day each year.
Problem #1: How many days of paid work you’ll be able to secure
If you’ve been following the calculations above, you’ll have worked out that the number of days you’ll be able to secure paid work on might actually be far less than 177 days available Work Days per year.
EXAMPLE: You work really hard to secure 141 x days of paid work in a year (3 days per week, on 47 weeks of the year) – this is a serious achievement! To earn the equivalent Min Wage payroll cost (£24,965.04) + overheads (£2780), you need to charge £196.78 per day to make the equivalent of Min Wage.
Notice how this is a very similar amount to the AUE day rate for a new graduate artist
For this reason, you need increase your day rate accordingly.
You might think about this element of your day rate as a kind of ‘risk premium’ above the comparison Minimum Wage amount. It is an added amount that helps to cover your risks of under-employment as a self-employed person. Anyone who is calling you in to work for them on a freelance basis is relying on you being available (rather than giving you the security of a PAYE role). It’s not asking a huge amount of them to pay part of the costs of this privilege!
Problem #2 : The skilled nature of creative work
The other stand-out problem with the comparison Minimum Wage day rate is that it doesn’t take into account the skilled nature of creative work. It’s likely that you’ve spent a minimum of three years learning, honing and improving your skills (eg self-taught or via university) before you start working as a self-employed artist.
As you continue to practice and develop those skills and gain experience, you’d realistically expect to be paid more than Minimum Wage because the quality of your work will be higher – you’ll become more efficient, and better at the work you deliver.
You may also take on more responsibilities or different types of positions in projects – for example you may start to find yourself working in more of a lead artist / project manager type roles.
For these reason, you’d need increase your day rate accordingly.
EXAMPLE: You have designed, planned and are delivering a programme of creative activities with a local community group, who you worked with to secure Arts Council England funding. You are responsible for the day-to-day running of the project, and bring in other creative freelancers to assist on elements of the delivery. You head-up all the problem-solving, budget-management, evaluation and reporting for the project.
This description fits well with the idea of a Lead Artist / Project Manager in the AUE Rates of Pay guidelines, and would mean your day rate should be ~£348.66
Hopefully you find these resources useful, and use them to advocate for being paid reasonably for your work as an artist!
If you are an artist in England, I would highly recommend becoming a member of a-n AND Artists Union England to support their valuable and important work in advocating and campaigning for artists.
If you find these resources useful, let me know via Instagram – @RachelDobbs1. All of the resources I produce are available to download for FREE, but if you’d like to contribute to my future projects, say thank you or just do something nice for a fellow creative practitioner, feel free to donate by clicking the button below…