If your child was planning on studying Art/Fine Art at Uni, would you advise them against it due to lack of job prospects (and AI)?

[NewYearNewBear]

Just that really.
My daughter loves art and is studying it as an A level subject and wants to study fine art at University.
She got an 8 at GCSE exam.

She thinks she can become a portrait artist and doesn't seem to want to consider related carers like graphics etc.
Would you advise them against studying Art even though it's probably the only thing they are passionate about?

Thank you! Yes I love it and it really has changed the way I see the world. I especially love clouds and water. I'm actually doing a painting right now for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. No idea of I'll get accepted, but it's pushing me to try harder!

DS has a first in Graphic Design from what is considered a good uni for the course (Kingston) as of last summer.

He hasn't had a snifter of an interview yet, let alone a job.

I warned him aged 15 that arty things were much harder to get a job in than science (and he had very solid STEM GCSEs, too), but he was adamant.

We're trying to swerve towards Town Planning, now, as a result.

In straitened times, the frills are the first thing to go, and AI meets a lot of design needs now.

"Doesn't really matter what the degree is in these days"

Sorry, but this is just not true. It matters now much more than it did when I graduated 30 years ago. Back then, graduates were a smaller minority and companies were happy to (or at least had no option to) snap them up and train them to do whatever they needed. These day, there are many more graduates, many of whom are doing degrees that are much more relevant to what employers need. Yes, there are still lots of "any degree" jobs out there, but there are many more "any degree" graduates competing for them. In the meantime, employers are receiving financial encouragement to invest in apprenticeships for training cheaper school leavers or for retraining existing staff to do the jobs they need.

My advice to @NewYearNewBear's DC would be to do Fine Art if she wants to make a career out of art (and is realistic about the prospects of that) but not if she wants to be competitive in the graduate jobs market. If she wants the latter then tell her to google graduate salaries by career subject. Fine Art is somewhere near the bottom (which is fine if money is not the objective).

I agree. Drawing, painting and so on are best thought of as practical skills that can be taught, you certainly don't need a degree to learn them. A Fine Art degree is as an academic course not an apprenticeship in painting. As an analogy, an electrical engineering degree will include practical elements but its main purpose is not to train electricians, it's to train the people who engineer the new applications that electricians will build and maintain.

This painting was in the Royal Academy Summer Show last year. It sold for £84k! It was brilliant, clever, funny and huge, but just goes to show it's possible...

Sorry, £85k!

No. There's so many directions you can go after an art degree.

Re: foundation. DS's desired uni strongly recommended one. His Sixth Form ran one, as did the Tech next door; but I discovered Solent Uni also did it. I thought it would be a great chance for him to do 'a year at uni while living at home' if he went there, instead.

But it cost £9250 pa!!

So he went to the local Tech!

Difficult. My daughter is a bit younger, but headed in this direction with the added complication of ASD and school refusal. She is very creative and I can see that this would appeal to her. Next month she has to decide on subjects: I told her to consider that it is easier to get into art/creative subjects later than it is to pick up the more academic subjects again. The fact is that it's all very well being somewhat talented but unless you are either phenomenally talented or extremely resilient and motivated then it is difficult to make a living out there.

I studied illustration and graphic design- for the above reasons, I now think it was the wrong choice.

If I had my time again, I think I would have been better off pursuing architecture or something more practical.

(I also agree with a pp who mentioned having to work: it was the same for me- I never had the luxury of not having to work. I was in a prestigious London Uni as well. Most people I studied with were from wealthy, well connected backgrounds. Now I realise how naive I was.)

I have NO IDEA why a quote from myself has crept in there... I tried to quote a pp that contained a quote but then abandoned it. This app is weird!

I would support them to do whatever was right for them. Even if there are limited prospects, they need a chance to make it. Maybe they will? If not, and as long as they are informed and realistic about it, then there will be side lines they can follow with their qualification.

I think the posters with DC looking for jobs will have different responses from those with small DC. It's a jungle out there.

Mine are grown. I'd support them to do a fine arts degree. They need a chance, or can side step.

D did this at Uni. Got the top result in her Uni 3 years ago.

Works in a cafe on minimum wage.

She loved the degree, but cant even get an interview in the related jobs she has gone for.

It is a very limiting degree. She now wishes she had done a combined one, maybe with journalism or something that would have expanded her employment options.

Having thought a bit more about this, I actually think you need to tell your kid to follow their heart. Yes a job is important, but more important is doing what you really want to do (whether that is going to art school with a perhaps lesser chance of employment after, or going into an apprentice position or whatever). The key is choosing what inspires you. You might be broke for the first 10-20 years of your working life, but actually you are building up really important skills.

Get her to read Mastery by Robert Greene, I wish I had at that age. So much solid advice in there!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastery-Robert-Greene-Collection/dp/178125091X

Around the globe, people are facing the same problem - that we are born as individuals but are forced to conform to the rules of society if we want to succeed. To see our uniqueness expressed in our achievements, we must first learn the rules - and then how to change them completely.

Charles Darwin began as an underachieving schoolboy, Leonardo da Vinci as an illegitimate outcast. The secret of their eventual greatness lies in a 'rigorous apprenticeship': by paying close and careful attention, they learnt to master the 'hidden codes' which determine ultimate success or failure. Then, they rewrote the rules as a reflection of their own individuality, blasting previous patterns of achievement open from within.

The key is choosing the right field. This book explains how, and how to develop the right skills. Really amazing book! (No I am not paid to promote it).

He also has some great interviews on Mastery on youtube that would be worth watching.

BTW the description sounds really cheesy, but if you check out his videos you will realise he's the real deal and very intelligent / astute.

Not if she's going to be saddled with a significant amount of debt, no.

Second also, except for that bit about sensitive and shy, plenty of my contemporaries were sensitive and shy, got great roles and m.a s, to go onto. My degree was a pretty international cohort and people went into conservatorships in the big five galleries in London. The best degree for insisting on their graduates being straight into real work as an arist is Goldsmiths...Hirst,Lucas,Emin,et Al (yba). Yes it's competitive, contrary to popular belief, art is not easy....Vision make the the difference.
Other shy practitioners...lowry, Lucas, okeefe, cezanne, to name a few. Art and introversion go together absolutely, always, but not exclusively. I'm definitely, as a good friend once told me, an Introverted extrovert.

FWIW I did a STEM degree and PhD, and it turned out to have shockingly poor employment prospects. I lived in poverty for a couple of years while frantically retraining as a computer programmer.

However, I do have a friend who did a fine art degree, and he loves it. What he did was to do a degree in Physics, and then a PhD, then he got a job in a bank earning a ton of money. He did the fine art degree as an evening course, while working at the bank. That has worked out very well for him.

Haven’t read the full thread so apologies if this has been mentioned before, but depending on the medium your DD works in, art conservation/restoration will not be under threat from AI. A friend does it very successfully - and finds it rewarding, artistically too.

Most Fine Art degrees are a joke. Many applied art degrees (graphic design, animation...) are pointless as AI is taking over - there are already free apps that anyone can use to create a great logo and visual identity (for free) and that have wiped out the jobs of graphic designers.

Proper drawing/painting/sculpture courses (3 or 4 years) are available in ateliers. Florence Academy of Art is the best but it's expensive and not possible on a UK student loan. Successful portrait artists who earn a living (often teaching alongside, for the company as much as for the regular income) from painting have mostly done some or all of their training in ateliers. Not that ateliers are perfect - the training is very rigorous and not necessarily very creative.

To work in art conservation you need a combination of two out of three of art history, drawing/painting and science skills - you need all three to become an art conservator but not many people do so the MA courses that train art conservators make do with 2.

Architecture degrees suffer from many of the same failings as fine art degrees and modernist architecture is also going to get a big hit from AI. There is a nascent movement to teach traditional and classical architecture again and it isn't particularly hard to get a foot in the door if you are prepared to do some summer schools.

My DD is in her first year of an art course luckily at a Scottish uni so fee free. She is autistic and had an awful time at school with bullying so to see her at uni doing something she loves and is very talented at is amazing.

Yes she probably will struggle to get a job but she’s following her passion right now and that’s worth it.

Those are the types of work AI can do really well. I would not advise studying those, but fine art, yes.

Just to add I have a degree & masters in the arts.
Did have some success and sold work through some bricks and mortar galleries in London, NY & Europe but not household name level.
I definitely would have done a lot better if I'd had family connections. Most traditional galleries have a vast database of clients/customers who are very well heeled and very well connected. If you can bring some more of those to the galleries private views etc then you are a much more bankable prospect.
I've got talent, but not amazing, but I'm personable & my work was interesting/unusual and aesthetically pleasing and with lots of luck I expect I found it relatively easy to get decent gallery representation so didn't have to deal with selling online or whoring myself on Instagram etc.
It's a very challenging career choice though, I imagine most artists (esp female ones) are riddled with doubt about their talent & place in the art world. You have to be a jack of all trades and run your own business (unless you earn enough to outsource/get an assistant) which takes the majority of your time for creation away.
It's a fabulous envious life if you can do it though, being in the creative world is fabulous and feeds the soul.

Now work as a management consultant in mostly the public sector & including advising parliamentarians - luckily still interesting (I won't say which aspect I work in, but it's valuable work and towards helping communities/society) because my health isn't great and I needed a 'desk' job.
Working in the arts gave me enormous confidence, I'm so proud of that chapter of my life, I was a very late developer and no way could I have done a traditional degree like law/medicine, I'm probably intelligent but my brain doesn't work like that.
My years at Uni inc foundation were truly my happiness in terms of work, I was able to be truly authentic, I'd found my place in the world and it filled me up and fuelled the rest of my life and any success I've had.