Help! I Hate…My Debt

Every week, The Art Journal’s resident art world Agony Aunt Charlotte Jansen answers your questions about access, gatekeeping and sticky social problems.

Have a burning question for her? Get in touch anonymously here.

I thought I was on the brink of the biggest opportunity of my life, after being selected for a project that promised to transform my career. I reorganised my life around the assumption that it would happen. Then the project was suddenly cancelled.

I was left with a huge, frightening financial hole, but what’s almost worse is the sense of loss. I turned down other opportunities, made sacrifices and invested in the belief that I was part of something important.

Now I’m trying to work out how to pay my bills while pretending that I’m fine. In an industry where everyone seems to be thriving, admitting that you’re struggling feels like professional suicide.

I’m also angry. It feels like the people behind the project have the resources to absorb its failure, while the less privileged are left to pick up the pieces.

How can I move forward without becoming bitter about an artworld that encourages us to dream big, but rarely protects us when those dreams collapse?

What you write exposes one of the biggest problems in the artworld. So many of us are barely surviving on what we’re able to earn – often far below our worth – with no support or savings if the shit hits the fan.

Financial precarity and class deepen the inequalities that prevent so many talented people from even embarking on a career. Only about 8 percent of creative workers in the UK are from working-class backgrounds, and that figure has halved over the last 20 years.

Working for free, or for barely enough to live on, is standard practice, alongside zero-hours contracts with no protection or benefits. If you’re from a privileged background, you’re four times more likely to enter the creative fields – because you can.

Even those who are generally better off are struggling to make ends meet, with insanely low and insecure pay for jobs that often demand degree-level education. People have been calling this out for years.

But little has actually changed to make the artworld more accessible or to protect people who face enormous financial burdens when projects are pulled at short notice – which is, sadly, very common.

As you say, one of the cruellest parts of a cancelled dream project is that you’re left grieving for a future that never happened. It’s not just the project; it’s the better version of your future that you imagined and now need to mourn.

When an opportunity is truly extraordinary, you make decisions for that future self. You turn things down, take risks and rearrange your priorities. And if the whole thing disappears, you’re left wondering how much of yourself you gave away to something you were never really in control of in the first place.

I tend to think that ambition requires a certain degree of irrational optimism, particularly in the arts, where the next opportunity is so often presented as the one that will finally make everything else worthwhile.

We’re encouraged to be visionary, resourceful, adaptable and grateful to have been invited into the room. We’re less often encouraged to ask who pays when the people at the head of the table change their minds.

Your anger is justified. The system celebrates creatives for taking risks while leaving them to absorb the consequences alone. The people with the greatest financial security can afford to call something ‘an experiment’. For those without it, the same experiment can mean years of debt. This isn’t a personal failing. It’s a structural problem, and pretending otherwise only protects the people who benefit from it.

That’s all to say that no one could blame you for feeling bitter about this. But let’s separate the immediate crisis from the existential one. Debt has a way of making every other problem feel permanent. Before you work out what this means for your career, work out what it means for next month.

Make a clear account of what you owe, what you need to live on and which payments are most urgent. Speak to creditors where necessary, and seek free, independent debt advice if you’re struggling to manage repayments. Put a plan in place.

You don’t need to announce your circumstances to the artworld, but it might help to share them with a few trusted people – friends, family or colleagues. Pretending to be fine takes its toll. You may discover that people you admire have survived similar catastrophes – even if nobody puts them in their bios – and may be able to help or offer advice.

The project’s cancellation does not erase the work you did, the relationships you formed or what you learned. You were capable of doing something extraordinary enough to be invited. That remains true. And perhaps there is something here worth holding on to: the distinction between the dream and the institution that offered to fulfil it. You can keep your appetite for ambitious, improbable things without giving any single organisation ownership of your future.

And next time, be as cautious and demanding as you can. Ask for contracts, cancellation terms, expenses and financial commitments to be agreed in writing. Build contingencies into your plans where possible. This isn’t cynicism; you can believe in the work and still protect the person doing it.

Oh, and give yourself permission to be bitter for a while. There’s no virtue in rushing towards a lesson or turning every disaster into a triumphant narrative of resilience. Sometimes something terrible happens, and it takes time to understand what it has cost you. Just don’t let the people who disappointed you determine what you believe is possible from here. You went into this project believing your life could open up. It did, though not in the way you expected.