For 40+ years I taught, usually out of town, which meant creative packing and arranging travel. The best way for me to approach teaching was to organize ‘tours’ where I would try to find two or three (sometimes more) events so that the various groups could share the cost of getting me to them.
Over the years I was able to earn more from teaching for individual groups because so many conferences were paying less than my already too low daily teaching fee. So mostly I only applied to teach at a conference if it was in a location I wanted to visit, or if I had people in the area (friends/teachers) I wanted to spend some time with.
In the textile field there has been quite a range of payment offered and at times I had to weigh the ‘exposure’ I would get from teaching at a conference and hope that if people attending the conference found me helpful, I would get more opportunities to teach in that geographic area.
Eventually I had to come to grips with the fact that ‘exposure’ is at best iffy, and at worst, I would be attending and working at some conferences by subsidizing the event by being out of pocket.
Recently I heard of events being touted that were not paying the instructors to teach. At all. They were offering money towards travel, but that was it. Since most events are geared towards the organizers making money, they were literally asking the instructors to make them money by not paying them any kind of teaching fee.
This is a disturbing trend that isn’t confined to the textile arts. I follow a number of authors on social media and one of them posted an ‘offer’ they were only too happy to refuse – attend an event, get a small amount towards their travel, present seminars for no compensation BUT they could sell their books at the author signing. Oh, but the event would be taking 25% of any sales.
Please, do not participate in any such event. If no teachers (or other creatives – musicians, authors, artists) will take part in this kind of event, they cannot happen!
Conferences need to pay their instructors just like they pay for the venue and marketing. Conferences need to cover the costs of getting the instructors to their event and pay for accommodation and food.
For our conference we chose to pay a travel allowance and per diem for food. This allowed us to budget our finances accordingly. We were as generous as possible in terms of the daily fee and prior to the instructors even arriving, their payment cheques were ready for them to pick up at the event itself.
They did not have to submit receipts which we then haggled over. And they went home with their payment in their pockets rather than wait weeks (or more) for their payment.
We did this in part because it allowed our treasurer to track expenses very closely because we and the instructors knew how much money they were going to be getting. We did not ask the instructors to finances the event by waiting for payment.
If we want textile crafts to continue to grow and remain healthy, we must pay our instructors a Fair Fibre Wage. We must put money into the pockets of the people who are knowledgeable in order to keep them teaching us.
We need to pay the designers, the artists, the musicians. They need the income and we need their input.