BIG Small Talk: Meet April Britski

BIG small Talk is a chance to meet and introduce people that Harbour Collective encounters along the way. Sasha Kucas speaks with the incredible April Britski, Executive Director of CARFAC.

Rising out of bed is prompted by her eight-year-old son and motivated by a steaming cappuccino. This former Art Historian starts each day with curiosity, knowing she will get to do really cool stuff. 

Comparable to taking delicious forkfuls of a decadent chocolate layer cake with flavourful frosting, our conversation uncovered one fascinating topic after another. I strayed from my initial questions and felt like Alice in Wonderland falling through the rabbit hole. Without a doubt, this shero unapologetically moves mountains with quiet determination. 

Here is what we discussed.

Tell me about yourself. I understand that you are the Executive Director of CARFAC. 

I am the National Executive Director of CARFAC, an association for visual and media artists. We provide professional development opportunities for artists and advocate for better pay and legal rights.

How did you get involved with CARFAC?

I think back to when I was a student, like many other art students, we searched for information about what the real day-to-day life as an artist entails. Discussions on artist admin work are often absent from art school teachings. They focus on teaching skills in painting, sculpture, or print-making. In my case, it was mostly drawing, media arts and extended media. The essential and pragmatic realities of an artist’s life were missing in the curriculum. I had wonderful professors who shared bits of this information here or there, but things like how to make a CV, write grants or exhibition proposals, where to exhibit, or what should be in a contract when you have an exhibition were things we thought we just had to fend for ourselves and learn as we go. That is how I found out about CARFAC. They do all the legwork for artists and galleries by providing industry standards for artists, galleries, and organizations. I never wanted to be an artist, but I wanted to work with them. Given my prior experience, I thought I would probably work in a gallery. I was interested in playing that intermediary role of guiding relationships within the sector.

What are you working on right now?

How much time have you got? 

I do a lot of presentations and talks about career planning and educating people on copyrights and other labour rights. Since the inception of CARFAC in 1968, our main objective has been recommending artist fees for exhibitions, reproductions, and other services. Our website contains all the guidelines that we regularly review and revise. I just returned from a week at the Banff Centre for the Early Career Artist Residency program, where I spoke about the business side of art, the programs and services CARFAC offers, and things we are working on. 

CARFAC just created an advisory group of thirty artists and public art staff in municipalities. We are consulting on setting new rates for public art, including new payment guidelines, standard contracts, and calls for artists. 

For the last few years, CARFAC has developed a resource guide, podcast series, and workshops about Indigenous Protocols and how they relate to visual art, and engaging Indigenous artists and communities. An advisory group of Indigenous artists and cultural workers worked on this project, available at:https://www.indigenousprotocols.art/. The initiative evolved, and now the group is forming their own collective. 

Also, for the last fifteen years, CARFAC has advocated for an artist’s resale right. Our goal has been to get it into the Copyright Act because when an artist sells or gives away artwork, and if it is sold again later on, the artist does not get anything, even though the work grows in value over time. We recommend that the artist gets 5% of all subsequent sales of their art. Over 90 countries around the world follow that recommendation.

Would you say your passion is advocating for other artists?

Absolutely. 

If anyone told me in my undergrad that I would be lobbying the government, making changes to tax laws for artists, negotiating with galleries and museums, or that I would be building a blockchain platform, I would not have believed them. The different types of policies that relate to artists and require advocacy are numerous and never-ending. There is always something new and of interest. Just recently, I worked with a team for CARFAC on developing a brief to submit to the federal government on the consultation on AI. Two years ago, I did not know what AI was. Now, we have a formal submission. I think concerns lie with the government making exceptions in the Copyright Act for AI companies to use images freely. CARFAC recommends that the law remains the same and uses the three ‘C’s’ principles. Artists should give Consent to the use of their work, receive Credit if their work trains AI and produces products, and receive Compensation.

Harbour Collective did some programming around NFTs. You mentioned blockchain. Tell me more about that.

We are one of the partners that built a blockchain platform, but not to sell NFTs – that was never the goal. There are lots of really cool things you can do with blockchain. In ours, artists can create a space to share their work through a living, interactive CV; installation views, sketches, and works in progress track the life cycle of any work. Since we are advocating for resale rights, this ability to track an artwork’s provenance is of particular relevance. It’s a robust portfolio of your work. Artists can issue a certificate of creation to someone who has purchased their work. An artist can list all the places and people that represent them. We are exploring different features for museums and galleries when sharing works in their collections or exhibitions. In the example of public art, if a mural catches your eye, you can scan a QR code to discover more about the artist. It could be a public education tool for curators and artists, too.  

That reminds me of Imprimo. Is CARFAC working and promoting Imprimo?

Yes. That’s the platform I’m talking about. We have been an early partner in its development. It is a platform created by Prescient Innovations and associated with Access Copyright. Access Copyright and CARFAC have similar interests when it comes to artists’ intellectual property rights. This portfolio website is very secure, ensuring the identity of an account holder with a built-in feature similar to vaccination passports. That way you know who the rightsholder is in an artwork.

What inspires or motivates you?

Anything that makes the life of an artist better is my inspiration.

Do you use your art history background?

Yes, but indirectly. I contact artists all the time. I find it exciting when asking people I have studied, or who I went to school with, to speak at a conference. The skills obtained when writing my thesis are very helpful to me in this job. I write a lot of policies and briefs. Knowing about Canadian Art as a historian, having worked in different galleries, and having direct contact with distinct communities is vital to my work. 

What moment in your life would you choose to re-live?

There are many. A particularly memorable moment in my life involves the Canadian Status of the Artist Act. The Act gives organizations such as CARFAC collective bargaining rights with federal institutions. So, we negotiated this with the National Gallery of Canada. It was not easy. We had a lot of bumps for many years. It was so challenging that we reached an impasse in our negotiations. We took them to court, and we won. They appealed it, took us to court, and they won. Then we went to the Supreme Court of Canada. That day in the Supreme Court, we had to convince nine judges who may or may not know anything about art that what we were arguing was just. Unanimously, the judges agreed with us. It was one of the most gratifying moments of my life. Canada now has the first union agreement for visual artists all because of our work. That day was incredible. 

What is something you have read or seen this week that is interesting?

Having been at the Early Career residency program in Banff this week, I found out what some artists there were doing with their time, what they wanted to make, and what they wanted to do with their careers. When I was in art school, artist-run culture was important for emerging artists to get into. Nobody encouraged us to do commercial work, and having an art dealer was not common practice. Whereas I am sure, thirty, forty years before that, when there were no artist-run centres, artists presumably would have had a dealer and work commercially. Artists now have a mix of the two in their practice and are figuring out how to make that happen. Diversity is the answer, and young people know that probably better than anyone. Nobody at the residency thought they would, or could, be an artist full-time. Developing strategies for selling certain kinds of work and exhibiting others as a career choice is sophisticated. 

Britski might squeeze in some exercise after dropping her son at school. Her days are long, filled with emails, meetings, and writing. Quality time in the evening includes playing Uno, watching Netflix, or pursuing her daily habit of drawing and painting.

Do please rest that brain of yours. From all the artists out there, we thank you, April.

April Britski is the Executive Director of CARFAC, Canada’s national association for visual artists. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Art History with a minor in Studio Art from the University of Saskatchewan, and a Master of Arts in Canadian Art History from Carleton University. April has worked and volunteered as an arts administrator for over 25 years, and joined the staff of CARFAC National in 2005. Her primary responsibility at CARFAC is the development and implementation of organizational policies and strategies related to artists’ economic and legal rights. She is actively involved in the research, development, and coordination of advocacy efforts, including CARFAC’s Artist’s Resale Right campaign. She assists with negotiating collective agreements for visual and media artists under the Status of the Artist Act, as well as other national voluntary agreements with presenters. April is a co-founder of Artists’ Legal Services Ottawa and the Visual Arts Alliance, and she has served on several boards and committees of cultural policy and artist-run organizations in Canada and abroad. Originally from Saskatchewan, April currently resides on the traditional unceded territories of the Central and Coast Salish Peoples including the Kwikwetlem, Musqueam, Skxwú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.