Fairfax County is home to plenty of artists, but many of them struggle to find space for practicing and displaying their craft, a survey recently released by ArtsFairfax found.
According to the Fairfax Regional Artist Survey, limited opportunities for networking and a scarcity of appropriate, affordable venues are the biggest obstacles to artists presenting their work in Fairfax County, pushing many of them to other localities.
“Fairfax has a robust group of artists who don’t get paid very much,” AMS research lead and project manager Lauren Frankel summed up when unveiling the survey results last week. “All of you professional artists are producing art that has a footprint outside Fairfax County. That’s something ArtsFairfax would like to change.”
ArtsFairfax, the county’s designated arts agency, and AMS, a consulting firm that specializes in arts and culture organizations, shared the survey results on June 25 at a community engagement event hosted by the Reston Community Center at Hunters Woods (2310 Colts Neck Road), though a full report won’t be released until this fall.
The survey was the first study of its kind conducted by ArtsFairfax, which says it was looking to better understand how many artists live in the area — including Fairfax and Falls Church cities as well as the county — and what help they need to succeed professionally.
Available online in English, Spanish, Farsi, Korean and Hindi from May 28 through December 2024, the survey received 1,480 responses over those six months, including 1,019 from people who identified as practicing artists who live or work in Fairfax and Falls Church.
Most respondents (86%) said they either are or aspire to be professional artists, but only 28% count on their art as their primary source of income. About half (51%) of respondents reported an annual household income of under $100,000 — a number that jumped to 62% for those whose art is their main source of income.
According to the survey, 22% of respondents overall and 28% of artists with art as their primary income earn under $50,000 a year. In comparison, only 34% of Fairfax County residents overall have a household income below $100,000, per U.S. Census estimates.
Because the survey was entirely voluntary, it can’t necessarily be taken as scientifically representative of the local artist population as a whole, but the sample size is “healthy” enough to offer some useful insights, Frankel said at the community meeting.
As highlighted by ArtsFairfax in a press release, notable data points included:
- Fairfax is missing out on available art because it is challenging to present work in the region. Of the survey participants who regularly perform or present their art to the public, half of them present 75% or more of their work outside of the Fairfax region.
- Individual artists identify weak local networks and a lack of appropriate and affordable spaces as challenges. 56% of individual artists said that the things they need most to share their work in the Fairfax area are more affordable facilities and help networking and connecting to organizations.
- The need for stronger networks was more important for some segments of the individual artist community. 63% of artists of color and 62% of artists under 45 said it was one of the things they needed the most.
While finding space for their work is difficult across the board, rental costs were especially cited as a challenge by those in the performing arts, including theater, dance, film, music and comedy.
The survey’s findings seemed to generally align with the experiences of the couple dozen community members who attended the engagement event. Most of them were either artists themselves or somehow involved in the arts, with a number of teachers, curators and programmers in the mix.
During small-table discussions that followed AMS’ presentation of the survey results, attendees shared a desire to connect more with fellow artists, whether to collaborate, learn from or just to talk. However, the county’s sprawling geography, the pandemic-era shift toward online activities and the perception of many arts as solitary activities, among other factors, can make building those relationships difficult, particularly for people who are new to the area or just getting started as artists.
Attendees also lamented the limited availability of funding and other resources at both an individual and an institutional level. RCC’s theater programmer noted that he has to turn down a lot of requests, because the space is “booked solid” months in advance.
“Tabling at events [in Fairfax County] can be thousands of dollars, but I can go to Richmond and vend for free basically,” one man said.
Others suggested they could use assistance with marketing and social media so it takes less time away from their actual work.
With the local arts scene too often overshadowed by the prestige of D.C., raising awareness of opportunities in Fairfax County for both artists and their potential patrons remains a challenge, an attendee said. He praised ArtsFairfax’s partnership with Tysons Corner Center, which regularly hosts pop-up art exhibits, for bringing attention to visual artists.
On a positive note, nearly everyone present agreed that the community engagement event was a success, one that could perhaps be replicated with regular roundtables or meetings organized in each magisterial districts or for different artistic disciplines.
The regional artist survey’s findings will help shape ArtsFairfax’s next strategic plan update, a process that will start rolling out to the public in September, President and CEO Stuart Holt told FFXnow.
Since joining in spring 2024, Holt says one of his goals has been to figure out how ArtsFairfax can better support individual artists and creators, expanding beyond its traditional focus on organizations. The agency’s recently redesigned website, for instance, includes job listings, calls for artists and a directory of profiles for both organizations and artists.
“We want to ensure our local, individual artists have access to the professional and promotional resources we offer to arts nonprofits,” he said. “We’ve made great progress in growing our arts directory and promoting local artist calls, so the next challenge for ArtsFairfax will be to strengthen the professional network for area artists.”
