Reflections on multicultural artists' employment and career prospects

This paper analyses multicultural artists' perceptions of their employment and career prospects in the arts. We do this first by reviewing the relatively small body of literature on multicultural artists' careers and supplement that with a literature review of general vocational development literature. Further, we examine the degree to which multicultural artists possess the generic employability skills necessary to gain and retain employment in Australia. We use data from a small-scale qualitative study, conducted in Western Australia, which identified artists' perceptions of barriers to participation in the arts in general and to paid employment in particular. From the literature and studied data, we propose a 'Dual Responsibilities Framework for Career Management of Multicultural Artists'.