The Answer is No brings you conversations with artists, writers, and filmmakers about how they sustain their careers and stay sane by saying no to bad gigs in order to say yes to the good ones.

Story Behind the Podcast

For nearly a decade, Alexis Clements, host and producer of The Answer is No, has been writing about and giving workshops on how artists get paid (and don’t get paid), what income and success looks like for them, and how they’ve organized to change their fields.

In that time she’s had tons of conversations with individuals and groups of artists about the realities they face when sharing their work with the world. And she herself, as a writer and filmmaker, has had to deal with contracts, distribution deals, organizations that never come through with the money they owe, fellow artists who are amazing collaborators, and some who aren’t.

Those conversations have taught her a lot, giving her a much clearer picture of the realities artists face in trying to build and maintain their careers. But so often those conversations are just between a couple people, or had quietly (and not so quietly) at the end a workshop or event.

The goal with this podcast is to open up some of those exchanges to a wider audience, to resist the ways in which so much of the arts is shrouded in smoke and mirrors — a bit of mutual aid through storytelling.

You can’t understand what a good deal is (or a bad one) if you don’t have a sense of what terms everyone else is being offered and what kinds of things are unacceptable under any circumstances. Artists, particularly artists of color, women, trans and non-binary artists, and so many others who have been systematically excluded from larger institutions, have less access to information about the field because of that exclusion. Our hope is to help build knowledge through the stories we tell in order to empower listeners to say no to gigs that are not benefiting them and work towards a more equitable field for everyone.

Also, here are a few of the articles that Alexis has published on the topic:

• “The Secret Recipe for Success in the Arts” in the Los Angeles Review of Books
• “What Are the Chances? Success in the Arts in the 21st Century” in the Los Angeles Review of Books
• “Five Things I Learned While Teaching a Class on Arts and Labor” in Hyperallergic
• “How Are Artists Getting Paid?” in Hyperallergic
• “A Clear Set of Demands: How to Be a Constituency of Artists” in Hyperallergic
• “Dismantling White Supremacy Among US Poets” in Hyperallergic
• “Making the Case for Debt Abolition” in Hyperallergic
• “Indicting Higher Education in the Arts and Beyond” in Hyperallergic
• “New Data Reveals Artists Aren’t Gettin’ Paid” in Hyperallergic

The Land We Occupy

Host and producer Alexis Clements and co-producer and editor Ali Cotterill both live in Brooklyn, New York, on land that has historically been occupied by the Canarsie and Lenape people. Our guests come from and live across the lengthy continent now known as America, both in the southern hemisphere and the northern, which is currently and was traditionally the land of hundreds of indigenous groups.

While we consider questions of equity and sustainability in this podcast, we also want to consider what it means to be present on lands that were taken from the people who stewarded them for centuries. We also want to consider the many migrations (forced and otherwise) that have brought people to this continent and what it means to steward this land and our lives on it in a way that seeks to avoid exploitation and is built from principles of mutual benefit and sustenance.

Share Your Story

What are the stories you’ve got to tell from your life as an artist? We want to hear them.

Get in touch in writing or send a voice memo to theanswerisnoshow AT gmail.com