Why Most Artists Lose Money On Their First Public Art Commission
Episode 225
16 July, 2026

Artists – most of you who take your first public art commission lose money on it. Not because the budget was bad, but because nobody told you a public commission is not a bigger version of a private one. It is a different job, with a different shape, and the work that does not appear in the brief – procurement, contracts, maintenance, stakeholder hours – is what quietly eats your fee.

By the time you realise what you have signed up for, you are eighteen months in, with years still to run, and no honest way out.

Here is what I want to give you today: the six things that genuinely change when you step from a private commission into a public one; the hidden costs inside the budget that almost no commissioner spells out, and that you have to know to ask about; and the support structure you need around you before you accept the commission, not after, because by then it is too late.

This is for artists invited to apply for their first public commission, and for artists already inside one who can feel the ground shifting and have not yet been able to name what is happening.