OUGD602 - Start Up Wednesday - Everything Legal

In order to gain more knowledge on the legal aspects of setting up and creating your own business I attended a university-run session with an external solicitor. The session covered everything from business structures to copyright cases and provided a wealth of knowledge that could be directly applied to my own freelance business after graduation.



Commercial Business Structures

Sole Trader - working by yourself, no employees, no forms, just pay taxes, individually takes all the risks and could end up personally bankrupt if things go wrong, £12 to become a sole trader

Limited Company - protected from personal risks

Partnership - two or more people coming together to make money, all equally responsible for risks, can all be sued or made bankrupt, only person you have to tell is the tax man

Limited Liability Partnership - cross between a limited company and a partnership, allows you to continue working as a partnership but gives you the protection of a limited company, have to fill in forms to apply



Limited Company

Members/shareholders are the founding members of a limited company, or anyone who invests in the business

Members/shareholders ask people to run the company for them, call directors - responsible for the day to day running

Directors ask a senior management team to run the business for them, called staff

In a small organisation, one person can do each role

Limited liability protects the members/shareholders - it means that members/shareholders can put money into the business and if it goes wrong they’ll lose their investment but not they’re personal assets (house, car etc)



Limited Liability Partnership

Structure a bit simpler that a Limited Company

Partners > Senior Managements Team > Employees

Long-term funding from places likes the Arts Council aren’t for commercial businesses, only for not-for-profit organisations

Faulty business structures = wasted time, energy and money, void transactions (got the technical details of a deal wrong and so it’s voided), personal liability, reputation, criminal offences



Finding the right structure

Consider the paperwork you’ll need, the taxes you’ll need to manage, how to take the profit of your business, your personal responsibility if your business makes losses

Government website called Companies House https://www.gov.uk/get-information-about-a-company

Allows you to view information available on any company registered in the UK

Having your home address as a registered address is the easiest but means lawyers can find you

Once the company is running you have to file a copy of your accounts every year (viewable online)

If you want to be a company you have to release certain personal details

If you want the protection you need transparency



Trading Names

Must declare your official name(s) (from birth certificate) on all documents

But can also operate under a trading name

All formal business communications (invoices, letters, emails, all paperwork) must include:

Formal name, company number, VAT number (if registered), correspondence address (must charge VAT on top of your selling prices if you’re making £80,000+ ish)



Names and Brands

Brands are protected under intellectual property under trademarks ™ (for free, a free trademark)

But for the best protection you must fill in a form = a registered trademark ® (£170 for ten years UK protection, can pay half up front) (£1,500 for the whole of Europe)

Trademarks operate under a class system

Books are paper goods protected under Class 16 - can register the Shy Bairns trademark for just books would only be £170

To fully protect a name or brand you must register a trademark in all classes that you’re operating in

To prove you had a trademark before anyone else, keep records of how long you’ve being using a name/brand

Unofficial people sometimes fish new trademark applications to try and bill and scam them for more money

Can search for trademarks: https://trademarks.ipo.gov.uk/ipo-tmtext?reset

Search for who owns domains names at: www.nominet.uk/



Patents

Protecting a new invention, costs tens of thousands of pounds

Don’t tell anyone about it until you’ve filled in the forms - if you tell everyone it’s not considered ‘new’


Confidentiality Agreements - if someone has signed a confidentiality agreements and then breaks it you can take action



Copyrights

Symbol is free to use in the UK and needs no registration, the more you use the symbol the more respected the protection will be

Protection of ‘works’ : original literary, dramatic musical or artistic works; sound recordings, films, broadcasts or cable programmes; arrangement of published editions

Websites and software come under literary works because of the written code

Images and text on website can come under artistic works

Publication rights ℗ - taking old work with expired copyright (like Shakespeare) and republish in a new way, the form in which content is published is the part that is copyrighted

Publishing new content would come under artistic works as well as published editions

Copyright is owned by the creator of a work, unless it’s created by an employee of a company (in which case the company owns the copyright) or you’ve signed a deal to sell your rights

Can prove its your work by posting it to yourself or posting an image online (preferably someone else’s), phones or emails isn’t necessarily safest because technology can break

If it’s an artistic or published work (including websites), copyright will last 70 years from the end of the year in which the owner died

Recorded music gets 70 years copyright from the date when it was published

Copyright restricts the copying of all or a substantial part of the work, issue copies to the public, perform/show/broadcast, adaptation

Creative Commons are a set of symbols you can put on your work to indicate that anyone can use it (public domain, carbon copy, not for commercial purposes)

Orphan Works - when you can’t find the owner of a work, write to the IPO and ask to use an orphan work



Moral Rights - the right to be credited for work
Paternity rights
Integrity rights - to prevent cropping and altering the integrity of the work
Ancillary rights
Performance rights - preventing work being performed in public
Database rights - preventing it from being added to a database
Resale rights - if your work is resold at an auction house or a gallery you will receive a royalty payment (payment and notification of sale if handled through DACS)

OUGD602 - Bloomberg New Contemporaries Proposal

On 08/03/18 Shy Bairns received an email informing the us that we had been shortlisted for New Contemporaries 2018.

At this stage, BNC requested that we send in our work. As our proposal detailed a series of workshops rather than a physical piece, it was decided that a portfolio of Shy Bairns work would be collated in order for the judges to see our capabilities, including past workshops and the publications produced by the group.

For ease of accessibility the proposal pack took the form of a simple portfolio folder, detailing our most prominent work from the past two years in chronological order. The portfolio was split into three sections; the original proposal document, examples of our past work, and example materials and proposed outcomes for the new workshop series. To differentiate between these sections, the portfolio employed three different sizes of paper, graduating from smallest at the front to largest at the back, to allow information to be located quickly.

The proposal was digitally printed on G.F Smith Brilliant White 100gsm stock and bound with a filing clip. 

OUGD602 - NEST LGBT Zine Design

Over the open submission period NEST received approximately 25 submissions, however this low number was to be expected as the zine would not be the full length of regular issues and the turn-around for submissions was shorter. The work was selected with the help of peers, staff and the Union to ensure an accurate cross-section of the LGBT community within the university was represented.

The zine was printed with Footprint Workers Co-Op, a Leeds-based risograph press. Spreads were organised into colour layers for printing, as specified by Footprint, and then sent to print in black and white as four individual files.

Creating this zine with NEST provided further opportunities to enhance my design for publications skills outside of the course. It also provided me with the opportunity to work with Footprint, which is a useful connection to make in regards to my other Risograph projects.

OUGD602 - NEST LGBT Zine Open Submissions

As part of the University's LGBTQ+ Week, NEST was asked to created a zine to represent the LGBT community at LAU. Students were asked to submit work by LGBT individuals or based around the theme of the LGBT community. To keep costs low the zine was to be printed in Risograph, rather than in full colour. Students were instructed on how to format their work correctly for this print method and given the choice of choosing to have their work printed in red, yellow, green or pink, or any combination of the colours.

A poster was created to advertise open submissions using the colours of the LGBT flag:

OUGD602 - Bloomberg New Contemporaries Application

New Contemporaries is the leading organisation supporting emergent art practice from UK art schools.

Since 1949 Bloomberg New Contemporaries has provided a critical platform for new and recent fine art graduates. Independent of place and democratic to the core, New Contemporaries is open to all. Participants are selected by a panel comprising influential art figures including curators, writers, and artists often who have themselves previously been a part of the New Contemporaries, and a rigorous process that considers the work within a broad cultural context.

New Contemporaries acknowledges that it is increasingly difficult for emerging artists to operate in the UK, as the cost of living, studios and further education all continue to rise. Since 2014, we have actively worked to address this and have put new mechanisms in place that are intended to support emerging practitioners. These include the payment of exhibition and performance fees for artists, in addition to the reimbursement of travel expenses and the covering of accommodation costs for both the launch of the show and its subsequent tour.

As an institution, New Contemporaries provides important opportunities for small collectives such as Shy Bairns, through exposure and showcasing work, and providing opportunities to gain connections. Although the organisation has a history of bias towards London based creative when selecting its shortlist, we felt it was important to apply regardless.

Traditionally, individuals who apply for BNC are individual artists with a particular specialism. Artists who are selected are asked to submit a piece of work that will then become a part of the New Contemporaries exhibition. The exhibition acts as a physical showcase of all selected artists, and is typically housed in a British leading contemporary art institution. This year the exhibition will start at St John Moors in Liverpool, and then graduate to the South London Gallery.

As Shy Bairns does not make artistic pieces, for our submission we opted to propose a series of participatory workshops that would be led in-situ in the the exhibition space. The aim of the workshops would be to provide the space and opportunity for the audience and other artists to respond and critique the exhibition, and more widely New Contemporaries as an institution. As a group we believe that there are many creative systems in place that allow artists and designers to be put in a spotlight without any real critique of the work or the system itself, and this often leads to bias at the top of the creative hierarchy, whether that’s race, sexuality, gender etc. We want to provide the public with materials to document their responses - this will include basic paper materials, a list of questions that the public could answer and some prompts that would encourage them to draw or write in response to the work around them. As an extension of these workshops, we would then go into the space every two weeks to collect these responses and turn it into a series of publications. The end result would be roughly 15 publications over the 30 week course of the exhibition.

A digital PDF proposal for this idea was put together in accordance with the entry specifications: