Why I Pay Children For The Artwork On This Blog
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Illustrated by Alyssa D., Leia O., Beatrix R., Mila A., and Even D.
When I first started planning No Magic Lecture, I knew I wanted the blog to do a few specific things. First, I wanted it to be useful for anyone who lives with children, be they teachers, parents, grandparents, or child-free friends and family. Second, I wanted to inspire readers to think intellectually about children and ourselves as caretakers and community members, something we shy away from in our culture, as though the closer we are to children, the less sophisticated we are as adults. And lastly, in connection with that damaging myth, I wanted to advocate for the deep, complex work of children. Children’s ability to adapt, to trust, and to constantly make connections with people and ideas should inspire us as adults. Yet we so often dismiss children as “just playing,” as though play equals leisure and leisure equals frivolity. False equations all around. Childhood is work like any stretch of personal growth is work - young children just haven’t learned to hate the process of learning the way so many of us have.
Because I wanted No Magic Lecture to be a place where children’s experiences and ideas were visible, I decided I would use their drawings to illustrate the posts. Young children draw constantly, often relegated to the kind of trivialized play I mentioned above, and while we can’t keep and cherish every single sheet they’ve ever scribbled on, we can learn to interpret and appreciate the thoughts their images communicate. To do this, we have to learn to view children as thinkers first and foremost. Researchers of themselves and those around them. We have to value that work. So, for NML, I knew I had to do that literally — As in paying children for their art and labor.
The idea of paying for artwork made sense to me not only as an advocate for children but as a writer. I can’t tell you how many uncompensated hours I have spent writing, either crafting formally published works or practicing and honing the craft. The amount of time it takes to become skilled in any art is a sunk cost, but when it comes to finished products, creatives are supposed to work for the sake of having worked. Because we love it? It’s a similar justification for underpaying child-care workers - we (mostly women) should do this work because we love children, not because we want to be paid. But I also love to pay my rent. I also love opportunities to travel, engage with my community outside my home, read books, be part of the world, and anything else that helps me live a full life and, if it has to be stated, “fills the well” so that I can be a better, more enriched caretaker, educator, and artist. (<--- This is a lot, I know.) So how could I, pressed as I am by both of these professional binds, possibly ask children to give me their work, their time, their labor, for free? I couldn’t.
But…the act of asking parents if I could pay their very young children for drawings was super weird (at first). Despite the logic and philosophy I had in my head, there was something that felt unsavory just about broaching the subject. It took me a few conversations to realize that money is an uncomfortable subject for many people in general. However I believe that part of learning to live in the world more deeply with others is learning to move meaningfully through discomfort. That’s what I teach children, and so I also have to teach myself. After the initial surprise, the first few parents I spoke to were more than receptive and brokered the publication of all the blog images on NML so far.
So how does this work? First, I ask parents of children under ten if it’s okay to extend the invitation to their child. If so, I suggest a few options for compensation that have worked well within the values of other families I’ve worked with. Some families are totally fine with cash (the going rate is about a dollar per drawing, based loosely on what the child would realistically be doing with the money). Other families feel more comfortable with a token of gratitude, like a card from me or a small gift of stickers. It’s all cool to me as long as the child is interested in participating and sees it as an exchange. I then give those parents all the information about what and how I would share their child’s work, including options for anonymity and credit to their child. I then suggest a few prompts I think will work well for future posts, like “a family,” “two people talking,” or “a place where people play, “ emphasizing that any images are fine. Scribbles are fine. There is no need to pressure any certain outcome. Just the child’s effort and marks are valuable enough.
Once I have the images, I convert their color into gray scale to highlight the form and intentionality of the child’s mark-making. I might also crop certain images, but overall, I leave the child’s work to be interpreted alongside the blog posts without other edits or comments. This way, the children’s work, and mine can be in dialogue together with the reader- a virtual meeting of minds, hands, and hearts.
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P.S. No Magic Lecture is currently seeking submissions! If your child under the age of ten would like to contribute images to No Magic Lecture (Seriously! Ask them!), send me a message here.