Who we CAN help:
- Individual professional visual artists and craftspeople living and working in London
Who we CANNOT help:
- Commercial (for profit) galleries and organisations
- Practitioners whose main career is not in the visual arts or crafts
- Artists and craftspeople who do not live and work in London
- Practitioners requiring advice on non-English law
- If you require legal advice and information but we cannot help you, try the links described in our FAQ section.
What we CAN help with:
Q&A can cover any issue surrounding visual arts and crafts practice, including:
- Copyright
- Contracts
- Licensing
- Moral rights
- Image rights
- Censorship
- Import and export
- Health and safety
- and any other element relating to a professional artist or craftsperson's career.
What we CANNOT help with:
- Q&A cannot answer litigious or potentially litigious queries - you wil be redirected to a list of practising solicitors with an explanation as to why Q&A cannot help.
- International legal systems, or those of any other country outside of England.
- Ongoing legal advice - Q&A is a first port of contact for general legal advice on specific queries. It is not intended to be a service to support practitioners through, for example, detailed contractual negotiations or amendments, drafting letters or litigation
- Telephone or face to face advice - Q&A is an email only legal advice service. If you do not have an email address, you can get one for free from Hotmail, Yahoo! or your internet service provider.
How the service works:
- Q&A is a free legal advice service for London-based professional visual artists and craftspeople.
- Enquirers go through the online legal advice and links provided in Artquest's legal advice pages, The Artlaw Archive and the Q&A links page.
- If no alternative, existing online advice is specific enough for your query, you send it to us on the online form.
- We pass this query on to our legal specialist art lawyer Henry Lydiate, who lets us know if he needs more information. If so, we let you know within 5 working days; if not, you get a response within 5 working days.
- Your response will aim to fill out the options you have and may direct you to alternative legal advice services, or suggest other legal support.
- We only provide responses via email - there is no option for either a face to face or telephone meeting. If you do not have an email address, you can get one for free from Hotmail, Yahoo! or your internet service provider.
We are unable to provide direct contact details for any of our legal advisors; Q&A is an email forwarding and response service between practitioners and these lawyers. Q&A provides legal information and advice for professional visual artists and craftspeople living and working in London under English law only. You should read our disclaimer before using any of our services.
How Q&A began:
Artquest is funded by Arts Council England and the University of the Arts London, and is based in the University's offices in Davies Street, London, W1K 5DA. The Q&A pilot programme was funded by a direct grant from Arts Council England and the continuing service is funded directly by Artquest.
The result of a national pilot scheme, Q&A was funded during a pilot year by Arts Council England's national office and is currently being evaluated as part of Arts Council England's wide-ranging Time:Space:Money research. Following evaluation by ACE a decision will be made regarding long term national provision of legal services to visual arts practitioners across England. In the meantime, Q&A will continue to run as a service for London-based practitioners only.
Further links and helpful pages:
You can check the advice and information on this site's Legal FAQ's and Links sections, and also on the Artlaw Archive website. To find out more about what Artquest does and for whom, see the Artquest website.
For more information on the Q&A project, contact us at qanda@artquest.org.uk.
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