art as a career?

Please help. My parents are pretty angry that I want Art to be a part of my career once I graduate uni. They always wanted me to go into Law since I was a kid. I haven’t even started A-levels yet. I really want to keep art in my life but everyone around me has been telling me that I’ll die on the streets. Is Art really that useless? What jobs can I get with, let’s say, a Fine Arts degree?

Well, your parents don't dictate what career you can and will do. Even if you don't want to do a degree in law, you can do it via professional qualifications and apprenticeships. If anything, law can be more of a backup career or something to support your artistic pursuits (although you will be pressed for time considering both law and art each require a lot of time).

Strictly speaking, you don't really need a degree to go into art. With an art degree, the most relevant jobs would be an arts curator, art teacher/lecturer, or an art appraiser/expert (you can strictly also work on restoring art as well as a conservator). Most of these jobs (other than a teacher) would not require you to have a degree of any sort, not even as an artist.
The only job that will strictly require a degree level education would be an architect, which is a professional occupation i.e. it's regulated by law (don't ask why). However, you can get into the role via apprenticeships (albeit very rare).
If you want a certain slant to a line of work, you can look into product design or product design engineering (the former requires no maths and more likely requiring art, the latter requires maths and possibly a science).
Note: you can't do architecture with a bachelor's in fine art.

You can then go for jobs that ask for any degree (mostly because you don't need degrees to go into them). These include:


You can also go into the following areas with further courses at collge (but kind of defeats the point of dong a degree):


You can then go into the following areas if you decide to later do a relevant postgrad degree:

You can then go into the following areas with specific professional qualifications:


So no, you won't live on the streets with a fine arts degree (although it's very tough to live as an artist without a second source of income). Most people who go into the arts would do something to earn money on the side (hopefully not just catering, but it's very typical). If you haven't planned this far, then I suggest you think about what you want to do.
Do also note, law is a very competitive career anyway. If your heart is not in the job, it's going to be very difficult to survive.

Thank you so much! This really reassured me.

Please help. My parents are pretty angry that I want Art to be a part of my career once I graduate uni. They always wanted me to go into Law since I was a kid. I haven’t even started A-levels yet. I really want to keep art in my life but everyone around me has been telling me that I’ll die on the streets. Is Art really that useless? What jobs can I get with, let’s say, a Fine Arts degree?

Please help. My parents are pretty angry that I want Art to be a part of my career once I graduate uni. They always wanted me to go into Law since I was a kid. I haven’t even started A-levels yet. I really want to keep art in my life but everyone around me has been telling me that I’ll die on the streets. Is Art really that useless? What jobs can I get with, let’s say, a Fine Arts degree?