I am not sure how genuinely art agencies actually do incorporate/utilise artists. How many of the jobs that get created are genuinely 1. part time 2. flexible in their work patterns? Best way I've found to support your career ie earn the necessary £££s... is to create your own job/work. Can be precarious at times especially when you have dependents but at least you keep a degree of sanity. But even that creates issues in retaining integrity... you end up working on a sort of continuum i'm finding with the really 'genuine' practice at one end and the rest sliding along to various degrees of prostitution... (sorry its early in the morning) and before you know it you are running a variation on the theme of workshops which you thought was part of your extended socially engaged practice... but when you weren't keeping your eye on the ball somehow mutated into something else! Sort of thinking out loud here. That's perhaps a role of collaboration... to help keep your critical, engaged eye on what you do. Very hard to that in isolation all the time, especially when working on big projects with non-art agencies (might I suspect be even worse with actual art agencies - at least with non-art settings, it is genuine, open non-art - in art settings... cosiness...self congratulatory etc springs to mind.... oh dear it is early in the morning!).