William Hunt performing Call John the Boatman at VIVID for Endurance, 24 April 2008'

Realising the Value is now published on the a-n website. It analyses the immediate situation for a small number of visual arts organisations that are due to lose their core funding from April 2012.

In April 2010, Su Jones of a-n asked me to research the likely effect of losing their RFO funding on 15 practice-led visual arts organisations. The resulting paper, Ladders for Development, attempted to articulate the value of what these organisations, and others like them, provided to the arts ecology.  It found, for example, that several of them nurtured and gave opportunity to talented artists at the beginnings of their career who later went on to achieve significant mainstream success in the art world: examples include Tacita Dean, current holder of the Unilever Turbine Hall commission at Tate Modern, and Simon Faithful.

Last October, a-n asked me to revisit the organisations and update the report.

The result is Realising the Value. It shows that the immediate future is still very unsettled for them, spanning an outlook that is at best cautiously optimistic and at worst, finite. Redundancies are already taking place with the likelihood of more to come, and the services, professional and social value these organisations offer to artists and to their local and regional communities are already being scaled back.

These organisations are representative of other comparable organisations in a similar situation; and as the Size Matters report demonstrates, also representative in important ways of small organisations that will retain their revenue funding.  The Size Matters report by Sarah Thelwell is an important context.  It conceptualises the early investment in artists who go on to achieve success as “deferred value”, and demonstrates how it is often other, larger organisations, who reap the financial and reputational benefits later on. The further point is made  that currently, funding mechanisms have no methodology for capturing – and therefore valuing – this activity.  ArtSway for example, appears to have suffered from a dogmatic application of ideology that has devastated an otherwise high value, well-governed and artistically ambitious organisation.

The implications for the visual arts sector include a lessening of opportunity for early career and emerging artists, with consequent negative effects on their career development and ability to earn a living, and increased competition for the opportunities that remain.  PVA Media Lab, for example, is a key player in the relatively small number of visual arts and media providers in Dorset. The company’s development role is not easily replaced, particularly within recent partnership projects. In another example, Globe Gallery in Newcastle recognises that “a predicted change will be our ability to support individual fees to artists to the level to which we have been able in the past.”

The wider implications suggest a longer-term effect on the arts ecology as a whole. As the sector contracts, the beneficial effects of the arts for individuals, for society, for employment, tourism, regeneration and the economy will also be lessened.

It’s a dispiriting outlook given the hard work so many have put in to creating what is in so many ways an area of activity the UK can be so very proud of.

For Those in Peril on the Sea. Hew Locke, Folkestone Triennial 2011

This time last year I had agonised over a 1000 word project proposal and been accepted for a January entry onto a PhD programme at the University of Brighton. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and had no evidence that I genuinely had the wherewithal – by which I mean the cleverness – to work at PhD level. I was guided by gut instinct, a fairly solid intuition that this was the right thing for me, and the encouragement of senior experienced academics at the University; one of whom put himself forward to be my supervisor.

This supervisor, who has guided a good many students through to thesis and viva, set me early tests of the old fashioned variety: “Write me 3000 words on Biennials of Art for two weeks time”, for example, and “put in writing the arguments why you want to use these three Biennials as case studies”.

We met formally to discuss my first piece of submitted writing and I said, rather timidly, that I had worked on it till it was the best I could do, but I didn’t think it was that good. Was it, I asked, PhD standard? Encouragingly, the answer immediately came back that yes, it was. Phew!

From this beginning, my learning and confidence has grown exponentially. By March, I thought nothing of writing 6000 words on ‘culture-led regeneration’; a term I quickly realised was misleading and inaccurate, not to mention regularly misused and misunderstood by public sector bodies engaged in it. A compulsory module on Research Methods, formally assessed via a presentation and essay on my research proposal, gained a grade of 72%. That was a turning point for me – no, my supervisors weren’t simply being kind and encouraging – here was external double marked evidence that I was at the least working at very high MA level. Formal Research Plan Approval followed shortly afterwards and was another milestone.  Since then, I’ve been on a field trip to research the Istanbul Biennial, begun interviewing Directors of Biennials (and how charming they have been, thank you, Andrea Schlieker, Lewis Biggs and Bige Orer), and started interviewing Biennial artists. Much more fieldwork is planned for 2012 and I can hardly wait. A write up of my Istanbul field trip earned the accolade of being “probably the most outstanding piece of work I have been given by a PhD student” from my supervisor (and I still think that surely I must have misheard? And what a clever use of the word “probably”!).

And so  here I am, 11 part-time months into the Fud, and still in honeymoon mode. It’s a wonderfully enriching experience. Without a doubt, this is the best professional development programme I have ever undertaken. It’s been a year of profound learning that is giving me much greater depth of understanding about my field. It’s making me into a far sharper and more effective arts professional. Whereas previously I might argue for specific courses of action based on experience, ideas of most effective process married to pragmatic realities, and some form of liberal ethical bias, I can now also support the argument by citing examples, theories and research. That feels pretty good.

Thesis and viva are still unimaginably distant, and anything could happen between now and then. But very importantly, I’m enjoying the process tremendously. So far at least, I appear to have avoided the common pitfalls. It is MY research project, designed and initiated by me, aligned with my professional experience and under my own control. I’m privileged to have two excellent supervisors with whom I have a supportive team dynamic. The fees are, thankfully, still affordable and even good value, given what is provided in return (most notably quality supervision, access to journals and workspace). The university is a mere 3 miles from where I live. I can still work and earn a living without falling behind (and a huge THANK YOU to all the wonderful people who have employed me this year).

In short, at this point and quite unusually in life, all is working exactly as I might want. That gut instinct from 12 months ago seems to have been a good ‘un!

The new shadow minister for culture, Dan Jarvis MP, wants to make friends with the sector. Three weeks into his new role he has provided a rousing statement of intent on the Guardian Culture Professionals Network site.

He believes -somewhat over-optimistically in my opinion, given the circumstances and his lack of decision making power while in opposition – that: “we are on the cusp of a new era, which if grasped will firmly secure Britain’s continued role as a leader both in the arts, and the creative industries. The legacy of the last decade has meant that we have the foundations to ensure that our children can become artists, sculptors and creative minds and that our country can continue to be known as a number one tourist destination.”

And he goes on to discuss the role of digital transformation:

“The most exciting projects for me are those where you can fully focus on the idea, the best response and have the control to go with your own vision.” Cici Blumstein, filmmaker, choreographer, installation artist

This new report, commissioned from me by a-n The Artists Information Company, is now published online and downloadable from here.

What’s it about?

A Fair Share? Direct Funding to Artists, quantifies the amount of funding given directly to artists from each of the four UK arts councils in the years 2009-2010, and 2008-2009. It also summarises the funding streams available to individual artists and the current visual arts priorities of the UK arts councils.

The key finding reveals that surprisingly few individual artists apply for funding in their own right, and even fewer are successful. In England, less than 5% of artists apply in their own name every year, and of those, less than 2.5% are successful. This means that there is little direct funding being given to artists to pursue and develop their own projects, under their own control – under 20% of available funding for the visual arts in England, 14% for Northern Ireland and around 18% for Scotland and Wales in 2009-2010.

The aim of the research  is to provide something of a rallying cry. Yes, this is a situation that should be addressed by the various arts councils that seek to support artists’ development within their overall policies. But it is arguably also the responsibility of individual artists to overcome feelings of disinclination, demotivation and whatever else may be preventing them, and to put together more and better applications for the considerable funding that is still available.

It is not radical to suggest that individual artists could and should get a bigger slice of the funding cake than they currently do, and that many more of them should be directly funded because of the value their practice brings to arts policy delivery. But the fact that they don’t highlights the urgent need to properly understand and address what isn’t working with the current systems, and take any actions necessary to improve them.

There is a request for comments in response to this research, particularly if you are an artist, about your own experience of the arts funding systems and your perceptions of it. Feel free to use this blog, or comment directly onto the a-n site immediately underneath the report.

Also published this week is Understanding Turning Point, originally a national visual arts initiative from ACE, devolved to regional groups.  Understanding Turning Points is a briefing paper is for anyone interested in understanding more about what Turning Point is and does.

Friday 11th November: I was delighted to hear that the Guardian’s Tom Service cited A Fair Share and AIR’s Big Artists Survey in his quite magnificent speech at the recent Paul Hamlyn Awards for Artists and Composers, republished on his Guardian blog here.  This research is meant to be used -  as information, advocacy and encouragement for intervention and change. That it exists at all is entirely down to the brilliant strategic thinking, intelligence, drive and passion of Susan Jones, the director and publisher of a-n The Artist Information Company. That the research is needed is demonstrated by its use in this instance, (and other instances that won’t  make the  pages of a national newspaper). But the significance lies in the fact that in a speech whose focus was musicians and composers, visual arts research was used, suggesting that the evidence has not been compiled for other art-forms.  Susan Jones has had the foresight and skill to commission this and other pieces of work almost before the sector – and other art form sectors – know that it’s needed. I’d say that right now a-n is ahead of the field, with more insight to come.  I’d recommend that anyone with an interest in the visual arts sector should watch the a-n virtual and magazine space.

Since I wrote the previous post, the results of the bidding process  into the ACE/Nesta/AHRC fund have been announced.

There were 495 applications – and only 8 successful bids.

Am I alone in feeling frustrated about this? I can’t help but mourn the enormous amount of time that went into making 487 unsuccessful applications, many probably from organisations where time and capacity is already a stretched resource.

But given the guidance was really very clear – at least on the roadshow I attended – that only a tiny number of applications would be successful, I also wonder why so many organisations decided to apply.

Was it the triumph of hope over experience? Enthusiasm for a pet digital project and a determination to apply whatever the chances? The judgement that, successful or otherwise,  taking the time to define an innovative digital project would feed into future strategy and was therefore worth doing? Or maybe a view that when an opportunity comes along, it must be seized?

I really don’t know. But I do wonder if there weren’t enough places on the roadshow, and if other guidance was less clear about what was being asked for, offered, and the probability of success? Perhaps there was confusion between this small and limited-in-scope fund, and the soon-to-be-announced ACE £20m programme for digital capacity building in the arts?

Whatever factors went into it, I can’t help feeling that there is dysfunctionality in a process which leads to such massive over-subscription and so much  unrewarded effort.

I’d like to hear what you think about this. What are your views? Did you apply?   If you have time to write a comment or two, I’d like to read them.

Self-portrait for today

Digital champions have a way of making the analogue world seem not just out of date, but those living in it to be dinosaurs, facing extinction.

Listening to representatives from ACE, Nesta and the AHRC discussing their joint Digital R&D Fund for Arts and Culture was fascinating from this perspective. The underlying message was very much about the need for arts organisations to get up to technological speed, to improve their performance on digital basics – like fit for purpose websites with content that can be used within a wider web context. According to a recent ACE survey, only 4% of current RFOs have high quality digital content as a destination in its own right.

But the aim of the fund is to future-think, to invest in digital innovation for the arts that doesn’t just make them fit for the present, but for the future – which is apparently a future that includes Smart TV and all sorts of other things I’d never heard of before today (thanks www.digitaltheatre.com).

£500k is available within six themes for research and development projects that will test a digital-type proposition for arts organisations in partnership with a technology company. This aim is to fund proposals that:

• Generates new knowledge of use to the sector.
• Has the potential to test a new business model/s.
• Will generate new audiences for the arts.
• May create new income streams.

Nesta insists on rigorous research and will supply research expertise to successful projects. This is a critical point in terms of realistic product creation, but also sends the message to technology companies that this is not simply a source of free public money. It also sends a message to arts organisations that this is not free public money for making art either.

What will be funded and what will the research outcomes be? It will be interesting to find out.  It’s a small amount of cash that will be spread between 5 – 10 projects.

There’s also a fast turnaround. Projects need to start this October and the research finish in October 2012. That leaves a small application window, a large amount of work to find a suitable partner, define a project and make the application, with pretty low odds on being successful. I also wonder how well it fits with commercial business models, who in times of recession cut back on R&D and concentrate on bringing business in, delivering to contract and banging out the invoice.

It seems to me that it might be most suitable for infrastructure agencies, those who work with arts organisations in a supportive role. Where the core business is about developing knowledge and systems that they cascade out to the wider sector. Audience development orgs perhaps, who’ve had their RFO money cut? Engagement and education organisations maybe?

But ACE is shortly to announce the details of a new 4 year £20m digital development fund, with similar aims but also including capacity building around digital stuff. If I was an arts organisation, I think I’d be inclined to wait for this one to come online. But then, I do have dinosaur tendencies.

More info on Nesta website here.

Plenary panel: DL, Dida Tait, Simon Faithful, Donna Lynas, Alistair Gentry

There was an engaged audience and lots of very relevant discussion at  the Beyond the Commission Symposium at Bournemouth University last weekend. The day offered a fuller and more nuanced perspective than usually available of the highways, byways and hidden twisted lanes that constitutes an artist’s route through life. (And yes, on the whole, dead ends were avoided although a couple of Cut Throat Alleys were publicised).

I had the pleasure of meeting Alistair Gentry, whose Market Project has really caught my imagination.  A consortium of eight artists and one curator, their strapline is ‘Economic and Professional Research by Artists”. I haven’t fully worked out exactly what the project is.  But one of things it does is confront some of the sacred cows of current art practice and policy.  Market Project events appear to be a platform for honest discussion about what an artist is, what their roles are, how much can be expected of them,  how much they are paid or not; indeed, whether there are too many artists.  (See Alistair Gentry’s write-up of the workshop he led). What stops this being po-faced and worthy is the non-politically-correct stance.  I don’t mean by this that the opposite happens – bigotry, ignorance, offensiveness.  Simply that Market Project seems to have created a space where accepted norms can be intelligently queried, behind-the-scenes dealing can be brought into the open and arts Group Think can be challenged.

It’s one of the most refreshing projects I’ve come across in a very long time, and Gentry a most unusual and original artist.  I recommend checking out the Market Project website on a regular basis, as I now intend to do.

And finally, it has to be said: well done Arts Council England for giving the project substantial two-year funding.

Mike Marshall, Controlled Burn (Video Still), 2011. Courtesy of the artist. Solo Exhibition ArtSway 26/6/11 - 29/8/11

I’m very much looking forward to speaking at this Symposium, organised to mark the end of ArtSway’s fantastic two-year Artist Associates programme.

Taking place on 16th July at The Arts University College at Bournemouth, the event focuses on the practice of supporting artists within the contemporary visual arts beyond the traditional curatorial, exhibition and commissioning role of the public sector.

Should this duplicate or complement, for instance, commercial representation? Should this be limited in reach or accessible? What is the impact on audiences and organisations?

As publicly funded arts organisations begin to develop these new models and initiatives for ongoing support, this one-day symposium presents an introduction to existing programmes and models, modes of representation and questions how long-term support of artists can be increased. A series of afternoon workshops will offer a range of scenarios to test and discuss options.

Confirmed Speakers are:
Simon Faithfull, Artist and ArtSway Associate

Alistair Gentry, Artist and Writer, Market Project

Dany Louise, Strategic Facilitator and Writer

Donna Lynas, Director, Wysing Arts Centre

Dida Tait, Head of Membership & Market Development, Contemporary Art Society.

Chaired by Mark Segal, Director, ArtSway.

More information and booking can be found here, or call Jo Sanna on 01590 682260  or e-mail:  jo.sanna@artsway.org.uk

She wanted to gain some baseline information about how much activity these organisations deliver to early-career and emerging artists, and how they contribute to the visual arts infrastructure in their locality and region.

My brief was to analyse and interpret this information for potential medium-term impact on the visual arts in this country.  Importantly, I was asked to recommend ways in which the worst effects could be prevented or mitigated – even within the context of around £150m per annum of public money being cut from the arts funding system.

The report, Ladders of Development, was published on Wednesday 25th May, and is available to read here.

The Guardian featured it here -  there are some interesting and sensible comments following that are worth reading.

If you don’t want to read the whole report, the Press Release below summarises the key information:

PRESS RELEASE

Commissioned by a-n The Artists Information Company from Dany Louise, Ladders for development exposes, quantifies and discusses the likely impact of the visual arts of Arts Council England’s decisions on fifteen previously Regularly Funded Organisations (RFOs) visual arts organisations that were unsuccessful in their NPO application.

 It shows that a disproportionate number of artists’ membership and development agencies and practice-based organisations lost core funding, despite ACE’s aim of creating a “balanced portfolio”. Many of these organisations are ambitious, punch above their weight and play a crucial strategic development role within the visual arts ecology.

Each of the organisations that include galleries Artsway and Castlefield, production companies s Folly, Isis Arts and PVA and membership organisations NewWorkNetwork and Contemporary Glass Society have developed bespoke professional practice activity and expertise over a number of years across diverse visual arts practices, and provide significant, quantifiable opportunities for artists at early and mid-career.  Consequently, they feed strategically into the work of bigger organisations that have neither capacity nor remit to undertake this depth of specific artist-centred development work. 

Organisations studied collectively create 19 full-time and 46 part-time jobs, contracted work for 287 freelancers, 133 internship opportunities and 43 artists’ mentoring opportunities annually. Overall, they directly or indirectly support almost 6,700 visual artists pursuing professional careers at a time when artists’ livelihoods are under threat.  Other quantitative data suggests education work will be badly affected. Taken together with the impact of increased tuition fees, this layer of visual arts cuts has the potential to lead to an unwelcome stagnant and mono-cultural arts environment, in which only an elite group of people with leisure, money, social and cultural capital can gain access to the arts.

The report urges ACE to recognise the vital role of smaller practice-led organisations within the future sustainability and quality of the contemporary visual arts. Amongst recommendations is that ACE should within NPO agreements require larger-scale galleries, institutions and visual arts organisations to take greater responsibility for wide-ranging artist professional development activity. If they were to outsource the artists’ professional development roles to practice-led organisations that have the expertise, networks, local reach and experience to deliver it, they will not only achieve more for the artists’ concerned, but also support the “ladders of development” needed to foster future significant artists.

This post has now been written up formally and will appear in the July/Aug edition of a-n magazine.

The Stage commissioned me to write an article discussing the pros and cons of Festivals from a performing arts perspective which was published in the 16th June 2011 edition.  A downloadable pdf of that piece is available here.

A good discussion at the Founders Room at the Brighton Dome, where we all – panelists and audience – agreed that Festivals bring many benefits to a city but are not unproblematical.

Dr Sassatelli suggested they are useful for local identity and profile, but  that festivals often suffer from a “staged authenticity”.  This was a theme taken up by Professor Steven Miles, who started by questioning whether festivals give more than they take? His view was that the “staged authenticity” of many festivals leads to cities competing with each other for funding and as destinations. This results in issues regarding periphery and core, where city centres are developed by the periphery is left untouched, leading to gentrification, and economic winners and losers.

Andrew Comben, as Director of Brighton Festival, spoke of his view that a Festival has to stand alone beyond the obvious benefits; that the artistic meaning is more important than the instrumental meanings.  His motivation is being able “to offer audiences an enormous cross-section of the artists’ view of the world”.

Questions from the audience raised issues around inclusiveness and participation, about the mainstream and fringe and the ability to stage innovative risk-taking work. A good question was about balancing cultural spend against statutory spend on health, education, housing etc  The panel unanminously agreed that it isn’t helpful to look at this as an either/or question; that many factors influence quality of life, and the arts have a contribution to make to these other agendas.

My presentation was around meaning and lack of it in festivals – here’s a short version of the text:

This is, I think, a fantastic question, and one that is not examined nearly enough by our civic cultures.   I suspect that as we go thru the evening we’ll hear a range of responses relating to the benefits of Festivals  – for city profile, for tourism, for destination marketing, for economic impact, for social cohesion and local identity.   And you never know, some of us might possibly advocate for festivals as a development platform, showcase and paid opportunity for artists, performers and writers.  We will, I hope, argue that Festivals provide pretty good opportunities for professional artists at the top of their game to share their work with us. And by doing so,  delight, provoke and inspire us as audiences.

But too often, I think, festivals are something of a bandwagon that civic authorities jump upon without fully understanding their characteristics, or indeed, how they incubate.  There has been a fad and fashion for festivals over the last 5 – 10 years that is resulting in them springing up all over the place, at any time of year, for  any reason, and for anything from a single day event to a three month blow-out.  To me as an arts professional, this is problematical.  I would suggest we’ve moved from a place of incorporating into the mainstream the best that festivals have to offer, to a situation verging on the ridiculous – where anything and everything can become a festival, with a consequent lack of substance and meaning.  

Credible festivals do come in all shapes and sizes, and originate in many different ways, from grassroots organisations to profit making businesses. But the key question for me is about meaningfulness – and the lack of it.  That is, I think, a concept that is not often part of the debate, but could be tonight and to which I hope you will respond.

I want now to invite you to take a look at these images, which are of artworks exhibited in various large scale festivals, and two of which were site specific commissions:

And now I would like you to compare that  with this image:

Ah yes, Brighton’s latest festival – a Festival of Shopping, which apparently took place over the month of April.  Someone described it on twitter as “scraping the bottom of the barrel of meaninglessness”.  I wonder why?   I’m going to leave it to you to draw your own conclusions about that,  and I look forward to your input into the debate tonight!