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The ‘Arms Length Principle’ and the Arts in Wales – the community arts view |
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The Wales Association of Community Artists (WACA) believes that the length of the arm between government and the allocation of funding for the arts should be as long as possible , but not so long that government cannot hear and respond to the voices of arts practitioners and the agencies whose job is to know, serve and represent them , primarily, in our case, the Arts Council of Wales. They at least have had the opportunity to gain experience and knowledge about the arts scene to help determine how funding should best be spent , and to respond to the opinions of the various cultural constituencies and stakeholders when the inevitable disagreements arise. Importantly, ACW is - in theory at least - independent of all political pressure, and is required to be consistent and rational, abiding by a set of policies and priorities which have been talked over at length with the arts sector. It is of course impossible to please everyone, but the annual conference, the Panel of National Advisors, the agreed procedures, and of course the Council members themselves, ensure that there as at least a chance of fairness and intelligence at ACW in guiding how money is distributed. For this reason WACA largely opposes the proposal for key ACW clients, and some degree of responsibility for issues of arts policy and prioritising, to be 'brought in' to the Assembly. There may be some benefits for the Assembly separating out and 'adopting' the very largest client (WNO), whose funding is in any case assured and not subject to the normal levels of scrutiny, and such a process could on the face of it succeed in painlessly removing a degree of bureaucracy and rather tokenistic 'funding approval' by ACW. But even for such a large client, there needs to be ongoing scrutiny and accountability to ensure that WNO do actually deliver what they have promised on with the very large dollop of arts cash which they receive each year. Would civil servants with no prior knowledge of the field really be able to evaluate this? In terms of WACA's own members, and the constituency that we represent , there is an ever increasing body of evidence in Wales and in the rest of the UK that participatory arts activities have huge potential to allow safe discussion of issues affecting people's lives and Community Arts strives to develop the creative skills and confidence of participants to maximise this potential Inclusivity is a key characteristic of Community Arts, and because of this, issues (which may be a planned part of the activity or which may incidentally arise during the activity) will be welcomed and integrated as part of the Community Arts process and/or product. This also provides a natural (if often unrecognised) commonality between community arts and local regeneration programmes such as Communities First Community Arts strives for balance between quality of 'product' and Inclusivity of process. By 'quality' we mean the extent to which participants have achieved the best they are capable of By Inclusivity we mean actively encouraging the participation of socially excluded individuals, groups or communities Inclusivity is an essential part of the Community Arts process itself, facilitating open dialogue and negotiation between participants and artist/facilitator, and encouraging co-operation and collaborative creativity between all participants. To sum up: Community Arts is about creative activity rooted in a specific and targeted community in which participants received support from and experienced and suitably qualified professional in the field to decide, organise and practise the arts in response to their own ideas and lives. So WACA fully supports the Minister of Culture when he expresses the wish to "see public money invested in the arts reaching all communities within our nation". And while we would dispute the statistics he has provided in order to demonstrate an unfair distribution of arts funding to support participation (we know directly of a much higher level of community arts activity in the Valleys than he has acknowledged) we agree that more should be done to boost the level of activity in the most disadvantaged areas. In fact WACA has consistently been lobbying and requesting Mr. Pugh to make the necessary resources available to the Arts Council so that they can in turn support the level of activity from the well established professional community arts organisations to do exactly that. To date he has not listened and his door closed to such requests. Minister , we are ready and waiting , we have the skills, the track record;but it takes money to make it happen. WACA's more than 100 members are all actively involved with delivery of highly effective and creative work at the community level. It has been gratifying that in the past five years there has been a greater recognition on the part of the Arts Council of the value of this work, especially in realising that 'participation' and 'quality' in the arts are not mutually exclusive , that the value of a community based arts project may be not just in terms of the benefits it brings to participants and their community but also in the creative quality of the final product itself. For this reason we applaud the Culture Minister's commitment to democratising the arts in requesting that "in exchange for the guarantee of public funding I want to see more work done on access." But we must be careful not to confuse his plea for more 'access' (which could mean anything from cheap theatre tickets to community concerts) with the central concern of Community Arts with ensuring that everyone has the chance to participate in, as well as enjoy the creative activity of their choice. And we are sceptical about his real commitment to this process, because to date he has not responded positively to the requests for the necessary funding (in the face of the continuing shrinking of lottery funding which is putting the survival some excellent and well-established initiatives at risk) to enable Community Arts organisations to maintain their level delivery in the poorest parts of Wales - a delivery which even his own Culture Committee recognises in their latest report as being seriously under-resourced. |
| Wales Association of Community Artists web site: |
| e-mail: culturalconcerns@onetel.com |
Thursday, February 9, 2006 |
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