| Arts Council Policy and Its Opponents |
Arts Council Uncovered |
| Analysis and Critique , Arts Policy in England , July 12, 2020 |
It seems out of kilter to look back at the Time Before. Nonetheless, things happened; the arts in England produced two salient documents. Arts Professional published in February the results of a survey. Five hundred respondents used sixty thousand words to reportedly attest to their perception of intolerance pervading public-subsidy arts. It appeared to relate to the attitudes within the grant-giving body itself. Certainly a strategy document from Arts Council England prompted a vigorous and heavy-weight response. “ACE in a hole? An alternative cultural strategy for England” was written by John Holden, John Kieffer, John Newbigin and Shelagh Wright. Their title is a reference to the caustic Billy Wilder film of 1951. It responded to a ten-year “strategy” document “Let’s Create.” The document, they averred, was more a grand-standing posture than strategy, avoiding as it did any mention of intention what to fund or not to fund. In its place, said the press, “England’s arts chiefs have said they want to create a nation...” Top-down statism leads. “It also aspires to give communities in every village, town and city more opportunity to design and develop the culture on offer there.” So there are going to be fifty thousand recipients plus of arts cash. It is absurd that the rich myriad of community organisations are going to fill in forms to display to Oxbridge types their “ambition and quality”, “inclusivity and relevance”, “dynamism”, and “environmental responsibility”. ACE is now committed to “moving away from having centres of excellence.” It is high in allegiance to fashion. Less money for artistic mastery than “the dissolving of barriers between artists and the audiences with whom they interact”. The critics represent the Council as abandoning its mission, positioning itself as a development agency, intent on “building the identity and prosperity of places”. A commentator points out that the activities now espoused by the Council have been systematically excised over the past period. Natural Theatre is cited. “Natural Theatre's approach to street theatre where immaculate attention to costume detail and performers who are following a scenario not immediately apparent to their audience tell the story. Natural Theatre were of course cut by the Arts Council about 10 years ago. Similarly many of the community arts groups who were doing participatory art that the Arts Council now want everyone to do have been cut.” The writers call for the Council to clear up its language. “Vague generalisations and arcane art-speak about “cultural communities”, “a creative and cultural country”, “ambition and quality”, “inclusivity and relevance”, “dynamism and environmental sustainability.” Rather than proposing uncontroversial “outcomes”,it would be better to start with asserting –or re-asserting –some core principles...Education, and specifically arts education, is the gateway to making that right a reality, but current government policy is deliberately erecting barriers to arts and cultural education, and so is denying access to the arts. ACE urgently needs to call out the Department for Education for its appalling failures in this area. It should do so in the name of justice.” The arts, they remind us, are not bordered by what the state funds. “In the United Kingdom, culture–that is, the customs, celebrations, creative acts and performances through which individuals make sense of their lives–is already diverse. Most people lead fulfilling cultural lives that do not depend on outdated official definitions of culture. That does not mean that ACE has to commit its limited funds to every form of cultural expression, but justice demands that its priorities should start from where people are at, not where historical baggage and vested interests happen to be most powerful.” “In a system totally ensnared in a byzantine maze of targets, metrics, monitoring and evaluations, trust has been lost: trust between government and ACE, between ACE and the organisations and individuals it serves,and –albeit more tricky –trust between the arts establishment and the people.” “Trust must also be built among, between and within cultural organisations. It is a truism that detailed monitoring and interference in people’s work destroys trust and militates against real experimentation and risk-taking. "To work creatively, individuals and organisations need to feel that they are controlling their own destiny, able to work with imagination, not just competence, and that what they are doing has a purpose. When those three criteria are aligned, trust flowers.” A former Chair of the Arts Council, unnamed, is cited. Public funding is a “cash machine with a complicated PIN number”. “The power relationship between ACE and cultural organisations needs to be reversed. ACE exists to serve its “clients”–that used to be the favoured terminology. But now the recipients of funding are more likely to feel that their core purpose is to fulfil targets set by ACE. Relationships based on mutual trust would help ACE to be what it says it wants to be –an advocate for the arts, not an auditor of the arts.” The sign-off. “And don’t forget Georges Braque: “the purpose of art is to disturb.” ACE needs the confidence to embrace these truths.” This is spicy stuff. Whether correct or not is to be seen. But spice is always good. “ACE in a hole?” can be read at: https://www.artsprofessional.co.uk/sites/artsprofessional.co.uk/files/administrator/ace_in_a_hole_jan2020.pdf |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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