Arts debate

Not very helpful then for the Arts Council to bring forward two more.

Why does no one get it? There is no value in art in an of itself, there is only value in the relationship with it as a human being. This is not measure by numbers, x thousand people saw this work and so on. It is only measured by the consciousness of individuals and communities.

Change the game. Back the risk-takers. Back the disrupters. Trust the artists. Reap the rewards.

Art means different things to us all. Some see it in David Beckham's football playing, in Pavarotti's warblings, or Heston Blumenthal's cooking. Others see it in rapping, garden design, wine making, or fashion design. They are all right and none is inherently better that the other. The common denominator here is the pursuit and achievement of the highest level of human ability.

Sports and the arts have much in common. Important both as everyday amateur activity, and professional elitism. The Man United afficianado who bonds with friends over football chats and trips to the games is doing something very similar to the Glyndebourne regular. They are engaging with a cultural activitiy which goes to the heart of their personal identity.

And what of arts and crafts? Lots of people enjoy knitting. Is that art? Even if you think not, where do you draw the line between that and the extravagant textiles that you'll see on a visit to the V&A?

And entertainment? Some think of the high arts (e.g. opera, theatre) simply as entertainment for the rich or upper class. There's a lot of truth in that. Is someone a better person because they spend a Saturday evening at the Royal Opera House rather than watching a DVD of a James Bond movie at a friend's house? Can good art be devoid of entertainment?

This is only becomes a problem when the Arts Council, a publicly funded organisation, has to devise arts funding policies. Why should one person's entertainment be subsidised and another's not?

The arts (in the broadest sense) are funded by those who use and appreciate them, and by people who wish to promote the values they think are embodied by that art. Much of this happens intuitively. They do it simply because they enjoy it.

European culture was once dominated by Monarchy and the Church. These two insitutions were the main sponsors of what some call high art. Indeed they are responsible for the notion. Both institions were paternalistic in the sense that they decided what was of value. Much of the tradition of high arts (again, opera, theatre, fine arts but also architecture, garden design etc) was status symbols, badges of wealth.

At the end of the day, the Arts Council must realise that the question of what art is, or more to the point, which arts should it fund, comes down to the issue of what it wants to promote in society. Arts funding policy is social policy.

Does it want to continue the legacy of the "high arts" with its pre-20th century values, an anachronistic hangover from past society which favours one narrow band? Or does it want to accept that we now live in a democratic society and that it must be more pluralistic in its funding policies?

There's nothing wrong with art that is all about the creator. But actually, the more people that it engages, the extent to which it engages, and the longevity of its engagement increase its value. If Beethoven had not shared his art with the world, would it have any value? Of course not. Art can be a private pursuit. And whilst the value to that individual might be high, the value to society is probably low.

Democratic funding policies don't have to mean funding everyone and everything. Good decisions must be made as to what is most important. And the reasons behind those decisions must be articulated.

Public subsidy must benefit society as a whole. It should incentivise excellence, address market failure, create opportunity. And it must be accountable to the public.

The worst and most unacceptable policy (or lack thereof) is to surreptiously spend the lions share of the money on "high arts" with a pretense that all arts is seen equally without any justification for the disproportionate spend. That's what the Arts Council currently does, and unless it stops doing that, it may find itself being closed down by the Government because its lack of accountability and inability to articulate openly and honestly what it does and why it does it amounts to serious abuse a great deal of public money.

Accountability and transparency are not the same thing. The Arts Council is reasonably transparent; certainly the spending reported in the annual report is a good start. The information provided is certainly sufficient to demonstrate that the organisation lacks accountability. But I might also add that the Arts Council's Chief Exec is notorious for avoiding interview and defending whatever the Arts Council's policies are. Very unusual, if not inexcusable, for the head of a publicly funded organisation which ought to operate with transparency.

The issue of accountability is a different matter. That must surely be measured by whether the public agree that the money is well spent, and whether a broad section of the public derive value from the spending.

The fact that the lions share of the funding is devoted to the "high arts" actually means that the organisation is categorically not accountable to the public. The "high arts" are the interest of a very small portion of our society.

I'm not advocating a case for killing off those high arts, but that the support needs to be wider. The high arts might not survive (certainly in their present form) without Arts Council subsidy, but so many other significant cultural activities (e.g. jazz, folk music, world music, electronic music to mention a few areas from the musical world which I am most familiar) desperately struggle to survive with very low levels of funding. The notion that "other so called arts are quite happy in the commercial sector" is just not true. I'm afraid that line smacks of gross ignorance. Practitioners must endure poverty and/or second careers ("day jobs") to work in their chosen fields, and the industry is largely propped up by the underpaid and volunteers. "Greater plurality" as you put it is not enough. We need equality in the distribution of funding.

Can I point out some contradiction in your defence of the "high arts"? On the one hand you declare that their longevity is a prime reason for support, but then you suggest that they would not survive without the subsidy. That paradox doesn't actually sound too much like longevity to me. It sounds more like dying traditions which are kept hanging on only by means of a life support machine. Now I don't want to see any of those precious cultural activities die, but why keep them so lavishly funded relatively, and AT THE EXPENSE OF, a more diverse cultural programme?

I find the historical refences you give somewhat curious. This notion of the ancient civilisations and the renaissance being a primary reason for the Arts Councils policies is verging on the ludicrous. If the organisation's main function is to preserve antiquity, such as the British Museum does, the OK. But not for an organisation which has a broader cultural responsibility, one that ought in my view to be focussed on the living world.

One of the big problems with the "high arts" is that they have actually become profoundly dysfunctional in the 20th Century. Classical Music and Opera just do not have the same vibrancy or relevance that they did in the 19th Century. The mainstay of the repertoires within those arts actually comes from a very restricted time period ("Mozart to Mahler") and crucially there is no living composer who has been able to write new works that have been able to enter that canon. To me, that means that those traditions are dying, if not already dead. They are no longer truly living traditions. Culturally speaking, the ecological system which once gave these art forms life has long been destroyed.

With such a desperate creative situation, one must ask how long before the audience simply tire of the same dated repertoire? How much can life can be breathed into this body merely by endless reinterpretion? We all know the age of this audience is very high. Will there be an audience at all for this work in 50 years? Isn't it time to start investing in culture that has a better future than backing the also ran?

I also can't help thinking that this notion of the ancient civilisations and the renaissance must itself be a 19th century manufactured idea created to serve 19th Century notions. I think now, in the 21st Century, we can see that many of these old notions now require revision as they have little meaning or relevance to modern society. Indeed there's much which is actually objectionable implicit in these cultural traditions.

Perhaps those notions held in a Victorian class bound society where everybody studied classics. Get real. Talk about the world we live in, not with third hand notions of ancient societies and redundant ideologies. We're no longer living in the 19th Century. We're not even in 1946 any more. Isn't it time the Arts Council considers and takes responsibility for this societies cultural future rather than obsessing in false and largely irrelevant notions of the past?

To quote Jonathan Richman:

I saw the chewing gum wrapper,
saw it after lunch;
Faded little cruddy thing,
I picked from among the bunch.
Cruddy little chewing gum wrapper,
My eyes would not let go;
Saw the little thing that I liked so.
Loved the faded colors like would end up at the dump,
My heart goes bumpety, bumpety, bumpety bump.

Cruddy little chewing gum wrapper,
Faded by the rain;
You got to see it for yourself,
My words just can't explain.
Cruddy little chewing gum wrapper,
dried up by the sun;
Someone else got to feel this way, I can't be the only one.
Who loves the faded colors like would end up at the dump.
My heart goes bumpety, bumpety, bumpety bump.

Faded plenty and corroded some,
I saw the chewing gum wrapper,
I picked it up just like a bum,
Cruddy little, cruddy little, cruddy little thing;
Full of dirt and it was full of grit,
I saw the chewing gum wrapper;
But colors like that you can't git,
Cruddy little cruddy little cruddy little cruddy little.

Well, cruddy little chewing gum wrapper,
My heart would not let go;
The colors hypnotize me, and I love them so.
Cruddy little chewing gum wrapper,
This I must say;
These colors move me more than most or what I see today.
I love the faded colors like would end up at the dump,
My heart goes bumpety, bumpety, bumpety bump.

I saw the chewing gum wrapper,
When I was on a walk;
I saw the faded green
And I could barely talk.
Cruddy little chewing gum wrapper
When I was on a roam
I saw the faded yellow
And wanted to take it home

For those who accept that good taste is relative it is particularly important that levels of subsidy are properly balanced between high and popular arts. We should remain perpetually wary of experts since their expertise maybe nothing other than the field of upper middle class taste

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/theatre/2007/01/theatres_of_new_dreams.html

Liz Gardener’s 2006 retrospective blogg celebrates an explosion of democratically situated arts activity appreciated by large numbers. Yet last year the `street art` sector received only £2.7 million out of £402 million of overall Arts Subsidy (ie less than one percent) Another issue to be redressed is that the enormous audience figures of the open air arts sector are not recognized by the Treasury because tickets have not been bought. It is also noteworthy that around a quarter of the amount given to popular open air art was spent on three days of performance by one French theatrecompany. Whilst noting that the French company was good value the fact remains that only £2 million was spent on all the UK work in that sector including companies, festivals and the commissioning of new work throughout that year..

What I am discussing is proportionality. Whilst it is unnecessary to fund very popular arts that are perfectly able to support themselves it is equally unnecessary to fund arts that will easily flourish, on expensive ticket revenue paid for by the better- off. Why do we subsidize these £30 tickets? It is possible to redress some of these balances by asking the larger arts institutions to tighten their belts. They will no doubt be vociferous in their opposition but in the street arts sector the massively committed smaller groups slogging away with very little support can make very little noise.

I am one of many who would like to see a massive increase in the proportion of government arts funding spent on widespread creative participation in the arts through
A) the funding of festivals and arts organizations in the new up and coming and vibrant Street Arts and Circus and Carnival sectors
B) A similar increase in start up funding for musicians. We are a very musical race and this should be encouraged.

These two areas are the current main weaknesses in the AC portfolio. Efforts should be made that ensure all people have access to every aspect of creativity.
If we are going to have a living artistic culture like the one that nurtured Shakepeare we may ironically have to displace some support from the Shakespearean industry and re think down the current overwhelming preference for the tameness of heritage over the risks of art. We should ask that The Arts Council supports the creative underdogs in fair and appropriate proportion as well as the heritage flagships. We should harness our articulacy in protection of the new, the participatory, the experimental, the democratic, the popular and the small.