Arts debate

Arts funding needs dialogue, not rules, says Ken Turner

12 May 2007 by Ken Turner 12 comments

Ken Turner, an artist and frequent contributor to the website throughout the public consultation, gives his perspective on the Arts Council's agenda since the 1960's, and tells us why '...funding needs dialogue, not rules.'

Having been given the chance to continue the debate, and commending ACE for launching the discussion, I find it extremely difficult to keep within reasonable bounds in the length of a written piece. Therefore I can only slightly enlarge on what I have said already online and leave it to others to continue the discussion/debate or whatever it seems to be.

It would be appropriate in the context of the debate to dip onto my own historical experience and practice stemming from 1967 to 1978 through to my concerns today. As a painter I left a successful exhibiting career in galleries to work as an artist in the community. In 1967 I set up action space, (lower case intended). This act was a direct protest against the gallery system and the idea of art being a commodity (You can read more about it here).

During the decade ‘68-‘78 a system of practice came out of action space that at the time was completely unknown. It had in those years successfully completed a sense of a mission that has now turned sour in the hands of bureaucrats. Social input is now privileged over art. I will later discuss this falsification of ideas taken from an artist’s movement to show how far removed institutions can be from the intentionality of artists and their practice. And in this sense become undemocratic.

An artists approach to art is, I would have thought, sacrosanct. However, the ‘systems’ of thought developed by the Arts Council arising from what happened in the 60’s became completely muddled in its attempt to translate what was happening in the art and community experiment. In the first place it is dangerous to make a drawing board analysis, and in the second place it was undemocratic to bring these experiences of artists working in the community into a form of rigid criteria without consultation with the artists concerned: there were other groups and individuals besides action space.

A simplistic formulation of criteria now dominates. The ‘arms length’ policy has gone, replaced by a critique primarily resting on social aspects of engagement in art. Artists are now being cajoled into thinking about their art in ways that prioritise the getting of money as being the most important first step in grant applications. In doing so the Arts Council is actually entering into the artists domain of creativity. How right is that, how democratic? Could be bordering on subtle but unconscious soviet style directives? One in which art is for people’s sake no matter what the quality of that art is. If you care for people then you should also care for the quality and kind of presentation of art. The artist as author and instigator has to be in full command of their particular creative skills and presentation. action space would not have succeeded under the new regime, never have pioneered new paradigms, never have brought a new concept of working into play. In the time of radical reversal and turning round of thought in the 60’s, action space with other artists groups like Forkbeard Fantasy, Interaction, Brighton Combination and Welfare State were free to grow and prove their worth. action space was making performance art long before the term was coined.

It appears to me that today’s attitude in the Arts Council, having wrongly understood the art of the sixties has now become moribund and atrophied in its thinking whilst speaking from a supposedly high level, unassailable position of authority. Hopefully, as in the sixties and seventies, the Arts Council is listening to this debate but this time with a more democratic spirit. The only reservation I would have on my judgement is that ‘community art’ in its ‘misinterpretation’ from action space has a probable function with a wider section of the community in terms of familiarising a public with ideas of an approach to creativity in a more popular, easily understood form. The so-called art workers in this field are by extension also social workers. In this context many ‘live art’ artists fall into this bracket because this is where the money is. The question is, does this activity increase the awareness of a wider public to art? No!

In continuing my argument I want to bring together, ‘value for money’, ‘public value’ and ‘value in art’. The question is, are these propositions compatible? Value for money could be related to public value and value in art related to the qualities in art conveyed to the public. But in the Arts Council terms, they are used for economic and political ends. Converted into strictly rigid rule-book guidelines they could be seen thus: ‘value for money’ for the most immediate and obvious economic pay-back of art to it being of ‘public value’ as doing the public good and as being the ultimate measure of art’s value. Philosophically, educationally and socially that is nonsense. As a way of thinking it trashes the idea of art and how the artist works. Actually I need say no more on this absurd rationalisation of art and society. But it does illustrate that rules cannot be applied to funding the arts. There needs to be a dialogue with artists. A dialogue that establishes agreement on concepts related to an artist’s particular approach and what the sum total of the artist’s developments looks to be.

In this procedure of dialogue the notion of social engagement and art will take care of themselves when art is prioritised. It being a question of what it means to be human. ‘Value in art’ is seen as art at its highest level where ‘public value’ increases creative awareness. Thereby achieving ‘economic value’ and the return of all values into enriching cultural life. A culture only grows through the radicality of change. Rulebook guidelines will inhibit young artists into a false belief that financial benefits come first. A quick fix mentality directed by Arts Council policy.

A possible way of change is to adopt a step-by-step method; steps that lead into dialogue with the Arts Council, to a more complete understanding between the participants where ideas and instrumentation are clearly seen to be workable, however experimental. These discussions should be part of the process, if not the main decision making process itself in order to make a fair judgement in terms of the art itself. I think this approach should be up for discussion.