Liz Forgan, London. Credit: Steve Double
People often ask what Arts Council England means by excellence says DAME LIZ FORGAN, Chair, Arts Council England.
It is a tricky word, lazily taken for granted by some, suspected by others as carrying connotations of class or conventional culture, contentious, politically loaded and capable of starting fights. However, it is the star we steer by so we need to explain what we, at least, understand by the idea.
Everyone will have their own sense of what excellence is, but for us it is simply the bravest, most original, most innovative, most perfectly realised work of which people are capable – whether in the creation of art, its performance, its communication or its impact on audiences. It can be found in the classical canon or in wild anarchy, in elegant theatres or railway arches; it can be accessible or obscure, aimed at a tiny audience or millions. It can be costly or cheap to achieve, last half an hour or a hundred years. Be the work of an inspired teacher or a great diva, a radical outsider or an acclaimed genius. Work on a global scale or speak to a small community. It ticks no boxes but it is to be measured in its effect on both those who make it and those who experience it – and it is the opposite of the safe, routine and imitative.
We cannot expect excellence every day from everyone, but we can insist on the aspiration towards it. And the Arts Council’s job is to recognise it, support it, nurture it and protect its freedom to be itself as far as we possibly can.
Such an all-encompassing description will not satisfy those who insist that a definition of excellence must place everything from Purcell to Sarah Lucas in a gigantic league table or else be accused of cultural relativism. But the Arts Council is not an academy. It is an organisation whose duty is to engage with living artists and audiences, to encourage and inspire to ever-greater ambition and boldness. And excellence, in its most creative sense, is at the heart of our vision for the arts that we support.
At a time when the dizzying potential of digital technology is transforming the way we make, distribute, receive and exchange art it would be absurd to define excellence in the language of the conventional art forms. Art forms are morphing and combining. To be relevant in the 21st century, any definition of excellence has to find room for participation in art, as well as the classical notion of creation.
But we are not in the business of ‘anything goes’. There is a difference between the profound and the trivial, the visionary and the routine, the ground breaking and the repetitive. It is just getting harder and harder to be sure where the boundaries are if we are to keep our aesthetic faculties open to the unfamiliar and the puzzling. That, however, is the task for all of us.
Of course, much art in England takes place outside the operations of the Arts Council. But we are a significant part of the cultural life of the country, in that we are responsible for much of the nation’s public investment in its art and its artists. We therefore thought it right to produce this document – the fruit of a year-long dialogue with audiences, artists, public and private funders and arts organisations – to set out both our goals for the next 10 years and our priorities for the next four.
In the next few years, we will need a clearer sense than ever before of what really matters – what matters over everything else when funds are tight. In seeking to achieve our mission, great art for everyone, artists must be supported and appreciated. Children and young people must learn about and love their culture if they are to carry it on. And the art itself must be enriched by the contribution of the whole of England’s vibrant and changing society and by the transforming impact of digital technology.
Why is this so important? Because art is intrinsically valuable? Because it is necessary for a successful economy, to our national prestige, to our mental health, to our social cohesion, to our sense of identity, to our happiness and to our well-being? All of the above – as we and others have constantly sought to demonstrate as scientifically as it is possible to do.
As people responsible for spending substantial amounts of public money, we are duty bound to account for the public value of art with all the data we can muster. Intrinsic and instrumental arguments all have their place. But art, like excellence, will always elude neat definition. We must be as clear as we can and then acknowledge that it simply has mysterious aspects that are immensely powerful and can never be anticipated or accounted for. As Benjamin Constant said, ‘Art achieves a purpose which is not its own’. We shall steer the next 10 years by our star of excellence, but no one can be entirely sure where art will take us.
