You know, I meant to hit the New Year blogging, and have had several things I wanted to point out/at on here last week, but the snow and some pressing issues rather stole the hours away. I'll try and make up for it this week.
Next time someone tells you that there's less need for a focus on diversity because even the people who don't really get it at least now know 'the rules', or that diversity is 'an add on' to their real arts work and just a burdensome Arts Council box to tick - I'm not making this up for effect, people do say this stuff! - remind them of Lynda La Plante's recent and widely-reported comments. (Overseas readers: she wrote a half decent tv series once, Prime Suspect, and has been banging out crooks with heart and police dramas with diminishing returns ever since.) As reported here by the BBC and here by the Telegraph, she feels excluded by the politically correct BBC and that commissioners would 'rather read a little Muslim boy's script' than one by her. “If my name were Usafi Iqbadal and I was 19, then they’d probably bring me in and talk,” said La Plante, apparently.
Well, that made me give three cheers for the BBC - or it would if it were absolutely true. Or if these comments were the last we ever heard of La Plante. Unfortunately I suspect neither is quite the case. Although the range of voices heard on the BBC is broader than it was, there is still a tendency to commission a relatively small set of old faithfuls. It seems very easy to use the same people over and over. (More noticeable, of course, when the person is some way from the tv norm - Griff Rhys Jones doesn't stand out in the same way as even Alan Bennett.)
The theatre has seen a number of precocious debuts of late, it must be time for some new talent, new voices on tv too. How did Griff Rhys Jones corner so many markets, for instance? Most urgently, perhaps, we need to hear the stories and imaginings of those who are most often represented by phantasms - young Muslim men, amongst them, but not exclusively.
The diversifiying of the arts workforce and of the stories the nation tells each other still has a long way to go. Have a look at the comments on some of the other coverage of La Plante's comments and you can see why. Look at the tv schedules and you can see the nonsense of La Plante's comments. If I was a commissioner at the BBC, I'd be forcing her to collaborate with Shazia Mirza, on a comedy drama.
(Hmm, maybe that's why I'm not a commissioner at the BBC...)
Showing posts with label diversity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diversity. Show all posts
Monday, 11 January 2010
Tuesday, 27 October 2009
Last words on the IFACCA World Summit, for now
I’ve had a very hectic time of it for the last fortnight, which is why it’s been quite on here. I had one or two more things I wanted to say about the IFACCA World Summit, but have decided it’s best to do them as a kind of montage of the last day or so, before they go completely cold in my notebook. I will return at another time to the themes of translation as a kind of dialogue relating to diversity, and to the interface between tradition and innovation, I hope you'll find here.
So, imagine some atmospheric background music, and plunge in to the following paragraph. (I did try and render it in SA colours but it lost some legibility.) Then work out what the applications might be for you. (Speakers listed at the bottom, not exact quotes – all clumsiness mine.)
The crossroads of identity I don’t want to be part of any club that will have me as a member Watching speakers rush through too many slides makes me feel so tense, especially white text on a white background An open political space is a pre-requisite for proper creativity Intercultural dialogue is not about the connection of two fixed points Does intercultural dialogue actually lead to the erosion of identity? Eric Clapton’s guitar style as an example of hybridity I am interested in shattering morals We were connected to our mother cultures but felt like orphans Give up on authenticity…culture is a necessary fiction Use the moment of perfection in a traditional form to inform contemporary forms of art The intercultural moment is also in time/history: between old and new, now and past There is no interculturality without translation, even within a single language A photograph of BALTIC in a presentation on microfinance?! Should we have a World Art Day? We had been good at doing the impossible but not so good at the ordinary
You can now see and read more of the presentations on the Summit site. Many thanks to Sarah Gardner and her team at IFACCA, to Annabell Lebethe and her team at the National Arts Council of South Africa and to programme director Mike van Graan for a great time in Jo'burg.
Quotes from (in order) Frank Panucci, Groucho Marx quoted by Frank Panucci, me, Joy Mboya x4 , T Sasitharan x6, Arturo Navaro with my exclamation and questions marks, Sanjoy Roy, Albie Sachs
So, imagine some atmospheric background music, and plunge in to the following paragraph. (I did try and render it in SA colours but it lost some legibility.) Then work out what the applications might be for you. (Speakers listed at the bottom, not exact quotes – all clumsiness mine.)
The crossroads of identity I don’t want to be part of any club that will have me as a member Watching speakers rush through too many slides makes me feel so tense, especially white text on a white background An open political space is a pre-requisite for proper creativity Intercultural dialogue is not about the connection of two fixed points Does intercultural dialogue actually lead to the erosion of identity? Eric Clapton’s guitar style as an example of hybridity I am interested in shattering morals We were connected to our mother cultures but felt like orphans Give up on authenticity…culture is a necessary fiction Use the moment of perfection in a traditional form to inform contemporary forms of art The intercultural moment is also in time/history: between old and new, now and past There is no interculturality without translation, even within a single language A photograph of BALTIC in a presentation on microfinance?! Should we have a World Art Day? We had been good at doing the impossible but not so good at the ordinary
You can now see and read more of the presentations on the Summit site. Many thanks to Sarah Gardner and her team at IFACCA, to Annabell Lebethe and her team at the National Arts Council of South Africa and to programme director Mike van Graan for a great time in Jo'burg.
Quotes from (in order) Frank Panucci, Groucho Marx quoted by Frank Panucci, me, Joy Mboya x4 , T Sasitharan x6, Arturo Navaro with my exclamation and questions marks, Sanjoy Roy, Albie Sachs
Tuesday, 6 October 2009
Are there really no innocent songs?
One of the speakers who caused the most breaktime-buzz at the IFACCA World Summit was Stojan Pelko, the State Secretary in the Slovenian Ministry of Culture. After a tour-de-force of Minister-as-tourism-advocate from the Jamaican Minister of Culture, this was a totally different kettle of fish. There may be other State Secretaries who end by exploring a metaphor from Gilles Deleuze, but I’ve missed them so far.
His topic was whether cultural diversity was the source of world peace or the root of all conflict. Coming from a part of the former Yugoslavia, as he put it, once you have known poets shooting from the hills it is hard to see culture as therapy or something than can overrule ‘real power’. Using a devasting clip from Goran Markovic’s The Tour, he suggested that in global capitalism ‘there are no innocent songs’, and that the discontinuities of history - where old certainties break down - are where the universalities emerge. (Certainly at that point, this seemed a world away from the ‘dodgy advocacy’ I mentioned yesterday, and suggests a positive outcome to recession.)
Where the arts could be ‘real arms’, Pelko argued, was in creating what he called ‘subterranean solidarities’ – by encouraging a sense of non-identity with the collective where people became ‘raw, free and vulnerable’. (As opposed, I take it, to the security of common identity and values that can, in extremis, lead to intolerance.)
He then concluded by exploring the central images of a short text by Gilles Deleuze, ‘Desert Islands’. (You can find this on Scribd here. It’s a very short essay and well worth reading - and not as difficult as much of his later work.) At the time this simply resonated as a metaphor, and I’ve yet to have chance to read the full text of Pelko’s talk, so I may have misinterpreted things. Deleuze sets out how islands are of two sorts, which I think now may be both two kinds of cultures, but also apply to different strands of artistic practice. There are he says, continental islands, ‘accidental, derived islands… separated from a continent, born of disarticulation, erosion, fracture; they survive the absorption of what once contained them’ and oceanic islands that ‘are originary, essential islands…display a genuine organism.’ (There’s no suggestion one is better than another.)
Deleuze says ‘Continental islands serve as a reminder that the sea is on top of the earth, taking advantage of the slightest sagging in the highest structures; oceanic islands, that the earth is still there, under the sea, gathering its strength to punch through the surface.’ That speaks to me of tradition and innovation, of growth and decay, of the power relations within culture over time. This is where Pelko seemed to take his talk, suggesting a need to ‘become the stranger’ on the desert island, before moving from solitary to solidarity, in the knowledge that songs will not save alone but must be seen in relation to real power. As he said, quoting Delueze in French, ‘il faut l’imagination collectif…’
Metaphors defy the need for practical conclusions, so I’m going to refrain from drawing any right now. I’ll end with an amusing and provoking quote from Deleuze’s essay Stojan Pelko didn’t refer to, but I’ve written down for future use as the epigram to a poem:
‘That England is populated will always come as a surprise; humans can live on an island only by forgetting what an island represents’.
His topic was whether cultural diversity was the source of world peace or the root of all conflict. Coming from a part of the former Yugoslavia, as he put it, once you have known poets shooting from the hills it is hard to see culture as therapy or something than can overrule ‘real power’. Using a devasting clip from Goran Markovic’s The Tour, he suggested that in global capitalism ‘there are no innocent songs’, and that the discontinuities of history - where old certainties break down - are where the universalities emerge. (Certainly at that point, this seemed a world away from the ‘dodgy advocacy’ I mentioned yesterday, and suggests a positive outcome to recession.)
Where the arts could be ‘real arms’, Pelko argued, was in creating what he called ‘subterranean solidarities’ – by encouraging a sense of non-identity with the collective where people became ‘raw, free and vulnerable’. (As opposed, I take it, to the security of common identity and values that can, in extremis, lead to intolerance.)
He then concluded by exploring the central images of a short text by Gilles Deleuze, ‘Desert Islands’. (You can find this on Scribd here. It’s a very short essay and well worth reading - and not as difficult as much of his later work.) At the time this simply resonated as a metaphor, and I’ve yet to have chance to read the full text of Pelko’s talk, so I may have misinterpreted things. Deleuze sets out how islands are of two sorts, which I think now may be both two kinds of cultures, but also apply to different strands of artistic practice. There are he says, continental islands, ‘accidental, derived islands… separated from a continent, born of disarticulation, erosion, fracture; they survive the absorption of what once contained them’ and oceanic islands that ‘are originary, essential islands…display a genuine organism.’ (There’s no suggestion one is better than another.)
Deleuze says ‘Continental islands serve as a reminder that the sea is on top of the earth, taking advantage of the slightest sagging in the highest structures; oceanic islands, that the earth is still there, under the sea, gathering its strength to punch through the surface.’ That speaks to me of tradition and innovation, of growth and decay, of the power relations within culture over time. This is where Pelko seemed to take his talk, suggesting a need to ‘become the stranger’ on the desert island, before moving from solitary to solidarity, in the knowledge that songs will not save alone but must be seen in relation to real power. As he said, quoting Delueze in French, ‘il faut l’imagination collectif…’
Metaphors defy the need for practical conclusions, so I’m going to refrain from drawing any right now. I’ll end with an amusing and provoking quote from Deleuze’s essay Stojan Pelko didn’t refer to, but I’ve written down for future use as the epigram to a poem:
‘That England is populated will always come as a surprise; humans can live on an island only by forgetting what an island represents’.
Thursday, 1 October 2009
Should Arts Council England have a Director of Strangeness?
As mentioned, I spent last week at the IFACCA’s 4th World Summit on Arts & Culture in Johannesburg. (And a few days prior to that meeting South African participants in the amazing Swallows Partnership in the Eastern Cape. You can read accounts by some of the English Swallows on Northern Stage’s website here.)
It was a really stimulating few days, in all sorts of senses. Firstly I saw some challenging and exciting art, including Brett Bailey's Three Colours. Secondly I heard some challenging speakers who did their level best to shake up my sense of how the world of cultural policy looks and feels. And thirdly I met loads of really great people from all over the world. And as a bonus, I wasn’t ultimately responsible for organisation, as I was at the previous Summit in NewcastleGateshead in 2006.
But it’s hard to summarise the discussions around the theme of ‘intercultural-dialogue’. So I’m going to spread a few thoughts out over the next few posts, covering the key ideas I took from the Summit. The first is this idea of ‘strangeness’.
Keynote speaker Professor Njabula Ndebele set out a challenge to the notion of diversity and difference as automatically ‘a good thing’, arguing – as did a number of people – that it could promote separation as much as appreciation. (A diverse community, he remarked, being more often evoked than experienced.) He then went on to suggest that the notion of intercultural dialogue is intrinsically linked to both integration and loss, that what we often label as ‘diverse’ is more simply ‘unfamiliar’ to the dominant culture, and the reactions to it will inevitably include both resistance and accommodation in different measures, leading to either integration of the unfamiliar or loss of previous assumptions or beliefs, or, often, both. It may then be more helpful to think of cultural ‘strangeness’ than ‘difference’ or ‘diversity’.
This seems a fruitful avenue to play with – partly as it feels like a paradigm common to innovation in both making and experiencing the arts.
I could, for example, describe ‘getting into jazz’ following that pattern:
1. initial incomprehension – ‘what a racket!’
2. rejection due to then current norms and beliefs – ‘solos are self-indulgent’
3. a gradual making sense of attraction or potential uses – ‘actually this has a kind of freedom and emotion I don’t get elsewhere’
4. integration into my new set of ways of understanding and being in the world - another section of record shops to browse, new gigs to go to, a more varied musical diet.
But it also shifts the power dynamics often at play in discussions of ‘diversity’ – who brings diversity, where, when, who decides etc. Whilst the dialogue between the strange and the familiar - central to much art – reframes cultural diversity as a process, not a state reached by simply putting people from different backgrounds together. It is through the connection with the 'strangeness' of our diversity that we create something new, which then helps us understand difference more deeply, and from where we can renew a rich cycle.
It was a really stimulating few days, in all sorts of senses. Firstly I saw some challenging and exciting art, including Brett Bailey's Three Colours. Secondly I heard some challenging speakers who did their level best to shake up my sense of how the world of cultural policy looks and feels. And thirdly I met loads of really great people from all over the world. And as a bonus, I wasn’t ultimately responsible for organisation, as I was at the previous Summit in NewcastleGateshead in 2006.
But it’s hard to summarise the discussions around the theme of ‘intercultural-dialogue’. So I’m going to spread a few thoughts out over the next few posts, covering the key ideas I took from the Summit. The first is this idea of ‘strangeness’.
Keynote speaker Professor Njabula Ndebele set out a challenge to the notion of diversity and difference as automatically ‘a good thing’, arguing – as did a number of people – that it could promote separation as much as appreciation. (A diverse community, he remarked, being more often evoked than experienced.) He then went on to suggest that the notion of intercultural dialogue is intrinsically linked to both integration and loss, that what we often label as ‘diverse’ is more simply ‘unfamiliar’ to the dominant culture, and the reactions to it will inevitably include both resistance and accommodation in different measures, leading to either integration of the unfamiliar or loss of previous assumptions or beliefs, or, often, both. It may then be more helpful to think of cultural ‘strangeness’ than ‘difference’ or ‘diversity’.
This seems a fruitful avenue to play with – partly as it feels like a paradigm common to innovation in both making and experiencing the arts.
I could, for example, describe ‘getting into jazz’ following that pattern:
1. initial incomprehension – ‘what a racket!’
2. rejection due to then current norms and beliefs – ‘solos are self-indulgent’
3. a gradual making sense of attraction or potential uses – ‘actually this has a kind of freedom and emotion I don’t get elsewhere’
4. integration into my new set of ways of understanding and being in the world - another section of record shops to browse, new gigs to go to, a more varied musical diet.
But it also shifts the power dynamics often at play in discussions of ‘diversity’ – who brings diversity, where, when, who decides etc. Whilst the dialogue between the strange and the familiar - central to much art – reframes cultural diversity as a process, not a state reached by simply putting people from different backgrounds together. It is through the connection with the 'strangeness' of our diversity that we create something new, which then helps us understand difference more deeply, and from where we can renew a rich cycle.
Thursday, 23 July 2009
Does the arts sector trust the public?
A recent article on The Stage's website began: 'Arts practitioners have raised concerns about the government’s plans to give the public more say in how funding is allocated, warning that such a move would favour “populist” art work at the expense of “quality, diversity and risk taking” in the sector. ' It was bridging off a new publication on Participatory Budgeting And The Arts. It brought on one of my not infrequent 'get over yourself' moments.
Participatory budgeting is a fairly horrible-sounding term for giving people control of budgets - usually small ones at local level. It's beginning to be used by local government in the UK, though so far the community development use of the actual process is often as important as the actual budgeting decisions. Some places have experimented with supporting arts projects in this way, and there are examples in the report. It's an interesting and challenging read, which looks at potential scenarios if the process is more widely adopted. The report also makes some recommendations for how to encourage best use of participatory budgeting. Key to this are communication and good information, clarity about need and outcomes, making time for learning and using the 'tool' appropriately.
There are clearly threats to the arts as well as opportunities in this way of deciding funding, and it's not a simple thing to do. Finding a way to talk about what an arts project actually is, and what it does or could do, is really key to this. Of course I feel frustrated when the populist vote seem to choose the mediocre and avoid what I think is brilliant, via the participatory budgeting called 'consumption'. But that's their choice and who, ultimately, am I to say that they're not getting out of their choice what I get out of mine? I'm only depressed by people who make no choices at all - though I'm not sure i know any.
If we can find better ways of talking about the wide variety of things people mean when we talk about “quality, diversity and risk taking”, avoiding our arts jargon, the public will make informed choices, albeit different ones perhaps than those schooled in curation and production. Tools can then be developed which support this - such as small grants schemes for localities, or Own Art-style interest-free loan schemes for customers, or free/discounted ticket schemes - that then support the public rather than the provider. Information, discussion and good communication can then do what time usually does and give the public ways of understanding and enjoying what at first seems bizarre, bad or 'arty-farty'. (I mean the way things move in from the margins over decades until they become the mainstream.)
One final thought: if 'arts practitioners' really have so little faith in the people we live with and amongst - the people we are - that we really think the public are currently incapable of being part of this kind of discussion without simply picking 'populist' rubbish, how do we change that?
Participatory budgeting is a fairly horrible-sounding term for giving people control of budgets - usually small ones at local level. It's beginning to be used by local government in the UK, though so far the community development use of the actual process is often as important as the actual budgeting decisions. Some places have experimented with supporting arts projects in this way, and there are examples in the report. It's an interesting and challenging read, which looks at potential scenarios if the process is more widely adopted. The report also makes some recommendations for how to encourage best use of participatory budgeting. Key to this are communication and good information, clarity about need and outcomes, making time for learning and using the 'tool' appropriately.
There are clearly threats to the arts as well as opportunities in this way of deciding funding, and it's not a simple thing to do. Finding a way to talk about what an arts project actually is, and what it does or could do, is really key to this. Of course I feel frustrated when the populist vote seem to choose the mediocre and avoid what I think is brilliant, via the participatory budgeting called 'consumption'. But that's their choice and who, ultimately, am I to say that they're not getting out of their choice what I get out of mine? I'm only depressed by people who make no choices at all - though I'm not sure i know any.
If we can find better ways of talking about the wide variety of things people mean when we talk about “quality, diversity and risk taking”, avoiding our arts jargon, the public will make informed choices, albeit different ones perhaps than those schooled in curation and production. Tools can then be developed which support this - such as small grants schemes for localities, or Own Art-style interest-free loan schemes for customers, or free/discounted ticket schemes - that then support the public rather than the provider. Information, discussion and good communication can then do what time usually does and give the public ways of understanding and enjoying what at first seems bizarre, bad or 'arty-farty'. (I mean the way things move in from the margins over decades until they become the mainstream.)
One final thought: if 'arts practitioners' really have so little faith in the people we live with and amongst - the people we are - that we really think the public are currently incapable of being part of this kind of discussion without simply picking 'populist' rubbish, how do we change that?
Monday, 20 April 2009
10 quotes and thoughts on resilience (8 - 10 plus hidden bonus track )
8. Most systems… usually proceed through recurring cycles consisting of four phases: rapid growth, conservation, release and reorganisation….This understanding is also important for policy and for managing natural resources because it suggests there are times in the cycle when there is greater leverage to change things, and other times when effecting change is really difficult. The kinds of policy and management interventions appropriate in one phase don’t work in others.
Please look here for a better, briefer summary of the four phases than I can do right now . The phases of rapid growth – the phase marked by opportunism – and conservation – marked by growing specialism and consolidation - are known as the fore loop. The back loop consists of release – often chaotic, marked by disturbance and shock - and reorganisation – when the options arising from change lead to renewal and the return of order, albeit a new order. We need to respect the necessity in the cycle of both loops, although they may not be equally as fun for all of us. Deny the back loop, for instance, and you may appear Canute-like. Want to live there and you may just be a trouble-maker…
9. The dangers of the late conservation phase:
- Increases in efficiency being achieved through the removal of apparent redundancies (one size fits all solutions are increasingly the order of the day)
- Subsidies being introduced are almost always to help people not to change (rather than to change)
- A preoccupation with process (more and more rules, more time and effort devoted to sticking with procedures)
- Novelty being suppressed, with less support for experimentation
The credit crunch and recession seem to sit most clearly in the release phase. But perhaps the cultural sector is also still in experiencing the dangers described here. Not falling into these traps in responding to the early release phase will be really important.
10. A back loop is not all bad. It is a time of renewal and rejuvenation, a period of new beginnings and new possibilities – hence its description as a period of creative destruction….Those new beginnings can often grow to be ruling paradigms in the next front loop. They are critical times to achieve change and reform in a constantly moving social-ecological system.
I am a glass-half-full type of person. (And a Libran, although I don’t really believe in horoscopes.) So the idea that both loops are creative is appealing. Ensuring that the actions we take in the back loop help shape new and better, more resilient, ‘ruling paradigms’, is really important. So, to use a current example, whilst I welcome this week's government announcements about encouraging artists to keep town centres lively by occupying empty shops, I don’t want that to be the new ruling paradigm for provision of artist workspace. I want that paradigm to enable the development and resilience of sustainable, high quality spaces that properly supports a thriving sector delivering quality art. The proposals may help that, but only if delivered with appropriate sensitivity to the whole arts 'social-ecological system' to use the phrase from Resilience Thinking. If it’s simply a short term measure with simplistic measurements of success – moving from empty shops to shops with things in them – it may actually damage the resilience of the sector in the long run, let alone the town centres. (By, for instance, not having good quality art in town centres positions, and reinforcing negative or outdated perceptions in some people of what art can be or do.) Done well, though, it could be brilliant.
And finally, a self-explanatory, free-hidden-bonus-track quote for anyone who's stuck with this:
11. Anyone can do it. You don’t need a detailed appreciation of thresholds and adaptive cycles to apply it. You do need to see your enterprise as part of a broader interlinked system, be able to identify the important processes and variables that underpin your operation, and have the capacity to ask the appropriate questions. And you need the capacity to implement change.
Thursday, 16 April 2009
10 quotes and thoughts on resilience (1 - 3)
I mentioned some time ago I had been reading ‘Resilience Thinking’ by Brian Walker and David Salt. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Although I plan, at some point when I’ve more time, to write a ‘proper’ essay on the implications of resilience thinking for the arts, and for funders of the arts, I thought I would for now share some of my ‘notes in the margin’ –some quotes and thoughts. They concentrate on possible parallels in the arts world – and how Walker and Salt’s advice might be applied in the arts ecology - though the book is important in terms of climate and ecological change too. I’ll spread over a few posts to make it a little easier to read. (I know this one’s a bit long.)
1. ‘Resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function and structure.’
Helpfully memorable and easily applicable to the arts or individual organisation and to the system. Disturbance might be a grant cut, a failed application, the loss of staff, change in audience or customer behaviour. It might also be a new CEO, an influx of funding, a funder wanting you to do something else, a sudden ‘hit’. How resilient are you? Can you absorb the shock and work in a way which doesn’t damage long term? Crucial at a system level – the system of organisations also needs to have resilience. (Put simply, for example, the poetry world can withstand one or two small presses stopping so long as others fill their space – in fact that is part of the system that brings new growth.)
The idea of systems is central. The easiest way to think about this is that things in a system interact in a complex and adaptive way – not in a simplistic, linear ‘crank the handle’ way. The book includes 5 case studies in the environmental field which illustrate this. But an arts organisation can demonstrate this too. There are factors to do with their quality and ‘efficiency’ that impact on them. But they also interact with how audiences are behaving and that ‘system’, with the ups and downs and changes in funders’ worlds, in the business world, in the broader economy, and in the political world. These are all arguably ‘systems’ that also interact in a larger one. It’s complex – though we do it to some extent without thinking - but you need to consciously ‘map’ all the systems to know what’s working on you.
2. ‘The Paradox of Efficiency and Optimisation:… Being efficient, in a narrow sense, leads to elimination of redundancies – keeping only those things that are directly and immediately beneficial… this kind of efficiency leads to drastic losses in resilience.’
You could relate this to how you shape your budget and programme, or to cuts in local authority funding. Worth the Chancellor bearing in mind when looking around for savings before the Budget. Simplistic efficiency today may have drastic knock-on effects when further shocks come. Systems work indirectly as well as directly so you need to look at the big picture. An obvious example of of 'simplistic efficiency' leading to less resilience is what happens when organisations choose not to build up a reserve in order to maintain or expand programmes. Reserves give not security for now but resilience for the future. They should be a measurement of health not wealth.
3. ‘There is no sustainable ‘optimal’ state of an ecosystem, a social system, or the world. It is an illusion, a product of the way we look at and model the world. It is unattainable, in fact… it is counter-productive, and yet it is a widely pursued goal.’
This is challenging to someone like me who’s talked a lot about sustainability and sustainable organisations. They go on to say that the common reaction when the model doesn’t quite work is to exert even more control, and I can see the truth in that – from government to arts funding to artistic directors. Models are not necessarily a bad thing – they can be useful if you use their simplification to explore how things might work – but you need to acknowledge they are models and not reality in all its complexity. So if there is no stable sustainable state, only an adaptive sustainability, we need to support people to adapt, to be as complex as they need to be, and to acknowledge that concentration on single aspects is likely to lead to less resilience when further change comes, as it inevitably will. Sustainability therefore comes from resilience, not vice versa, and is continually happening or not, rather than being acquired.
1. ‘Resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function and structure.’
Helpfully memorable and easily applicable to the arts or individual organisation and to the system. Disturbance might be a grant cut, a failed application, the loss of staff, change in audience or customer behaviour. It might also be a new CEO, an influx of funding, a funder wanting you to do something else, a sudden ‘hit’. How resilient are you? Can you absorb the shock and work in a way which doesn’t damage long term? Crucial at a system level – the system of organisations also needs to have resilience. (Put simply, for example, the poetry world can withstand one or two small presses stopping so long as others fill their space – in fact that is part of the system that brings new growth.)
The idea of systems is central. The easiest way to think about this is that things in a system interact in a complex and adaptive way – not in a simplistic, linear ‘crank the handle’ way. The book includes 5 case studies in the environmental field which illustrate this. But an arts organisation can demonstrate this too. There are factors to do with their quality and ‘efficiency’ that impact on them. But they also interact with how audiences are behaving and that ‘system’, with the ups and downs and changes in funders’ worlds, in the business world, in the broader economy, and in the political world. These are all arguably ‘systems’ that also interact in a larger one. It’s complex – though we do it to some extent without thinking - but you need to consciously ‘map’ all the systems to know what’s working on you.
2. ‘The Paradox of Efficiency and Optimisation:… Being efficient, in a narrow sense, leads to elimination of redundancies – keeping only those things that are directly and immediately beneficial… this kind of efficiency leads to drastic losses in resilience.’
You could relate this to how you shape your budget and programme, or to cuts in local authority funding. Worth the Chancellor bearing in mind when looking around for savings before the Budget. Simplistic efficiency today may have drastic knock-on effects when further shocks come. Systems work indirectly as well as directly so you need to look at the big picture. An obvious example of of 'simplistic efficiency' leading to less resilience is what happens when organisations choose not to build up a reserve in order to maintain or expand programmes. Reserves give not security for now but resilience for the future. They should be a measurement of health not wealth.
3. ‘There is no sustainable ‘optimal’ state of an ecosystem, a social system, or the world. It is an illusion, a product of the way we look at and model the world. It is unattainable, in fact… it is counter-productive, and yet it is a widely pursued goal.’
This is challenging to someone like me who’s talked a lot about sustainability and sustainable organisations. They go on to say that the common reaction when the model doesn’t quite work is to exert even more control, and I can see the truth in that – from government to arts funding to artistic directors. Models are not necessarily a bad thing – they can be useful if you use their simplification to explore how things might work – but you need to acknowledge they are models and not reality in all its complexity. So if there is no stable sustainable state, only an adaptive sustainability, we need to support people to adapt, to be as complex as they need to be, and to acknowledge that concentration on single aspects is likely to lead to less resilience when further change comes, as it inevitably will. Sustainability therefore comes from resilience, not vice versa, and is continually happening or not, rather than being acquired.
Wednesday, 15 April 2009
What will you buy on Record Store Day?
Saturday 18 April is the first international Record Store Day. As the phrase would suggest, this started in the US and is being adopted by independent record shops (see what I did there?) in the UK and elsewhere this year.
Record shops are somewhat under threat these days, and not just independent ones. Time was you could spend a happy Saturday afternoon walking round most towns of any size and visit half a dozen record shops of different sorts. Now you can struggle – and even the corporate chains have been disappearing, whilst those that remain are mainly DVD shops. But independent record shops – such as Beatdown Records or RPM in Newcastle where I can sometimes be found browsing at lunchtimes – are hotbeds of local music scenes and of diversity in music. I’m not going to get all Nick Hornbv on you, but they can be formative and transformative as well as sometimes, to be honest, off-putting and inaccessible-seeming to non-cognescenti. So very much like other arts spaces then…
I spent my first wage packet (summer job, carpet warehouse) on a Pere Ubu album I still have and a Passage lp I don’t, from the fabulous Action Records in Preston, not too long after it opened. It's still hanging in there, remains as atmospheric as ever and is taking part in Record Store Day and which you can visit here. The last thing I bought there, earlier this year, was a second-hand copy of Weary Blues by Langston Hughes and Charles Mingus, which just goes to show how record shops can grow with you. (No, I didn’t sell the Passage record in revenge for Richard Witts’ later history of Arts Council Great Britain, I rather enjoyed that, I just went off synthesizers, long before I'd ever heard of the Arts Council.)
So even if you’ve got out of the habit of visiting real record shops, forgo Amazon for a day and visit your local record shop – many have special events on.
Record shops are somewhat under threat these days, and not just independent ones. Time was you could spend a happy Saturday afternoon walking round most towns of any size and visit half a dozen record shops of different sorts. Now you can struggle – and even the corporate chains have been disappearing, whilst those that remain are mainly DVD shops. But independent record shops – such as Beatdown Records or RPM in Newcastle where I can sometimes be found browsing at lunchtimes – are hotbeds of local music scenes and of diversity in music. I’m not going to get all Nick Hornbv on you, but they can be formative and transformative as well as sometimes, to be honest, off-putting and inaccessible-seeming to non-cognescenti. So very much like other arts spaces then…
I spent my first wage packet (summer job, carpet warehouse) on a Pere Ubu album I still have and a Passage lp I don’t, from the fabulous Action Records in Preston, not too long after it opened. It's still hanging in there, remains as atmospheric as ever and is taking part in Record Store Day and which you can visit here. The last thing I bought there, earlier this year, was a second-hand copy of Weary Blues by Langston Hughes and Charles Mingus, which just goes to show how record shops can grow with you. (No, I didn’t sell the Passage record in revenge for Richard Witts’ later history of Arts Council Great Britain, I rather enjoyed that, I just went off synthesizers, long before I'd ever heard of the Arts Council.)
So even if you’ve got out of the habit of visiting real record shops, forgo Amazon for a day and visit your local record shop – many have special events on.
Wednesday, 25 February 2009
Wednesday Word of the Week: Resilience
This is a word I think we’ll be hearing a lot more of this year and next, in the arts as elsewhere. Enjoy it now before it gets tiresome. It draws on thinking in the field of ‘ecology’ – a word I’ve been using a lot lately in describing the needs of the sector, though there is also a strand of thinking about personal or 'emotional resilience'. This sees the sector not as a fixed infrastructure which may or may not reach a state called ‘sustainability’, but as a system or field where individual elements will grow, shrink, give birth, die and mutate, with organisations of different size and nature both co-operating and competing for the greater good. It also draws, as that description might suggest, on systems thinking. It’s not about simply pulling a lever or inputting something to get an output – it’s about often overlapping systems and their impact. (This is one of the reasons I don't think simply protecting funding is the answer to all the issues of the recession - unless we understand the complex systems at play that may only be a sticking plaster.)
So the best definition of Resilience as it applies to the arts sector I’ve seen is ‘the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function’. For the arts the ‘disturbance’ (not always a negative) might be loss of funding, sudden influx of funding or commissions, change in funders’ priorities, change in environment (eg a multiplex opening down the road from your arthouse cinema), changing audience patterns, changing technology and so on. Many arts organisations are already highly resilient, but there may more that can be done by thinking this through as a sector. Size does not guarantee resilience – note, for instance, that the best independent record shops may be surviving the download era better than the chain stores.
I plan to return to some of these themes over the next month, as they seem some of the most urgent things to think about, and there a number of possibly fruitful parallels I want to throw up to be challenged. (I’m currently pushing Resilience Thinking by Brian Walker and David Salt onto people – it’s a really good exposition of these ideas. There’s an article summarising them here .)
I also recommend an article by Peter and Trudy Johnson-Lenz about the ‘Six Habits of Highly Resilient Organizations’. It's worth thinking whether your organisation does these things:
1. Resilient organizations actively attend to their environments.
2. Resilient organizations prepare themselves and their employees for disruptions.
3. Resilient organizations build in flexibility.
4. Resilient organizations strengthen and extend their communications networks – internally and externally.
5. Resilient organizations encourage innovation and experimentation.
6. Resilient organizations cultivate a culture with clearly shared purpose and values.
So the best definition of Resilience as it applies to the arts sector I’ve seen is ‘the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function’. For the arts the ‘disturbance’ (not always a negative) might be loss of funding, sudden influx of funding or commissions, change in funders’ priorities, change in environment (eg a multiplex opening down the road from your arthouse cinema), changing audience patterns, changing technology and so on. Many arts organisations are already highly resilient, but there may more that can be done by thinking this through as a sector. Size does not guarantee resilience – note, for instance, that the best independent record shops may be surviving the download era better than the chain stores.
I plan to return to some of these themes over the next month, as they seem some of the most urgent things to think about, and there a number of possibly fruitful parallels I want to throw up to be challenged. (I’m currently pushing Resilience Thinking by Brian Walker and David Salt onto people – it’s a really good exposition of these ideas. There’s an article summarising them here .)
I also recommend an article by Peter and Trudy Johnson-Lenz about the ‘Six Habits of Highly Resilient Organizations’. It's worth thinking whether your organisation does these things:
1. Resilient organizations actively attend to their environments.
2. Resilient organizations prepare themselves and their employees for disruptions.
3. Resilient organizations build in flexibility.
4. Resilient organizations strengthen and extend their communications networks – internally and externally.
5. Resilient organizations encourage innovation and experimentation.
6. Resilient organizations cultivate a culture with clearly shared purpose and values.
Monday, 12 January 2009
Has nostalgia got a hold on me?
One of my resolutions for the New Year was to try and avoid nostalgia. I've since been debating with various friends what activity is allowed under this regime. First I was picked up on liking Fleet Foxes. Not a fair cop as I don't even like Neil Young or CSNY, though I do like weird folk music. Then perhaps revivals of plays should not be allowed. Did I only like the Fluxus show at Baltic mainly because the graphic style made me nostalgic, albeit for a time largely before I was born/conscious? Did all those lovely printed things actually make me nostalgic for the punk and post-punk that picked up on them? And so on.
So I've been buying new records, seeing new plays and looking for new things - or known people doing new things. (Last year's album from the revived Portishead, for instance, strikes me as an astonishing piece of work on any terms and definitely didn't make me yearn for the This Life years.) But then today I heard a report that's it's Motown's 50th birthday.
Although I was only born in 1964, and thereby can't really be nostalgic for Motown, the impulse is in there, alongside a love of many of the songs, and an appreciation of the change Motown made. It was the first black-owned company to cross over - previously black musicians had made music which crossed over, but for white employers. I've actually never felt the need to 'choose' between Motown and Stax, which many (mainly white, it seems) critics portray as more authentic - even though many of the key musicians were white - but I know the whole story is not rosy. But where ever you sit on Motown as expression of cultural identity or as employer, any number of fantastic, life-affirming songs came from a company that 'embedded' (as we bureaucrats like to say) black music in the mainstream like no other.
If you don't enjoy this excellent video of the Greatest Ever Robinson and his Miracles, odd dodgy note and all, please seek immediate help. (Oh dear, I can hear that final straw breaking some poor puritan camel's back somewhere...)
So I've been buying new records, seeing new plays and looking for new things - or known people doing new things. (Last year's album from the revived Portishead, for instance, strikes me as an astonishing piece of work on any terms and definitely didn't make me yearn for the This Life years.) But then today I heard a report that's it's Motown's 50th birthday.
Although I was only born in 1964, and thereby can't really be nostalgic for Motown, the impulse is in there, alongside a love of many of the songs, and an appreciation of the change Motown made. It was the first black-owned company to cross over - previously black musicians had made music which crossed over, but for white employers. I've actually never felt the need to 'choose' between Motown and Stax, which many (mainly white, it seems) critics portray as more authentic - even though many of the key musicians were white - but I know the whole story is not rosy. But where ever you sit on Motown as expression of cultural identity or as employer, any number of fantastic, life-affirming songs came from a company that 'embedded' (as we bureaucrats like to say) black music in the mainstream like no other.
If you don't enjoy this excellent video of the Greatest Ever Robinson and his Miracles, odd dodgy note and all, please seek immediate help. (Oh dear, I can hear that final straw breaking some poor puritan camel's back somewhere...)
Wednesday, 30 July 2008
Does counting still count?
Sticking with Sustained Theatre, it's been very interesting seeing the different reactions to it, especially how its relationship to Arts Council has been perceived - is it a report by ACE, for ACE or about ACE etc? The ever-entertaining Article 19 is puzzled and can't see how artists have been given the lead role. It may be they just don't trust what's said about the artists steering group. It may be the artists are saying the 'wrong' thing. They see the site as a sop to avoid real change - though I'm not sure they agree change is needed.
On the other hand, Arts Industry and others are running it as 'ACE told to stop using BME', which is not quite my reading of the report as a whole, although there are certainly some saying that, but wanting another term, not no account taken of patterns relating to background. AI concludes we no longer need to gather data on race, gender ,sexuality and 'to an extent' (whatever that means) age, and disability. That definitely isn't my reading of the Sustained Theatre work. It seems a complacent conclusion. (Which also fails to give any acknowledgement that this is ACE and the artists involved grappling with long-standing, still-debated issues.)
It may be crude, it may feel awkward at times, and there is undoubtedly a long way to go still, but counting has definitely helped make a difference to equality of opportunity. We shouldn't rule it out because it will make some of us feel more at ease that 'great art does not tick boxes'. The time taken to still not achieve equal pay for women, despite legislation, suggests that it's easy to overestimate the natural fairness of the world, left to its own devices.
On the other hand, Arts Industry and others are running it as 'ACE told to stop using BME', which is not quite my reading of the report as a whole, although there are certainly some saying that, but wanting another term, not no account taken of patterns relating to background. AI concludes we no longer need to gather data on race, gender ,sexuality and 'to an extent' (whatever that means) age, and disability. That definitely isn't my reading of the Sustained Theatre work. It seems a complacent conclusion. (Which also fails to give any acknowledgement that this is ACE and the artists involved grappling with long-standing, still-debated issues.)
It may be crude, it may feel awkward at times, and there is undoubtedly a long way to go still, but counting has definitely helped make a difference to equality of opportunity. We shouldn't rule it out because it will make some of us feel more at ease that 'great art does not tick boxes'. The time taken to still not achieve equal pay for women, despite legislation, suggests that it's easy to overestimate the natural fairness of the world, left to its own devices.
Tuesday, 29 July 2008
Can blue men sing the whites?
I’d been thinking about aesthetics and identity a lot since my last post. Then on Friday I saw a trio of fantastic performances by black musicians in the shape of Allen Toussaint, the Neville Brothers (time off injured last season has improved Gary’s keyboard playing no end, I swear, though he looked a bit different…), topped off by Abram Wilson’s fantastic jazz band reinventing New Orleans jazz whilst covering the Arctic Monkeys, Michael Jackson and James Brown and it felt very much ‘mine’ and very much ‘other’ at the same fun, exhilarating time. Then on Sunday night I watched the wedding reception episode of Gavin And Stacy series one. (Yeah, I know, late catching up – I’m always out at ‘art’, you know.) Which was one of the most pitch perfect bits of writing I’d seen in a long time, and very like the wedding reception I went to in Preston a couple of weeks ago.
So I thought I’d also throw out a Nick Hornby-style ‘Five things that Aren’t Saturday Night Sunday Morning but what is’ list, just for fun…
· The poetry of Jim Burns (a Preston poet to his bones despite moving to Cheshire some years ago, and being the world’s expert on the Beats). Start by looking at a few of his poems on the fantastic Poetry Magazines archive. http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/search/index.asp?search=Jim+Burns
· The work of the Side Gallery – treat yourself to a few minutes browsing their website.
· Control by Anton Corbijn – not the whole rock star suicide thing, obviously. But the depiction of bookish grammar school boys and life in Macclesfield has the tang of truth about it. (Looks great too.)
· David Eldridge’s Market Boy. This play definitely rang true from my (mercifully brief) time in London in the 80s, but had a joie de vivre and zest that made me think there is life beyond Northernness… (Would it be fair to call Eldridge Lee Hall’s Essex cousin?)
· The Royle Family can be a bit crude at times but I spent what I think of as literally years sitting on the sofa and brewing up like the Ralph Little character, though I was reading a book too. My mum even looked a bit like Sue Johnson, and although we would never have gone in for the belching, farting, banjo-playing thing, my granddad did have a neat Xmas party trick that involved whipping out his dentures…
Which makes me think that one man's box is another man's identity is another man's cliche, which would take me on to Peter Kay, so it's time to stop.
So I thought I’d also throw out a Nick Hornby-style ‘Five things that Aren’t Saturday Night Sunday Morning but what is’ list, just for fun…
· The poetry of Jim Burns (a Preston poet to his bones despite moving to Cheshire some years ago, and being the world’s expert on the Beats). Start by looking at a few of his poems on the fantastic Poetry Magazines archive. http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/search/index.asp?search=Jim+Burns
· The work of the Side Gallery – treat yourself to a few minutes browsing their website.
· Control by Anton Corbijn – not the whole rock star suicide thing, obviously. But the depiction of bookish grammar school boys and life in Macclesfield has the tang of truth about it. (Looks great too.)
· David Eldridge’s Market Boy. This play definitely rang true from my (mercifully brief) time in London in the 80s, but had a joie de vivre and zest that made me think there is life beyond Northernness… (Would it be fair to call Eldridge Lee Hall’s Essex cousin?)
· The Royle Family can be a bit crude at times but I spent what I think of as literally years sitting on the sofa and brewing up like the Ralph Little character, though I was reading a book too. My mum even looked a bit like Sue Johnson, and although we would never have gone in for the belching, farting, banjo-playing thing, my granddad did have a neat Xmas party trick that involved whipping out his dentures…
Which makes me think that one man's box is another man's identity is another man's cliche, which would take me on to Peter Kay, so it's time to stop.
Wednesday, 23 July 2008
Identity and aesthetics = chicken and egg?
The Sustained Theatre project, which has launched a website and a number of provocative documents, is a rich example of what can happen when a funder – in this case Arts Council England – opens up projects to leadership by artists. The Whose Theatre report into black theatre led to Sustained Theatre which led to a number of papers, including the one by Professor Gus John and Doctor Samina Zahir, Speaking Truth to Power, which aims to shake up the national debate on ethnicity, identity and the arts.
The paper, which is the first epistolary strategic report I’ve ever seen, demonstrates, perhaps inadvertently, how bloody hard our job is, at times. How do we change the way the arts reflect society, and ensure proper openness for people who are not white and middle class, without putting people in boxes, limiting identity and aesthetics and encouraging those in power to simply tick boxes? I’ve never been keen on the term ‘the sector’ which the artist steering group wished to use for the black theatre sector – to avoid the ethnic determinant – and it is clear that neither are many artists, some of whom prefer the term ‘black theatre movement’.
John and Zahir don’t agree with each other on this, or indeed, on much at all – or so it sometimes seems. Their debates are reflective of genuine difficulties, and the paper opens up a debate about aesthetics and identity I find really interesting. I think my aesthetics have played a large part in shaping - changing - my own identity, for instance, in that it was books and literature, not 'background', that led me into education and then employment in the arts. I rarely see my own background reflected well on stage or in galleries, and will swing for the next person who equates the white working class with Shameless-style fecklessness. (Okay, I won’t literally swing for them, as I’m now part of the middle class diaspora of my original ‘ethnic’ group, but they’ll feel the full force of a well-made point, don’t you worry. Then I'll go home to watch A Kind of Loving.)
I also put a tick against this quote: ‘We really must stop fashioning the world on the basis of the peculiarities of London.’ But that’s a whole other post…
The paper, which is the first epistolary strategic report I’ve ever seen, demonstrates, perhaps inadvertently, how bloody hard our job is, at times. How do we change the way the arts reflect society, and ensure proper openness for people who are not white and middle class, without putting people in boxes, limiting identity and aesthetics and encouraging those in power to simply tick boxes? I’ve never been keen on the term ‘the sector’ which the artist steering group wished to use for the black theatre sector – to avoid the ethnic determinant – and it is clear that neither are many artists, some of whom prefer the term ‘black theatre movement’.
John and Zahir don’t agree with each other on this, or indeed, on much at all – or so it sometimes seems. Their debates are reflective of genuine difficulties, and the paper opens up a debate about aesthetics and identity I find really interesting. I think my aesthetics have played a large part in shaping - changing - my own identity, for instance, in that it was books and literature, not 'background', that led me into education and then employment in the arts. I rarely see my own background reflected well on stage or in galleries, and will swing for the next person who equates the white working class with Shameless-style fecklessness. (Okay, I won’t literally swing for them, as I’m now part of the middle class diaspora of my original ‘ethnic’ group, but they’ll feel the full force of a well-made point, don’t you worry. Then I'll go home to watch A Kind of Loving.)
I also put a tick against this quote: ‘We really must stop fashioning the world on the basis of the peculiarities of London.’ But that’s a whole other post…
Wednesday, 9 July 2008
How did I end up on stage with an Undertone?
It must be conference season. After the one on social capital I wrote about recently, last week I had the pleasure of chairing ‘Our Creative Talent’, an event organised by three partners: Arts Council England, Voluntary Arts Network and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. The event marked the launch of a major piece of research into participation in the arts through voluntary and amateur groups, and through informal learning. You can download it here. There are some pretty impressive statistics about people’s involvement in the voluntary and amateur arts, although as with most ‘groundbreaking’ research, it raises as many further questions as it gives answers. (Or at least that’s what the researchers were trying to persuade me...)
Speakers ranged from Margaret Hodge to Feargal Sharkey, once an Undertone now head of British Music Rights and possibly Britain’s only strategic ex-pop star via Alan Davey and Robin Simpson (whose blogs I heartily recommend: start at Cultural Playing Field.) There were various workshops, then a panel session where I had that almost impossible task of spotting people put their hands up.
There was a really positive atmosphere throughout the day and it is clear that the voluntary arts are seen differently than was the case when I first wielded a long-arm stapler in their cause. There are lots of questions to work through though: can the sector deliver on quality consistently enough? How is the sector changing given the aging population? How do we encourage better connections with the professional and funded sectors (the right, better connections)? How do we cope with the destruction of adult education in this country? For starters.
You can read all about the conference, and listen to some of the sessions on the Voluntary Arts England site. (Follow the Flickr link there enough and you can see me on stage with Feargal Sharkey. I’m not embarrassed to say that gives me a thrill. Click here to see a seasonal Undertones classic. Or here to see him in full pre-smoking ban glory on my favourite Undertones song. )
Speakers ranged from Margaret Hodge to Feargal Sharkey, once an Undertone now head of British Music Rights and possibly Britain’s only strategic ex-pop star via Alan Davey and Robin Simpson (whose blogs I heartily recommend: start at Cultural Playing Field.) There were various workshops, then a panel session where I had that almost impossible task of spotting people put their hands up.
There was a really positive atmosphere throughout the day and it is clear that the voluntary arts are seen differently than was the case when I first wielded a long-arm stapler in their cause. There are lots of questions to work through though: can the sector deliver on quality consistently enough? How is the sector changing given the aging population? How do we encourage better connections with the professional and funded sectors (the right, better connections)? How do we cope with the destruction of adult education in this country? For starters.
You can read all about the conference, and listen to some of the sessions on the Voluntary Arts England site. (Follow the Flickr link there enough and you can see me on stage with Feargal Sharkey. I’m not embarrassed to say that gives me a thrill. Click here to see a seasonal Undertones classic. Or here to see him in full pre-smoking ban glory on my favourite Undertones song. )
Monday, 30 June 2008
How many of your neighbours can you name?
I went to a fascinating conference last week. Organised by the North East Social Capital Forum, 'Healthy, wealthy and wise' gave me lots to think about, both personally and professionally. Social capital is the relationships that bind us together and lead us to trust others around us - including those not in our direct networks. The arts can play a key role in building social capital - from two people singing or playing instruments together to huge gatherings like Glastonbury via the multitude of groups, societies and communal arts activities people take part in.
A number of speakers set out the potential benefits of social capital - which has been linked to creating the conditions for safe, creative economies to develop. (It can also be used for ill: bullying, racism and homophobia, for instance, rely on a form of social capital that excludes ‘the other’.) The keynote speaker was Robert Putnam, a Harvard professor who is a leading figure in this field. It's worth looking at his ideas, which have lots of relevance to those making arguments for the arts, or thinking how to develop engagement in the arts.
It can help to think what puts people off, as well as what attracts them to the arts as personal or social activity. (And of course the new digital social networks mean you can be private and social at once far more comfortably.) You can see some of the presentations (some of which suffered from that prevalent condition relianceonpowerpointitis) on the Community Foundation website.
My personal challenges? Well, if it's true that every 10 minutes of commuting by car reduces your likelihood of taking part in community activity by 10%, how do I find more time to get involved locally? And how many of my neighbours could I name? Not as many as I could when I worked shorter hours, from home, and picked the kids up from school. Conclusion: work gets in the way of social capital. Or substitutes one network for another with different effects.
I think arts organisations could think productively about how they encourage the building of social capital. Perhaps adapt some of the ideas on this website. (Rather folksy, maybe, and more suited to America than some other countries, perhaps, but adaptable.) Why don’t arts venues host blood donor sessions, for instance, for staff and local people? (Click here if that sounds like a good idea and you’re in the UK.) Could there be more discussions after shows, or open houses where people can simply meet staff? What kind of greeting do visitors get?
And of course, the conference gave me plenty to think about how the Arts Council could produce more interaction and trust. But I’ll come back to that.
A number of speakers set out the potential benefits of social capital - which has been linked to creating the conditions for safe, creative economies to develop. (It can also be used for ill: bullying, racism and homophobia, for instance, rely on a form of social capital that excludes ‘the other’.) The keynote speaker was Robert Putnam, a Harvard professor who is a leading figure in this field. It's worth looking at his ideas, which have lots of relevance to those making arguments for the arts, or thinking how to develop engagement in the arts.
It can help to think what puts people off, as well as what attracts them to the arts as personal or social activity. (And of course the new digital social networks mean you can be private and social at once far more comfortably.) You can see some of the presentations (some of which suffered from that prevalent condition relianceonpowerpointitis) on the Community Foundation website.
My personal challenges? Well, if it's true that every 10 minutes of commuting by car reduces your likelihood of taking part in community activity by 10%, how do I find more time to get involved locally? And how many of my neighbours could I name? Not as many as I could when I worked shorter hours, from home, and picked the kids up from school. Conclusion: work gets in the way of social capital. Or substitutes one network for another with different effects.
I think arts organisations could think productively about how they encourage the building of social capital. Perhaps adapt some of the ideas on this website. (Rather folksy, maybe, and more suited to America than some other countries, perhaps, but adaptable.) Why don’t arts venues host blood donor sessions, for instance, for staff and local people? (Click here if that sounds like a good idea and you’re in the UK.) Could there be more discussions after shows, or open houses where people can simply meet staff? What kind of greeting do visitors get?
And of course, the conference gave me plenty to think about how the Arts Council could produce more interaction and trust. But I’ll come back to that.
Monday, 16 June 2008
Once we had a country and we thought it fair
It’s Refugee Week in the UK. (Please open this link in another window and listen to Open Air FM’s ‘Celebrating Sanctuary’ programme whilst reading this post.) Refugee Week is a festival of arts, cultural and education activity that celebrates the contribution of refugees to British life. Why’s this anything to do with the arts? Well, many people who have to go into exile are often put in that position because of their cultural activism – their writing, their films, their art, as well as their politics. And culture becomes even more important in exile.
If you want to know why you should be bothered at all you could start by reading the novelist Mark Haddon’s recent piece about the way the Government treats asylum seekers in the UK. My wife is an ESOL teacher in Stockton-on-Tees, and I’ve met many people with astonishing stories, talented people with lots to give, some of whom end up sleeping on friends’ floors and getting by on vouchers and charity, when they could be giving something back to the country they are very grateful too, despite their troubles. I know the stories Mark Haddon tells are sadly typical. I also share the feelings of anger and shame he describes.
There are an increasing number of projects trying to ensure the skills and talents that people bring to this country don’t get lost under the brutal pressures of survival. Exiled Writers, for instance brings writers together in London and on the web. You can look on the Refugee Week site for other examples.
The North East’s best Adopted-Geordie-American-Iranian filmmaker Tina Gharavi has made an eight hour film called Asylum Carwash for the Engaging Refugees & Asylum Seekers project; a partnership project between National Museums Liverpool, Salford Museums and Art Gallery, Tyne & Wear Museums and Leicester City Museums Service. The description ends with the question I’ll end on too: How often do we think about what people are forced to endure in order to survive?
(This post definitely fits into the ‘personal opinion not necessarily reflecting the Arts Council position’ category, though I’m proud to see our logo on the Refugee Week funders and partners page. If you’re interested in another essay on art and asylum, you can still read my introduction to Geoff Broadway’s 2001 Durham Cathedral Residency exhibition on his site. The title of this post comes from W.H. Auden's Refugee Blues.)
If you want to know why you should be bothered at all you could start by reading the novelist Mark Haddon’s recent piece about the way the Government treats asylum seekers in the UK. My wife is an ESOL teacher in Stockton-on-Tees, and I’ve met many people with astonishing stories, talented people with lots to give, some of whom end up sleeping on friends’ floors and getting by on vouchers and charity, when they could be giving something back to the country they are very grateful too, despite their troubles. I know the stories Mark Haddon tells are sadly typical. I also share the feelings of anger and shame he describes.
There are an increasing number of projects trying to ensure the skills and talents that people bring to this country don’t get lost under the brutal pressures of survival. Exiled Writers, for instance brings writers together in London and on the web. You can look on the Refugee Week site for other examples.
The North East’s best Adopted-Geordie-American-Iranian filmmaker Tina Gharavi has made an eight hour film called Asylum Carwash for the Engaging Refugees & Asylum Seekers project; a partnership project between National Museums Liverpool, Salford Museums and Art Gallery, Tyne & Wear Museums and Leicester City Museums Service. The description ends with the question I’ll end on too: How often do we think about what people are forced to endure in order to survive?
(This post definitely fits into the ‘personal opinion not necessarily reflecting the Arts Council position’ category, though I’m proud to see our logo on the Refugee Week funders and partners page. If you’re interested in another essay on art and asylum, you can still read my introduction to Geoff Broadway’s 2001 Durham Cathedral Residency exhibition on his site. The title of this post comes from W.H. Auden's Refugee Blues.)
Tuesday, 20 May 2008
Would the Pitman Painters classes happen today?
It’s Adult Learners' Week here in the UK. Adult education is one of those things that makes me feel proud and sorrowful about being British – like good council houses, allotments and Greggs pasties. (Where else do you still find organisations called things like Workers Education Association?) The Ashington Group, subject of Lee Hall’s The Pitman Painters that I wrote about recently, began as a WEA class in the 1930s. And that tradition carries on today with many thousands of people enjoying the arts through adult education, and artists and arts organisations being heavily involved in both formal and informal adult learning. (Literature in the North East has always been particularly strong in this field, with writers and editors like Michael Standen, Gillian Allnut, Andy Croft and the late Bill Scammell amongst many others having played especially important roles.)
In recent years some of the tradition of adult education has come under attack by the forces of modernisation. Some of this has been for the good – there have been benefits from professionalisation of teaching – but other effects have narrowed the people who can benefit, and narrowed the activities. I did a lot of adult ed teaching earlier in my career, and got a huge amount from it. I also saw some great writers emerge who might not have taken the first steps if adult education had not been so welcoming. Increasingly, though, you could harshly characterise the approach as being that most people will need to pay, need to get accredited whether they like it or not and they’ll only be able to pay for things for which are deemed ‘useful’. (Unless we’re especially keen to get them off benefits.)
The government is currently consulting on proposals for ‘informal adult learning’ which seem to be something of a corrective to that trend. There do seem to be dangers within – not least the idea that a Google search and an online experience is as effective adult education as meeting other human beings in a room. (Call me old-fashioned… I know it’s AND not or.) If your practice or your work brings you into this sphere it’s worth looking at that and responses such as those from the WEA and NIACE and perhaps putting your two penn’orth in.
In recent years some of the tradition of adult education has come under attack by the forces of modernisation. Some of this has been for the good – there have been benefits from professionalisation of teaching – but other effects have narrowed the people who can benefit, and narrowed the activities. I did a lot of adult ed teaching earlier in my career, and got a huge amount from it. I also saw some great writers emerge who might not have taken the first steps if adult education had not been so welcoming. Increasingly, though, you could harshly characterise the approach as being that most people will need to pay, need to get accredited whether they like it or not and they’ll only be able to pay for things for which are deemed ‘useful’. (Unless we’re especially keen to get them off benefits.)
The government is currently consulting on proposals for ‘informal adult learning’ which seem to be something of a corrective to that trend. There do seem to be dangers within – not least the idea that a Google search and an online experience is as effective adult education as meeting other human beings in a room. (Call me old-fashioned… I know it’s AND not or.) If your practice or your work brings you into this sphere it’s worth looking at that and responses such as those from the WEA and NIACE and perhaps putting your two penn’orth in.
Friday, 9 May 2008
Where are you and how did you get there?
Do you work in the arts and cultural sector, for an organisation or as a freelancer? If so, the Cultural Leadership Programme want to know how you got where you are, what helped and what didn’t, and what you think you need to help you get where you want to be in the future. They have on on-line survey you can fill in to provide a picture of the sector, its workers and their backgrounds. It only takes a few minutes and the more people complete it the better the picture. It’s here: http://www.culturalworkplacesurvey.org.uk
I usually describe my career plan as ‘checking the locks to see which doors are open and then seeing if the room looks interesting’. (Cue soundtrack: Once in a Lifetime by Talking Heads.) After university I worked as a chef and head chef for 6 years, which I count as major part of my cultural leadership training. (I got probably my best ever review as a chef: ‘World class’: Yorkshire Post. My books have had some good reviews but none that good.) People are often surprised at that: they don’t expect Arts Council staff (or writers actually) to have had such practical professional experience. I’m not sure what that says about people’s images of the arts.
But as I often point out, catering is one of the very few sectors you can leave to take up a job in the arts and your salary goes up and your hours get better…
I usually describe my career plan as ‘checking the locks to see which doors are open and then seeing if the room looks interesting’. (Cue soundtrack: Once in a Lifetime by Talking Heads.) After university I worked as a chef and head chef for 6 years, which I count as major part of my cultural leadership training. (I got probably my best ever review as a chef: ‘World class’: Yorkshire Post. My books have had some good reviews but none that good.) People are often surprised at that: they don’t expect Arts Council staff (or writers actually) to have had such practical professional experience. I’m not sure what that says about people’s images of the arts.
But as I often point out, catering is one of the very few sectors you can leave to take up a job in the arts and your salary goes up and your hours get better…
Monday, 21 April 2008
Is our Diversity broad enough?
Well, last week was one of those where even a half hour to post something here didn't quite happen. Let alone to satisfactorily finish the piece I've been trying to write about types of participation. One of the things I did last week though was see the new version of Lee Hall's 'The Pitman Painters' at Newcastle's Live Theatre. (I took my new boss, Alan Davey, to give him a few hints for his new job.)
The play - which transfers to the National Theatre in London Village next month - is about The Ashington Group - miners who became the toast of the art world in the 1930's. If I could reproduce the script here to talk about 'diversity', I would. The Arts Debate findings and a number of other things recently, such as research about the number of women in senior positions suggest there are still equality issues which need addressing. But I also come back to the complex backgrounds of people rather than simply their gender, ethnicity or sexuality. Put bluntly, swapping middle-class public school-educated white men for middle-class public school-educated white women or middle-class public school-educated black people is only one step forward in an arts world where the number of people from other backgrounds is very small.
(This is not just about 'equality', for me, it is about the art work - when an artform embraces creativity from all backgrounds, it becomes richer and more vital, when it becomes narrow, it can atrophy and become sterile. Examples I'd cite might be the novel and theatre before the Angry Young Men, or English poetry before the generation that came through in the 1980s.)
Like all of Lee Hall's work there's a seam of sentiment in 'The Pitman Painters', but it is finely hewn. His foreword in the programme puts the case for inclusion and diversity powerfully, and with that same risk of sentimentality. I reproduce part of it here to stimulate some thought on whether our current approaches to diversity go far enough:
'The idea that art is somehow a commodity, that culture is something one consumes rather than takes part in, is, of course, a very modern notion.... Despite the advances in education and the blossoming of the welfare state, somehow we have failed to 'democratize' the riches of culture. That The Group managed to achieve so much unaided and unabetted should remind us that dumbing down is not a prerequisite of culture being more accessible. That is a lie perpetrated by those who want to sell us shit. Culture is something we share and we are all the poorer for anyone excluded from it.'
The play - which transfers to the National Theatre in London Village next month - is about The Ashington Group - miners who became the toast of the art world in the 1930's. If I could reproduce the script here to talk about 'diversity', I would. The Arts Debate findings and a number of other things recently, such as research about the number of women in senior positions suggest there are still equality issues which need addressing. But I also come back to the complex backgrounds of people rather than simply their gender, ethnicity or sexuality. Put bluntly, swapping middle-class public school-educated white men for middle-class public school-educated white women or middle-class public school-educated black people is only one step forward in an arts world where the number of people from other backgrounds is very small.
(This is not just about 'equality', for me, it is about the art work - when an artform embraces creativity from all backgrounds, it becomes richer and more vital, when it becomes narrow, it can atrophy and become sterile. Examples I'd cite might be the novel and theatre before the Angry Young Men, or English poetry before the generation that came through in the 1980s.)
Like all of Lee Hall's work there's a seam of sentiment in 'The Pitman Painters', but it is finely hewn. His foreword in the programme puts the case for inclusion and diversity powerfully, and with that same risk of sentimentality. I reproduce part of it here to stimulate some thought on whether our current approaches to diversity go far enough:
'The idea that art is somehow a commodity, that culture is something one consumes rather than takes part in, is, of course, a very modern notion.... Despite the advances in education and the blossoming of the welfare state, somehow we have failed to 'democratize' the riches of culture. That The Group managed to achieve so much unaided and unabetted should remind us that dumbing down is not a prerequisite of culture being more accessible. That is a lie perpetrated by those who want to sell us shit. Culture is something we share and we are all the poorer for anyone excluded from it.'
Monday, 7 April 2008
What do people want from the arts?
The Arts Debate was a major public value enquiry, carried out by Arts Council England last year. It has published a number of reports and summaries of the findings, which you can access here. A new summary report has just been published, ‘What people want from the arts’. I draw a few conclusions relating to these findings, by drawing it to your attention:
People of all kinds value the arts but many feel there are barriers to them getting involved personally. These are mainly psychological, and relate (or so it seems to me) to confidence to act independently. As such they may be rooted in class, feelings of distance from power, or education systems and so on as much as specifically arts-related issues.
People get different things from the arts. The areas of value are described as relating to capacity for understanding and navigating the world, enriching our experience of life and applications to achieve wider outcomes such as learning or community cohesion. Although we might all choose different words, I think this is a useful way of looking at public value. From this flows the need to focus on quality and innovation, especially quality of experience, product and project.
This then has implications for all funders – not just the Arts Council, though particularly us – in terms of how we support people to create work that meets these aspirations in a fair and transparent way.
Some people will say this tells us what we already knew, and to a certain extent they might be right. But it tells us it in a different way, and it is a real endorsement from the public – including those not currently ‘engaged’ with the arts – of what artists and promoters and the Arts Council have been arguing for decades. As such it is powerful ammunition for use with, say, local councillors who think their constituents ‘don’t care’ about cultural provision.
One can look at these findings from a number of perspectives – which is what I hope to do over the next few posts, so this doesn’t turn into an essay (just now.) What might this mean for the sector’s response to a greater emphasis on ‘excellence’ in the arts? What does this mean for ‘participation’ – do we need better, subtler ways of defining it? Do we need to revisit our thinking on diversity and how we nurture new talent in the sector? Might there be implications for some of our basic models – of business, arts education, arts development, arts marketing?
(I’m also really keen to hear if there are examples of these issues being dealt with elsewhere in the world, where the influence of class in cultural experience might be different from Britain.)
People of all kinds value the arts but many feel there are barriers to them getting involved personally. These are mainly psychological, and relate (or so it seems to me) to confidence to act independently. As such they may be rooted in class, feelings of distance from power, or education systems and so on as much as specifically arts-related issues.
People get different things from the arts. The areas of value are described as relating to capacity for understanding and navigating the world, enriching our experience of life and applications to achieve wider outcomes such as learning or community cohesion. Although we might all choose different words, I think this is a useful way of looking at public value. From this flows the need to focus on quality and innovation, especially quality of experience, product and project.
This then has implications for all funders – not just the Arts Council, though particularly us – in terms of how we support people to create work that meets these aspirations in a fair and transparent way.
Some people will say this tells us what we already knew, and to a certain extent they might be right. But it tells us it in a different way, and it is a real endorsement from the public – including those not currently ‘engaged’ with the arts – of what artists and promoters and the Arts Council have been arguing for decades. As such it is powerful ammunition for use with, say, local councillors who think their constituents ‘don’t care’ about cultural provision.
One can look at these findings from a number of perspectives – which is what I hope to do over the next few posts, so this doesn’t turn into an essay (just now.) What might this mean for the sector’s response to a greater emphasis on ‘excellence’ in the arts? What does this mean for ‘participation’ – do we need better, subtler ways of defining it? Do we need to revisit our thinking on diversity and how we nurture new talent in the sector? Might there be implications for some of our basic models – of business, arts education, arts development, arts marketing?
(I’m also really keen to hear if there are examples of these issues being dealt with elsewhere in the world, where the influence of class in cultural experience might be different from Britain.)
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