Can sport inspire art?

There’s a lot of talk, and indeed a lot of clench-teethed muttering, about how the London 2012 will be a ‘cultural olympiad’. Opening and closing ceremonies have come under particular scrutiny.

The Great North Run Cultural Programme is a great example of how you can make meaningful connections between sport and the arts, and over the last few years has done both commissions of the first order (eg Wilson Twins, Michael Nyman) and mass participation arts ‘events’. I think it’s an exemplar for 2012. There is a natural connection as the driver behind it has been former world-record holder Brendan Foster, whose company runs (pun intended) the Great North Run. Brendan has been a real champion of involving artists in this phenomenon. He has a refreshing directness that many in the arts don’t have, too. It’s worth looking through what the Cultural Programme has been up to in recent years – it is a real achievement.


(One of this year’s moving image commissions - Run for Me by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, currently to be seen at BALTIC in Gateshead - features a member of our Communications team, Kathryn Goodfellow, and her dad. Kathryn's doing the run for the first time in October. Personally, I think you can take art and culture links too far and will stick to fiveaside … Like many people Kathryn’s being sponsored: join in here. Ali Simanwe from our Finance team is also running it and you can sponsor him here. Go on.)

The beginning of the peer show?

Last week we held two sessions at the National Glass Centre in Sunderland, discussing emerging priorities for Arts Council England with arts organisations and partners. This follows what I believe is technically known as a shedload of work we’ve been doing on this, drawing together influences including the Arts Debate, the government’s Comprehensive Spending Review, the McMaster Review, the ‘cultural offer’, 2012, and the need to save 15% on our current admin budget within the next three years. I’m not going to run through it all here right now. We had lots of interesting, challenging but overall positive discussion and I got some really good insights into how the Arts Council can better collaborate with others to achieve what I think is the mutual goal of people engaging with fantastic art.

There was a lot of talk about peer review, involvement and learning, but also a lot of disagreement about what it might be, and how best to organise it. One flip chart contained the immortal phrase ‘*ollo**s to peer review (local authorities)’, so you can tell it was a frank discussion! There was clearly a lot of nervousness that peers would be ‘the usual suspects’. (Though equal nervousness when I suggested including members of the public in peer reviews.)

Which made me think of a couple of pieces in The Guardian last week. One the somewhat premature announcement of the ACE inspectorate (Ofarts?) – we’re far from sorted on that yet. The other was Mark Ravenhill’s typically pithy suggestion for a parliament of artists. An interesting idea, (though not as interesting as artists getting involved in actual politics, as I’ve said before.) Only difficulty being that the names mentioned were very much the House of Lords end of the peer market – though yes, I would like to see Thom Yorke, Lesley Garret and Tracy Emin debating. But perhaps what we really need are more contrary ‘commoners’ whose names might not be recognised in the national papers, or dare I say it, London Village’s Bustling West End, but play key roles in the arts across Britain. Mix them up and who knows what insights and ideas we’d get? It's only a real diversity of voices that will help the Arts Council and the sector.

Do you feel Olympian?

The London 2012 Cultural Olympiad moved another hop, skip and a jump closer this week with the ‘opening for business’ to artists and arts organisations. You can read about the different ways to get involved here. Obviously there’s a considerable amount of lottery funding going into the Olympics and many people have made their views clear about that. Whatever the rights and wrongs, 2012 is a-coming and is now an opportunity to do some creative and fantastic things. I see no sense in the resentful scorn I’ve heard from some people. I think we could really do something to showcase the talent of young people, for instance, that might dislodge forever (ok, a generation…) this damaging myth that young people are, somehow, Trouble about which ‘something must be done’. I think it’s also a great chance for the arts in London to demonstrate the benefits to the whole of the UK of having a global cultural capital here.

At the IFACCA World Summit on Arts and Culture, organised by Arts Council in the North East in 2006 we had a session on cultural Olympiads, with two great speakers, Craig Hassall and Beatriz Garcia. Craig’s presentation emphasised the need to involve artists, which the team are striving to do. Beatriz’s website has lots of links of interest to those interested in the legacies of such events.