Convener: Emma
Adams
Participants:
There were a lot of people, some didn’t sign in I think – but here are the people
that did (I found some names hard to read, so apologies if I’ve spelt your name
wrongly): Felix M, Jo Carly, Louie Ingham, Amardeep Sohi, Rachel Parish, Angie
Baul, Matthew Austin, Hannah Myers, Jonathan Petherbridge, Ariane Oifizica,
Rosy, Lyn, Mhar Greahis, Dick Bonham, Cristina Catalina, Bethany Haynes, Mary
S, Alexis Terry.
Summary
of discussion, conclusions and/or recommendations:
A
preamble
I called this discussion because I have a feeling (and
I wanted to say it out loud in a place that might feel safe to say it) that the
strategy of responding to the assault on the arts by ‘defending them’ has
failed. As soon as we start to try and ‘defend’ we are admitting that our place
is a place of retreat. And that perhaps then, a more productive response to
this would be to say ‘no’ to defending and instead ‘yes’ to putting our energy
into reimagining what we are doing / why we are doing and who we look to for
permission to do so? To be explicit, to
take the Arts forward do we need to
utterly reject the currant premise (founded on austerity and cuts) and refuse
to engage with it and instead get busy with engaging with something more
positive? Because here in the world of ‘reality’ that we live in, the need for
Austerity and cuts are posited as coming from a ‘logical’ and ‘true’ place. I
wanted to discuss the possibility that if this concept is wrong but we continue
to act as if it is right, then the likely upshot is that all the solutions we
come up with to solve the problems we are faced with will fail.
Or put another way.
Victorians thought typhoid was caused by ‘bad smells’.
This meant that for years and years they refused to pay for the sewer system that
was needed to stop typhoid spreading.
Because they did not have the right premise they were doomed to fail and
people kept dying of typhoid.
I read a blog a few weeks ago on a site called ‘bright
green’ I think – and it was about looking at the success of ‘the right’ since
the post war settlement. The thrust of the argument was that ‘the left’ won a
ton of radical demands (NHS, shorter working days / social security etc) after
the war and then stopped dreaming of what it should be attaining and instead
turned its attention to defending the gains it had made. The
writer asserted that as soon as ‘the left’ began to ‘defend’ its gains it went
into retreat and started losing ground to the new radicals on the right who
were busy dreaming up ‘impossible’ things (such as dismantling the NHS /
erasing social security) which now don’t feel so impossible. The blog writer
called for those in the green movement to learn from the methods the right is
using and to dare to start dreaming and articulating arguments for attaining
the impossible, because attack is the best defense…
This got me thinking about what is going on for us
here in our world in the Arts…
Which lead me to write a blog for the SOTA live blog…
Art V Sofa (http://sotablog.artscouncil.org.uk/post/16981740637/art-v-sofa
)
And finally this train of thought lead me to thinking
it might be useful to try and discuss all this with people here at D&D7.
Because it feels like…
We have been given a pair of shoes to ware, which are
in fact Two-Right shoes. Some people noticed and said ‘we can’t ware these
shoes’ but still in the end they were the only pair of shoes on offer. So we decided to put them on. And actually,
as it turns out, the right foot put on its right shoe and it felt great. But,
just because one of our feet is comfortable doesn’t mean that our left foot is not
being squeezed into a shoe that will never be comfortable / right for it to
ware. Which it is. So we now have a left foot that is
complaining. Only the right foot is more
interested in kind of getting on with the job of learning to walk in the new
pair of shoes. So, then my question is… If
we continue to insist that the pair of Two-Right foot shoes is the correct and
only way to have a pair of shoes, then in the end the pain in the left foot will become the pain in the wrong foot and eventually our body will begin
to wonder if it might not be more comfortable if it just got rid of that irritating stupid useless fucking left foot
that does nothing but bleed anyway.
And before you know it, under these circumstances will we not convince ourselves
that the best thing to do for all body parts concerned would be to just fucking
well cut off the bastard wrong foot? That
fucking useless problem bastard wrong foot!
Who needs it?! Not us. Under
these circumstances a perfectly beautiful and healthy foot could end up being amputated
all because at no point in the conversation did we think it might be possible
to question whether the pair of shoes were wrong instead of the feet.
This may feel a little extreme – but I seem to hear
more and more artists talking about ‘the dead wood’ in art that ‘needs trimming’. I hear more and more people arguing over the
small pot of shrinking money trying to make arguments for who is more
deserving. I hear more and more people
undervaluing the work that producers and administrators do, because who needs
the ‘backroom’ now?
So, are we turning in on ourselves because we are
frightened for our life?
This is called divide and rule.
It is a very old technique
Is it working?
Amongst us.
In this room.
Is it? Is that
what is happening?
That’s what I’ve been thinking about.
Because if it is?
If that is what is happening?
It feels like a new premise needs to be found and
articulated.
Quickly.
Or as quickly as is possible.
That feels like a huge philosophical challenge.
And a bit impossible.
And so for these reasons I felt a little vulnerable
about trying to say all of this out loud because I still have to function and
get work in the world as it is. And I
don’t want anyone thinking that I’m a flutter-brain-flake-mother-fucker-type
when what they need to hire right now is a get-the-job-done-without-moaning-type
of person.
And I’d like to assure you, if you are one of those
people looking for a get-the-job-done-without-moanin-
type person that I am really very good at looking and behaving like I am that
kind of person and I am available for hire.
Right now.
Just in case.
If you were wondering.
So that’s my preamble. And I wanted to note all of
this because the discussion didn’t quite work out in the way that I had hoped
or was expecting it might.
‘Be ready to be surprised’ said Phelim and I was and
am.
Largely because most of the time, despite my hopes
(and possibly because I struggled to articulate what I was thinking. And/or possibly
because many who came to the discussion wanted to move from the amorphous to
the more tangible?) it became a discussion about ways to deal with the present
premise rather than exploring the idea of what a different premise could be.
This lead to some frustrations all round.
Ultimately there was a decision by some people present
to pick up the baton, recall the session and try again on Sunday.
So anyway, here is a description of the main themes
that were discussed in this first attempt at the session…
I’ve had to do some unpicking of my notes and memory
to find these themes. I may have missed
some things. This is not definitive but
an attempt to give a fair / representative snap shot of the main ideas that evolved
in the conversation…
Theme
1
There
was much discussion about how we might evolve / change the way that we present
ourselves / make ourselves valuable / communicate with our community and the ‘political’
world.
This
broke down into two sub thrusts:
One
about the ideology of the present government and a maxi political response to
this.
For example some questions raised:
Will the Arts Council still exist post 2015?
Should it? Should we be preparing for that?
Why did we lose the political battle with the
government during the spending review?
What are the implications of knowing we have lost this
argument?
Why don’t audiences / communities value the arts /
arts venues / arts opportunities that are available to them?
Are arts opportunities really available to communities?
What stops people from engaging? Class? Money? Opportunity? The arrogant
attitude of artists who are out of touch with what people want?
Do artists have to alter their goals now that the
financial situation has changed? Do
artists have a right to make authored work that isn’t clearly ‘for’ something /
fails to actively strive to engage with a community any more?
The second
thrust was about the more day-to-day / nuts and bolts logistics / realities of
dealing with local politicians / the day-to-day personal responses / practical
ways / strategies that an individual artist or company might use to further
their work.
For example:
Should we be learning to speak the language of the
DCMS and local politicians so that we can communicate effectively with them on
their own turf? Could the big ‘Royal’ and ‘National’ organisations which are
very good at doing this for themselves collaborate with smaller companies to
help them learn how to do this?
Should we stop calling ourselves artists at all? One
person mentioned that they know a successful theatre maker running a thriving
local venue who says, “I never say I’m a
theatre maker. I say I help people feel happier and live longer”
Do we need to think laterally about the worth / value
of what we do? For example some one now goes to council social services funding
streams instead of the arts Council to find money to do the work they want to
do.
Should we be inviting our MP / local councilor to the
next show we make, because if they see the work and the worth of the work they
will fight for it when it is threatened?
Theme
2:
The
best way to safe guard the arts is to build creativity in children / work in
school / work in community to develop creative literacy, well being and this
audiences agency - so that in the future they will then value and fight for the
arts .
This was countered with thoughts that much of the
funding (Creative Partnerships in England for example) for this work along with
many local council budgets for youth work have been lost in the spending review
/ cuts and so opportunities to work with children / young people have been
lost. And also what about artists who want to make work now?
Theme
3:
Thoughts
about trying to define what an alternative premise might be?
Do we need to work out what is valuable about what we
do in terms that are not to do with economics?
Would it be useful to read the work of an economist
called ‘Umiar Haque’ who works from the starting point of being a capitalist
but who questions whether capitalism is measuring the right things when it
looks for how successful it is?
What does it mean for us as artists struggling to be
valued that when Archeologists measure human development they look for
‘evidence of significant artistic activity’?
Is our argument with George Osborne or with the people
who vote for George Osborne?
Can we learn anything from the Occupy movement?
Should we learn from the scientists who study pure
science (for example those working with the Hedron collider)? They on one hand
believe themselves to be at the frontier of human understanding and justify
this endeavor for its own sake. But also they are able to talk about the
unexpected spin offs (for example MRI scans / the Web) which come from this
research and which are widely / generally valued?
Conclusions / Action
Points
A new session to be called to continue this discussion so
that some conclusions / action points can be found.
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