Sarah Thelwall has just completed a residency with
Proboscis. In her paper
Capitalising Creativity recently published by Proboscis she discusses how publicly funded, not-for-profit arts organisations might liberate themselves from their subsistence model of existence.
The consequences for arts organisations of the current funding crunch for arts organisations are also discussed in the much quoted
Mission Models, Money report,
Towards a healthy ecology of arts and culture.
"Hundreds of not-for-profit organisations critical to both our historical and contemporary cultural canon, the creators and producers of this ‘golden age’, are over-extended and under-capitalised. Often with high fixed costs and inflexible business models many are highly dependent on annual public sector grants to survive as patterns in attendance and earned and fundraised income from the private sector change. This scenario, whilst allowing survival, offers very little scope for fundamental transformation into more responsive, adaptive, sustainable mission-led businesses delivering cultural excellence to an even wider general public. Yet this ability to evolve has never been so essential." (Mission, Models, Money, 2007) |
Thelwall's main contention is that by developing a blended economy of public funding and commercial income streams, organisations (esp. artist-led orgs) might begin to develop their own, more grounded and confident, objectives according to their artistic aims and intuitions; continuing to fund experimental, developmental and responsive art practice through public funding and investing in people and infrastructure through generated income.
In public funding contracts, income is linked to the amount of labour required to produce the art object or service (to ensure value-for-public-money). Usually there are some additional objectives associated with audience size and diversity. In this model the only way for an organisation to increase its income is either to become more expert and efficient at delivering outcomes or to commit to additional projects (often public funding requires that you do something
new). This can lead to both burnout of key people in the organisation and a fragmentation of purpose, rather than a proper fuelling and nurturing of experimental artistic processes (what Thelwall calls First Order activities). This is the activity that generates and supports the development of powerful and inspirational vision and new "intellectual capital".
By contrast, an entrepreneur would identify an existing (preferably growing) audience/customer base and provide a product or service for which there is an established demand. The suggestion is that arts organisations develop a distinct and maybe separate strand of more entrepreneurial activities that capitalise on their intellectual capital; to identify the Second Order activities in their existing practice that generate products or services that are:
- packageable (and therefore do not require expert involvement at the point of distribution)
- scaleable (the cost of production to your organisation remains the same if you sell one unit or thousands.)
- for an existing market (market development/creation is risky and expensive).
The additional benefit is that in the process of tapping your growth market, you create positive feedback and the accessibility, reach and audience for the experimental (First Order) work grows too.
Second Order activities should not be confused with other more peripheral income generating ventures such as cafes and bookshops. Some examples might be the ongoing work of
Sarah Staton and the
Tate Homebase Multiples : slogan..."Would it look nice in the living room". But these rely on the marketing machine of the high profile Tate in order to be effective.
The examples given by Thelwall include the re-creation of bespoke children's playgrounds as kits to be sold cheaper more widely and the scarily ambitious alternative approach being developed by
SCAN
"SCAN - this digital media focused arts organisation is exploring an agency model. As a by-product of artists’ projects a series of commercialisable products & services have emerged. SCAN is developing these in conjunction with the artists, Higher Education institutions and commercial entities with the help of research and proof of concept funds. This distinctive approach enables SCAN to identify the rare opportunities in individual artist careers when a commercialisable outcome might both grow the audience for their work and enable the artists to benefit from a royalty stream or research strand." (Thelwall, S., 2007) |
This example side-steps the, sometimes unhelpful, correlation of art with product (which it seems hard for the art to survive) and reinforces a cluster of values probably more familiar to practitioners of Networked Media Arts of
dialogue, service
and
tooling and process.
A friend pointed out wryly how delicately Thelwall's article is expressed - so as to not upset artists or to imply that they have somehow lost all of their common sense as a result of years of cosseting by public funding.
All of this requires a good deal more of further constructive and practical thought- and action; around the economies of exchange for art and artistic services, especially those unique to Networked Media Arts. In earlier years I was happy as an artist to swim around in periods of creative productivity, drawing on whatever resources and opportunities came my way, buoyed by the mystique of noble poverty. Running parallel to this was another more glamourous world of the chosen-few gallery artists whose work operated in the rare commodity market. Reflecting on the Node.L Season of Media Arts 2006 taught me that there exists an unpalatable, prerequisite base-line of privilege (whether it be wealth, free-time, or education) necessary to involvement in any kind of cultural activity. Now as a member of the Furtherfield Neighbourhood the stakes seem higher than ever. There is great work done by many people, that will be lost if we don't find a way to continue in a way that is appropriate, and somehow integral to our collaborative artistic approach. It feels like an artistic challenge!
Comments
Last week a new book was
Last week a new book was presented about the history of the alternative music scene in Linz from the 1970s to the mid-90s. I haven't actually had my hands on this book since I paid for it at the presentation, as it was immediately seized by my husband, who was part of that scene then, and my elder son, who is part of the scene now. However, I have heard large chunks of it read out loud, first at the presentation, and since then at home. One statement in particular, which I have heard quoted from just about everyone I have encountered in the past week, is perhaps analogously applicable here too: "Sure we can live from the music we make - we just can't live from the money we get for it." I wish I knew something more useful to add.A "...does not live by bread alone" statement?
I'm not sure I understand the spirit of this statement out of context. "Sure we can live from the music we make - we just can't live from the money we get for it." ...could mean:- music sustains the soulful aspect of our lives - but not our material needs. I just can't work out whether the statement is one of acceptance, or recognition of a problem, or of protest, or an exhortation to artists to shrug off material concerns. What do you think?Maybe a question of priorities
Your question took me by surprise, Ruth, and I had to stop and think about it. It may be that the context is missing, or maybe it just doesn't translate well. Listening to the echoes in my head of the tone of voice in which it was repeated, though, I would say that it is mostly expressed as a statement of values, i.e. making music is what is important, making a living is secondary. Some of the people who repeated this statement last week did so as they were working at their "day jobs" (or rather "night jobs") as waiters. Many of the accounts in this book mention the family background of the protagonists, a kind of protest against expectations involving values like "security", "stability" - values that many of us rejected at the time. Now that the world has changed around us and we're not quite sure how to deal with the situation, a statement like this seems to sound like a kind of reassuring confirmation. There was a reason for rejecting those values, and it is still valid. Of course, this still doesn't solve the problem of the necessity of earning a living, even if that is not at the top of the list of priorities.Still thinking
I'm picturing the people in my mind, who were there for the book presentation, thinking about what many of them are doing now, and I think what prompted me to post that statement originally was a sense of unease about what the underlying assumptions might be in your original post. Maybe the point is that the question of "funding" might be posed the wrong way around to begin with. If housing is affordable, if health care and childcare and transportation are available, if the cost of living in general is manageable, then that affects the amount of funding - public or otherwise - that is needed to be able to engage in non-lucrative activities of any kind, whether artistic, educational, social, or anything else that human beings need to be able to do, whether it is "productive" or not.Taboo
Thanks, this is helpful and I hear where you're coming from. It makes me uneasy, both to think in terms of production (with all that word's associations)...and not to. Living and working in London is not particularly affordable, but the notion of affordability is probably always relative. There might be times when it's helpful and appropriate to think in terms of exchange for effort (or artistic output, product, service or labour) and others when the value of an activity is somehow negated by placing it in a framework of calculated exchange. At Furtherfield have been thinking about how to continue to explore and experiment with the activities that we value and collaborate with the people with whom we have an affinity ...and avoid burn-out...and...and... One way we might do this is to identify activities that we are already doing, that we want to continue with, and to find people or organisations who would like to give us money in exchange for the products of these activities. It's not about making profit but about having the means to sustain what we do. It is hard to think about, (almost taboo) the relation between money and art. Today's latest, crisis call for donations from the excellent Turbulence makes me think that I have to give it a go.Whatever happened to the age of leisure?
I was fretting about the infestation of corporate language in the contemporary UK art world, eg "diversifying income strands". A friend reminded me of the pre-Thatcher notion of a futuristic age of leisure- where robots and computers would do the work of thousands of people, so freeing the wage slaves. A two day working-week in shiney white factories; quiet places with just the hum and gentle beep of monitors where you would play table-tennis for most of the day, to pass the time, cos there was so little need for your human input.