Reasons to be thrifty - could 'local' be the new black?

make-do-and-mend

As the axe hangs over public spending for UK arts organisations and we wait to see where it will fall, many of us our thinking about how we make do with less, or even do more with less.

A couple of weeks ago I attended the final seminar in the current series organised by ERA 21 and MMM on the topic of ‘Thriving on Less’ and the speakers and audience came up with some great insights into how to approach this topical, thorny issue. As with the other events in this series (about which I’ve blogged here on being over-built and here on funding issues) MMM will be uploading video of the event to its website shortly. I’m sad to say this was the last in a series of 4 events – they’ve been the best discussions I’ve had in ages – really inspiring and thought-provoking.

Speakers came at the topic from two very different angles -although all saw imagination and working collectively as key to making progress.

Lucy Neal spoke about the leadership role of the arts in combatting climate change. She was excited about the potential to change attitudes and thinking through creative activity. In her words, ‘we are living in a revolution – the great imagining’ and the way forward is through collective action. The project about which she spoke – Transition Town Tooting – uses creativity and a festival to ‘create a new world by imagining it’. Some in the audience voiced concern about using the arts to evangelise about political issues – but Lucy clarified she was not advocating making work about climate change per se (‘Climate Change the musical’ it wasn’t), so much as wanting to see the arts play a role in enabling and leading new ways of thinking that bring people together to imagine new realities.

Edmund Nikols from Northern Stage spoke from a more practical level about how his organisation was approaching both efficiency-savings (e.g. on energy) and the challenges of reducing environmental impact (which in some cases cost more). He argued that until we value (and therefore measure) our impact beyond the narrow confines of the financial then we will never take environmental impact seriously and do anything about it – suggesting funders have a role in encouraging accountability on environmental terms. Caroline Routh (The Empty Space) spoke about a collaborative project aimed to increase access to performance and rehearsal spaces for emerging performing arts practitioners in the North East. She explained they had moved away from a model of seeking to creating a new building (which wasn’t ultimately feasible – or necessary) to focus instead on negotiating access to under-utilised spaces in existing venues. Again she touched on the role the funder could play in ensuring better value from our existing assets – mentioning how Sustain funding had been used to ‘prop up’ shortfalls in income from commercial hires for some venues, suggesting that funding could have been better spent paying for artists to use those spaces – so both the venue and the artists seeking access to space could have benefitted.

For Caroline, the key breakthrough in thinking (and progress) had happened when instead of framing the questions about ‘what to we need to do?’ (to which the answer had been – ‘get our own building so we can offer access to space’) they had considered ‘what do we need to achieve’ (the real need being ‘to provide access to space’ and that could be existing space, not necessarily their own). In other words – thinking in terms of outcomes not activities had helped them see alternative ways to achieve their goal. The mission was the same – the strategy was different.

Overall I was struck by comments about the need to make an imaginative leap, break the existing rules and turn a few paradigms on their heads. We need to take a bold step – whether we’re talking about stopping climate change or re-adjusting to a new funding reality, incremental change, or a ‘series of little adjustments’ (to quote Caroline)  is not enough. Repeatedly we also touched on the culture change that needs to happen to enable this – far greater collaboration will be required to make best use of our limited resources.

I’d suggest as arts managers considering all our options for achieving our mission – and not falling back onto the activities we’ve always done – is going to be critical when faced with 20% cuts in budgets as many fear. Shaving costs here and there will reduce overall quality, impact and reach – it could be death through a thousand small cuts. Far better to think creatively about if there might be other (better?) ways to achieve our goals. That means unpicking our assumptions – and one on which we’re all very hung up in contemporary international arts is that international is somehow better than national, and that local is even less valuable. The McMaster report is a case in point equating internationalism with excellence, although it’s a attitude that’s deeply ingrained in all aspects of the arts world.

Isn’t it about time we turned that one on its head? And just as locally-grown is the ‘new black’ of good food – perhaps we need to starting valuing more what’s close to home. This would certainly help cut costs (financial, environmental and human – there’s only so much travelling that’s healthy and many arts professionals seem to take pride in jet-setting).

How is your organisation approaching making cuts? Is it time to tweak or re-model? And might thinking local help? I’d love to hear what you think.