Palaces or community centres?
 The Hepworth Wakefield: a new art palace that's still reaching its community
As exhibitions galleries and art museums in England move a step closer together due to the merger of Arts Council England and MLA, I’m struck by a significant cultural difference between these parallel worlds and excited by the opportunity that bringing together these different perspectives brings.
Both the contemporary galleries sector and the museums sector are wonderfully diverse and I can cite examples from both which contradict what I’m about to say. But I’d argue that whilst all public galleries and museums are committed – at least in principle – to both art (and artists) and audiences, our art museums can often favour the audience at the expense of the art, and our contemporary galleries too often privilege the artist and art object over the audience. In other words, one tends towards the being a palace for art, the other can sometimes feel more like a community centre.
A quick comparison of audience trends in the ACE-funded contemporary spaces (stagnating) with the MLA-funded galleries (growing strongly – at least in those funded via Renaissance) bring this distinction into sharp focus. Just as a quick glance at the curator-focussed art press would reveal a disproportionate focus on the contemporary spaces when it comes to critical success.
It was notable how in PHF’s recent report into good practice in engagement and participation only museums-sector art galleries were included: not contemporary spaces. There must be a happy middle way – and there are an increasing number of organisations inhabiting it including Turner Contemporary, Hepworth Wakefield, Baltic, New Art Gallery Walsall, The Whitworth. But I’m looking forward to seeing how the forced marriage of these two quite separate worlds helps to challenge more widely our professional and organisational assumptions on both sides – to the benefit of artists and audiences.
Estelle Morris’s recent report for Arts Council England looks at one aspect of the merger of public bodies responsible for museums and the arts – how well ACE’s current funding and strategic framework ‘fits’ museums and libraries and where it needs to be adapted. Others in the museums sector including the Museums Association and Tony Butler (Director of Museum of East Anglian Life) have made strong arguments for the funding approach now used in the arts to be applied to their world. But lets hope benefits run both ways – and those of us who are more rooted on the arts side of the fence perhaps need the challenge of a stronger focus on audience which is a key strength of the museums sector.
Audiences and art (or artists) is not an either/or – it’s got to be both for public art galleries whether they have collections or not. It’s a fine-balance for art museums and galleries to strike but I thought Baroness Morris’s introductory remarks in her report articulated it very well:
‘Museums and libraries, art and performance are of value in their own right but they only make real sense when they connect with people and become part of life the nation and its citizens,’ (Estelle Morris, Baroness Morris of Yardley, Review of the Arts Council’s strategic framework, April 2010).
Perhaps then it’s not palaces or community centres we need but ambitious and proud town halls? Or Habitat – but as this well-known brand’s current demise illustrates, stylish and affordable can quickly become neither fish nor fowl…
 We all enjoy painting (and music and dancing) when we're two, so why don't more adults enjoy the arts? Arts Council England is inviting contributions to its consultation about a ten-year strategy for the arts entitled ‘Achieving Great Art for Everyone’ until 14 April. I believe it’s up to all of us in the arts sector to contribute to this strategy and I’d encourage everyone to make their views known directly - which you can do online. But the consultation also provides an interesting opportunity for us to talk to one another about what we see as the challenges and the solutions – which we don’t do often enough. So I look forward to hearing others’ views on the issues – for example I enjoyed reading Paul Smith’s(Executive Director of Liverpool Biennale) response.
Personally I’ve been thinking about the questions raised by the consultation for a few weeks now, and earlier this week attended a round-table with other arts professionals, chaired by Liz Forgan. I’ve drafted a response, parts of which I’ve posted below. I’ll be sending a full response (with nitty gritty stuff about visual arts) onto ACE in a few weeks but before I make up my mind definitively I’m interested in your responses to my views:
Do you share the Arts Council’s vision (Great Art for Everyone)?
Yes in theory – but I’m not sure I understand fully what ‘great art for everyone’ entails. I think some people would see that as status quo in terms of product with better marketing, other people might think it requires a very different approach to what and how we produce and present ‘art’ (as John Holden’s think piece on the ACE website implies). Not everyone will agree with what constitutes ‘great art’ – where do we stand on that?
I hope we don’t mean We (peers/ art world) decide what ‘great art’ is and we offer it to You (audiences). I think it has to mean We (professionals, artists and audiences) will start having conversations about what art is and means to us all and that our arts and cultural organisations (ACOs) will be the place to have these conversations – because only then do I think we can begin to widen the range of people who want art to be part of their lives.
What does that mean in practice? Taking a broader definition of arts and culture (as per Holden Democratic Culture, Bill Ivey Expressive Lives, etc) and inviting greater public involvement with our arts and cultural organisations – not just as audiences. It means ACOs being led by people who really value audiences and see the mission of our ACOs being about engaging with audiences and developing/ presenting artists equally. There are leaders like this at all levels in the sector from the Nationals to smaller organisations, but there are too many for whom audiences are not part of the vision.
What do you think are the most important things to focus on in order to ensure the arts leadership and workforce are diverse and highly skilled?
How can we ever have a highly skilled workforce in the visual arts when so many talented people leave the workforce (or fail to enter in the first place) because of the poor pay and conditions? We need a step-change in professionalism in visual arts management and administration – new business models, better ICT capacity, better marketing. With CCSkills (and the sector-lead bodies such as VAGA) ACE has an important development and advocacy role around raising professional standards in the sector.
Better pay and conditions and more flexible working arrangements are essential if we are not to continue to lose women with children from the workforce (economic factors also drive others out – but it’s women and mothers in particular where we see the biggest impact in visual arts).
We also need to learn from other parts of the arts sector about collaborative leadership in visual arts. Curator-led organisations do not serve the interests of audiences and often are not resilient. Joint leadership models – with a managing director alongside the artistic director – common in the performing arts are emerging and should be encouraged.
The skills and attributes we need are entrepreneurialism/ innovation of our business models, ICT, strategic marketing, collaboration with our peers. But more importantly we need to value our workforce and their CPD far more than we do currently in a long-hours, low pay culture.
What can ACE do about this (and it’s clearly not just ACE’s responsibility)? Support CPD and professionalisation agendas through investment in sector-led bodies and CCSkills. Encourage RFOs to become more progressive employers through a wider quality framework underpinning all RFO funding.
The other key issue for leadership is improving governance in the sector. Boards have a critical role to play in enabling ACOs to respond strategically to the fast-changing world in which we operate and provide an opportunity to bring external perspectives from other sectors. But ACOs find it hard to attract effective Trustees and many Boards fail to have the collective strategic impact they should because both non-execs and senior staff lack the skills to work effectively together in a governance capacity. The Cultural Leadership Programme is doing some excellent work in this area, and the issues are identical in the wider charities sector where there are many other agencies (NCVO, ACEVO, Social Enterprise Coalition etc) developing governance resources we can all benefit from.
What do you think are the most important things to focus on in order to ensure more people value and enjoy the arts?
We need to increase the level of engagement not just in terms of numbers, but in terms of quality – so I hope our measures of success for audiences will be outcomes-based not simply quantitative.
As ACE’s own excellent literature review highlights, the changing expectations of audiences, coupled with disappointing levels of current engagement, are perhaps the biggest challenge facing arts and cultural organizations. We can’t ‘sell’ ourselves out of this situation – as the Taking Part research shows, those who don’t engage currently are often just not interested because they don’t see the arts as relevant.
Arts and cultural organizations have to work harder to reach people because much of what we do is relevant and valuable, but we also have to work harder to ensure that we are increasingly relevant and responsive to our audiences – and that will mean two things: 1) listening harder to audiences and having more conversations, and 2) developing strategies which are informed by these conversations. Talking to many people in the sector about these issues recently for my current research I’m finding many people who understand the challenges and are keen to engage in news ways – but most of us feel this is a complicated area which we are only in the early stages of exploring.
In terms of implications for funders, if we are serious about extending engagement then that means encouraging greater investment in audiences, a focus on innovation in audience development and measuring quality not just quantity. We also have to be prepared for failure – because we need to experiment and won’t always get it right first time. Doing nothing is not an option, and I would like to see John Knell’s recommendations about minimum standards of customer-focus built into the RFO quality framework. ACE has just established a new peer assessment framework for artistic quality but there is no equivalent for quality in reaching audiences – if we are serious about extending audiences then this needs to be backed up by some form of assessment of impact or else how will we know whether we are being successful, or how we could improve further?
What do you think are the most important things to focus on in order to ensure the arts sector is sustainable, resilient and innovative?
ACE funding is the lifeblood of many ACOs and we need to squeeze as much value from this limited resource as we can to get maximum benefit for artists and audiences. Having said that, we don’t make best use of our public arts funding currently. We have no real sense of the impact of public investment (so how can we tell whether strategy is working? never mind make a case for why we need continued public funding), we have funding practices which inhibit innovation and resilience, we create a culture of dependency and too often reward failure not success, and we rely solely on grants when other financial tools could be a more efficient use of the funds.
For example, I’d like to see ACE being more flexible in how it allows RFOs to use their core grants – as development capital to try new ways of reaching audiences, or new business models, rather than simply as annual project funding to ‘do’ activity.
Clearer standards of performance for RFOS (and proportionate to size) would ensure better value for money – for example John Knell (Whose art is it anyway?, ACE, 2007) recommended some basic standards around audience engagement. Better governance and employment practice needs to be encouraged. Arts Council Wales has recently published a similar framework for its regularly-funded organisations.
Aside from leadership programmes (and I clearly think Clore Leadership Programme is having a major impact in this area) investment in people and organisations is not sexy. Artists yes, young people yes, but ICT systems, training – who wants to fund that? Support for organisational development and capacity building is much needed. And we need to be smarter about resourcing this – there is a huge amount of resource already available in the wider not-for-profit sector and more effective Boards could also play a key role. Funding programmes like Sustain, Thrive and Stabilisation have been valuable to those who benefited directly – but their impact was limited. A more strategic approach to capacity building support for the arts and cultural sector is required. Again, this isn’t just down to ACE – and sector-led initiatives such as Mission Models and Money or ITC (Independent Theatre Council) are already making strides in these areas.
I’d be really interested to hear what you think are priority areas for action in these areas of:
-
increasing engagement in the arts
-
making arts and cultural organisations more resilient and sustainble
-
and how can we ensure our leaders are diverse and highly-skilled?
And do you plan to send a response to ACE yourself?
If by 2020 you wanted everyone in England to enjoy the best the arts have to offer then how would you do this? It’s a laudable but major challenge, not least at a time when many expect public spending on the arts to be reduced.
The Arts Council of England is currently consulting on its vision and ten year strategy for the arts in England with the aim of ‘achieving great art for everyone’. Coming on the heels of a period when our national development agency has been widely criticized for its lack of openness this invitation to shape the direction and priorities of our major funder is welcome. Other steps are being taken to re-connect ACE with its stakeholders, including the public (through the Arts Debate a few years ago) and reinstatement of principles and practices of peer review and assessors. The consultation document sets out a commitment to ACE working more in partnership and being more porous to ideas. All this I support – in fact it’s how we used to work ten years ago at London Arts Board and it worked well then.
There’s also an attempt to clarify ACE’s different roles: development agency, funder and advocate for the arts. We tend to focus on the funding role, and we might question ACE’s capacity to undertake significant development and advocacy work in its new streamlined structure, but it’s useful to have a discussion about what we need to be doing as a sector across all three approaches – sometimes ACE will be best placed to deliver change, sometimes it will be arts and cultural organisations ourselves – but most of the time it will take a partnership between funder and sector.
A few weeks back, I gathered thoughts from a range of people about what some of these challenges might be. In light of these responses, I will be suggesting that ACE focuses on the following issues in its 10 year strategy:
1. Engaging audiences
The Arts Council’s own Taking Part research reveals large parts of society which have little engagement with the arts and major inequalities in who participates – particularly along socio-economic lines. There are lots of organisations that are reaching audiences in imaginative and meaningful ways, but too many arts organisations are not really focussed on their audiences. With the exception of those ‘seedbed’ organisations whose role is to incubate artistic innovation, most publicly funded organisations receive funding to provide access to the arts. And we have to move away from this notion of us providing content, and then marketing it to audiences. We should be in conversation with our audiences about art, providing cultural experiences that relate to their needs – not our personal tastes and whims as experts. If we are really to reach a wider range of people then we will need to find needs ways to work with audiences. In some part of my sector, visual arts, where ACE research shows that some organisations don’t even know how many visitors they have never mind who they are, why they come and what they gained from attending – we have a long way to go. This is an issue I’m currently researching in my article on user-led innovation so I won’t ramble on more here.
So what’s ACE’s role in this? Investing in those organisations who are leading changes in this area and developing assessment techniques that cover the audience experience and not just the artistic quality? We should also be supporting new models of presenting and producing visual arts both within galleries but also beyond their walls. But it can’t be just down the funders – especially when what we are talking about is changing professional attitudes – it’s down to leaders in the visual arts, courses churning out curators, artists – all of us.
2. Building the capacity of the workforce and our organisations
The arts sector needs to change rapidly. In a position paper about ‘C21st arts organisations’, Charles Leadbeater talks of the arts facing 10 major challenges but notes the pace of change itself is itself an issue. But to change we need organisational capacity – people, systems, skills – and in the arts we prefer to use our resources to present art at the expense of virtually everything else. Despite having an over-qualified workforce, many arts organisations fail to invest in the continued professional development of their staff. ICT capacity can be poor – making organisations inefficient.
Aside from leadership – which is currently the ‘new black’ – investment in people and organisations is not sexy. Artists yes, young people yes, but ICT systems, training – who wants to fund that? Support for organisational development and capacity building is much needed. And we need to be smarter about resourcing this – there is a huge amount of resource already available in the wider not-for-profit sector and more effective Boards could also play a key role. Funding programmes like Sustain, Thrive and Stabilisation have been valuable to those who benefited directly – but their impact was limited. A more strategic approach to capacity building support for the arts and cultural sector is required. Again, this isn’t just down to ACE – and sector-led initiatives such as MMM or ICT are already making strides in these areas.
3. More intelligent funding
We don’t make best use of our public arts funding currently. We have no real sense of the impact of public investment (so how can we tell whether strategy is working? never mind make a case for why we need public funding), we have funding practices which inhibit innovation and resilience, we create a culture of dependency, and we rely solely on grants when other financial tools could be a more efficient use of the funds. In a period when there will be less funding available – we need to make better use of the funds we have.
For example, I’d like to see ACE being more flexible in how it allows RFOs to use their core grants – as development capital to try new ways of reaching audiences, or new business models, rather than simply as annual project funding to ‘do’ activity. Research I’ve been doing with Artquest recently also suggests an opportunity to develop microfinance for individual artists. Clearer standards of performance for RFOS (and proportionate to size) would ensure better value for money – for example John Knell (Whose art is it anyway?, ACE, 2007) recommended some basic standards around audience engagement. Better governance and employment practice needs to be encouraged. Arts Council Wales has recently published a similar framework for its regularly-funded organisations.
I’ll be attending a round-table discussion next week, chaired by Liz Forgan (ACE Chair), to discuss the issues facing the arts in this country and how we might approach them based on ACE’s consultation. I used to work for the Arts Council, so I can never think about future priorities without also thinking about what that will actually mean in terms of spending decisions and activity. I’m glad it won’t be me having to make the difficult decisions that will inevitably need to be made because one thing is certain – if we really are to start moving in this direction of increasing engagement in the arts then there will need to be some very big changes – in terms of how ACE works, which organisations it funds, and how – those of us in receipt of public funding – approach our roles.
I’d be interested to hear your views on these issues and what you think of these suggestions. Are you planning to contribute to the consultation? What are your priorities for ACE for the next 10 years? What do you think about the more open approach – do you welcome this?
By the way, I’d really recommend taking a look at the review of research and literature ACE has published as part of the consultation. It has some very useful references to current issues and summaries of relevant studies.
Whoever is in power after the forthcoming general election, after many years of growth at national level we are going to be facing a very different funding situation from March 2011 when current budget commitments come to an end. The question is not whether the arts will face cuts, but how much and what we can do to prepare.
Perhaps the key question facing us then is if we have a new Tory government next Spring, what will this mean for government funding of the arts and cultural sector? How will funding priorities change and – for all the rhetoric – will we actually see any major changes in how culture is supported by Government?
Looking at recent policy statements by various Opposition politicians (see http://www.shadowdcms.co.uk/), there are some indications of future direction – a few of the key themes are highlighted below.
How does Culture relate to Progressive Conservatism?
The main gist of the Conservative approach to culture is based on:
- The economic impact of culture – particularly as it relates to tourism and creative industries.
- Its contribution to ‘civil society’ and quality of life.
George Osborne spoke recently about rejecting the instrumentalist policy in which culture is valued purely for its educational, social or economic impacts. Instead the arts are to be valued because they are ‘an expression of who we are.’
The Tories have always preferred Heritage to the contemporary arts (until 1997 DCMS used to be called Department for National Heritage) and Jeremy Hunt’s statements suggest there may be a greater emphasis on celebrating heritage in future. And excellence not diversifying audiences is the order of the day, according to Ed Vaizey cited in the Guardian in July 2009.
Funding matters
Of course Government policy and support is far wider than just funding, but money matters and for many arts organisations central government support (through DCMS directly or via ACE) is a large part of their overall income.
In terms of funding levels, we have an unequivocal commitment to continued funding of the arts and free entry to museums. But there is no commitment to maintain the level of support and clear statements that the arts will be expected to find ‘complementary sources of funding’. Match funding is definitely back on the agenda.
The US model – with its focus on philanthropy and $14 billion in museum endowments – is cited as a guiding light for the UK. This could entail tax-incentives to encourage greater giving.
A no-doubt popular commitment will be ‘to restore the Lottery to its original four good causes.’ According to George Osborne, £240 million a year less goes into the art from the National Lottery than in 1997.
Freeing the arts from ‘bureaucratic state control’
A Conservative government would change the administrative status of national museums, enabling them to act with greater entrepreneurialism, and talk of five-year funding agreements in return for a commitment to build endowments.
The arts funding bodies sound like they are in for some more restructuring as they will be expected to reduce their overheads and other costs from 13% (Heritage Lottery Fund) and 11% (Arts Council England) to 5% – in line with Camelot. There is also a commitment to consider merging English Heritage and HLF to create efficiency savings.
De-centralisation/ localism
We can expect the recent trend of inviting private companies and social enterprise to tender to deliver public services to continue under a Conservative Government. Some arts organisations have already secured contracts for public services – such as Dance United’s work with those at risk of offending, and there may be opportunities for other arts organisations to fund certain types of arts activity (i.e. activity with educational or social benefits) through these channels.
The other issue that may impact on culture – which other commentators have noted – is the focus on local decision-making and proposals to enable local residents to request a referendum on any issue (which could include a proposal to create a new arts venue or funding level of an existing one). This could present both opportunities and threats, but would require arts organisations to be more aware of their local profile and engage more closely with local people and politics.
So what might all this mean for arts organisations?
As with many other areas of public spending, we are dealing with conjecture currently in terms of the scale of potential budget cuts.
But in policy terms, there will clearly be a focus on:
- Increasing the proportion of funds generate from outside the public purse – and a return to a stronger culture of ‘match funding’.
- Efficiencies – both in the arts funding system but also perhaps in funded organisations.
- The economic benefits of the arts – particularly as a driver of tourism and job creation.
The diversity of audiences reached through the arts, and the impact of the arts on education and social issues are likely to be less important than hitherto. Cultural diversity isn’t mentioned explicitly, nor are artists. Risk and artistic innovation are not mentioned, nor is internationalism – although ‘excellence’ and heritage feature strongly.
Cuts in administration at what cost?
Nobody wants to see bureaucracy and inefficiency in arts funding, but equally the Arts Council needs enough staff and resources to fulfil its role effectively. It is already being cut to the bone in the current restructure so quite how further efficiencies on the scale suggested (around 50%) could be achieved without damaging the quality of the decisions ACE makes and the other work it does (development, advocacy) remains to be seen. [See my other post on this subject for further discussion]. And we might question whether Camelot is really a relevant benchmark in terms of administrative costs – as the roles and remits of ACE and Camelot are hardly comparable.
Other funding sources – an unequal playing field
The expectation that arts organisations should diversify their income streams and use public funding to ‘lever’ earned income or private donations is nothing new – it was a major strand of Tory arts policy in the 1980s and early 1990s. It’s also been a priority for the Arts Council for much of the past decade and the underlying trend has been for RFOs to reduce their levels of subsidy in the past decade. Most, if not all, arts organisations are already seeking to diversify income but it is harder for the smaller organisations and those based outside London in particular (as excellent research by Sara Selwood for Arts and Business highlights very starkly).
And arts organisations need support to develop their capacity to generate new income sources and to develop new business models. Government (and BIG Lottery) has spent millions on helping the Third Sector to do this through initiatives such as Futurebuilders, NCVO’s Sustainable Funding Project etc some of which is relevant to the arts. Independent foundations have also prioritised this area – including Esmée Fairbairn and Rayne Foundation. But more support needs to be made available to the arts sector for organisational development and seed-funding of activity of this type. Arts Council could play a key role in this – but not if cut back even further.
Most would agree that in the long-term endowments make sense, but they’ve not helped in the current recession and they are the preserve of the elite – not an option for most arts organisations.
Re-directing Lottery funds
Of course, redirecting Lottery funds back to the cultural sector sounds great – but how much of the decline since 1997 is due to decreased Lottery revenues overall, and how much is ‘diverted’ to other good causes? How much will come into the arts distributors as opposed to Film and Heritage is unclear. Also we don’t really know whether some arts activity (at the community arts end of the spectrum) is already supported through other good causes currently the gains to arts funding might be offset by losses in these areas.
Creative or Cultural Industries
In a recent speech George Osborne praised the Tate’s ability to attract private funds and the cultural sector’s importance in terms of tourism in the UK. He spoke of the number of jobs created through the creative industries, but also used the terms ‘creative’ and ‘cultural’ industries interchangeably. Clearly the potential economic impact of the arts is one instrumental areas that won’t be discarded if we have a Conservative arts policy – but it appears to be confused currently as to what that actually means for government support of the arts and creative industries. Hopefully the forthcoming Shadow DCMS Creative Industries review will clarify matters.
Nobody seems to like the Arts Council these days.
‘Did they ever?’ I hear you ask incredulously.
Well, I know I might be seen as a Great-Peter-Street-sympathiser as I used to work for ACE, but I really believe that arts funding bodies have an important role and need enough resources to do this properly – in the interests of the arts, the public and the arts organisations they fund.
So when I see the Tory guns lining up to take pot shots at funding bodies, it worries me. According to George Osbourne, the arts and cultural funding bodies (HLF and ACE) have ‘completely unacceptable’ levels of administrative costs: 13% and 11% respectively. The Tories want to see this reduced to 5%. Perhaps they will seek to achieve this through cutting the structure even further, or by merging some of the agencies. Perhaps they will look for new approaches – and there certainly could be some efficiencies if Grants for the Arts was scrapped (it makes me want to cry when I read those endless forms).
Nobody is going to argue that more money should be spent on administration, but I’m not sure the benchmark the Tories cite for this efficiency target (Camelot) is remotely comparable in terms of remit or operation. Personally (Grants for the Arts aside) I don’t see a lot of slack in the current Arts Council structure – never mind the new slimmed down version that comes into effect in April 2010. And it’s not in anybody’s interest to have a funding system which can’t do its job properly.
There needs to be a portfolio review – or ‘investment review’ as it’s sometimes known – particularly if we are looking at a period of stagnation or reduction in public funding. But even in a time of growth unless we review which organisations receive revenue funding how can we ever respond to new companies, new ways of presenting the arts to audiences, or new artforms?
Misery for everyone is not an option in my view – better we prune the portfolio so we allow the best and most strategic organisations to thrive rather than allowing a slow attrition of 5-15% cuts across the board.
This kind of exercise takes time and resources to be done effectively. I know because I’ve done them – group reviews of funded organisations on which you can make robust and fair decisions about which should and should not receive revenue funding. We’re talking about making complex and contentious decisions about who should receive public funding – it’s a process that needs to be well-managed and fair and transparent. The Arts Council of Wales is undertaking a portfolio review currently and it’s a major exercise.
It’s not in anybody’s interest to see the Arts Council cut any further – although I rather fear many arts professionals will be rubbing their hands at the thought of an extra £65 million a year going directly into the arts each year?
After a decade of major increases in public funding for the arts, are we about to see some major cuts? With public finances expected to be facing cuts in the near future, many of those arts organisations that currently enjoy the hallowed status of RFO (regular or revenue funded organisation) are beginning to wonder what the future holds for their funding.
I joined the arts funding system in 1999 following a major – and bloody – portfolio review which London Arts Board (LAB) had been forced to undertake after the pot had been spread too thinly for too long (Arts Review 1994/95).
During my 4 years in arts funding (which encompasses two central government spending rounds) I was fortunate to be working with 10% increases in funding levels. Even then there were enormous pressures on RFO funding and we had to ‘disinvest’ from several under-performing, or less strategically important, organisations to be able to provide funding for areas requiring growth (principally digital media, moving image activity and BME-led organisations).
At LAB we had a framework of procedures (a well-thumbed green booklet called ‘Making Grants’ which explained to us – the officers – and to our clients how we worked and the criteria we used when making decisions). We had 4 criteria:
- Artistic effectiveness
- Strategic something or other (which included such things as effectiveness in reaching audiences, partnerships, contribution to the arts infrastructure).
- Management and governance effectiveness
- Financial effectiveness.
That I can recall this almost word for word is testament to the rigour with which my former boss applied this framework – transparency and equality of opportunity were very important to her. It was basic, and we certainly struggled with it at times, but at least there was a process and it was published.
Currently I’m working with Volcano Theatre who an RFO in Wales where there is an Investment Review in full swing. To do a portfolio review well takes a lot of time – both for the funder and for the organisations being reviewed. Arts Council Wales (ACW) has set out how it plans to make decisions in a series of documents.
This includes a vision setting out what it sees the arts in Wales achieving, and linked to this clear priorities for its funding strategy (including what looks to be a very sensible approach to community arts and creative industries for example – and some clear signals that there is too much built infrastructure given the limitations on resources). In a document called Strive to Excel ACW also sets out in some detail what it calls a ‘quality framework’ – the standards of performance it expects in terms of artistic programme and business management. Now you can quibble with some of the detail – and to give them credit ACW recognises that different scale and types of organisation will meet the standards in different ways – but in principle I think this is a laudable and useful approach – making clear to all involved what is expected from RFOs in broad terms. ACE have coincidentally published a document covering RFO funding in broad terms. And their disinvestment strategy is now back on their new website.
And ACW are consulting on the process openly and widely – ACE is taking a different approach by involving only a small group in these discussions (Investment Strategy Reference Group). You could argue that’s better than no consultation – but if everybody’s funding is at threat then you could argue that all RFOs should have an equal opportunity for genuine dialogue about the process. That way we have a better chance of getting it right – as well as re-building some of the trust between ACE and the sector which was so badly damaged in the last investment review.
Sadly it looks like we are facing difficult decisions ahead – and we need to work together with the arts funding system to ensure the right decisions are made – and that means getting the process right and ensuring buy-in to that process or the decisions will not have authority.
It’s going to be interesting to see what happens in Wales – as we will surely be facing a very similar need to review to RFO portfolio in England. Sometimes there’s a gap between rhetoric and reality and we haven’t seen the outcomes of the Wales review yet – but so far Wales looks to be doing a decent job in difficult times.
|
|
Wed 27th July 2011 21:32
Loading...
Recent Comments