Review by Janet Summerton, who is a researcher and writer, and runs the Arts and Cultural Management programme at the University of Sussex.
(Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 2001, ISBN 0 903319 94 2, £8.50 [£11.59 incl p&p*])
This is a nice little book - a good reminder of priorities and processes of making art. It grew out of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation?s grants programme, ?Time to Experiment?, which provided professional artists working across the arts with ?research and development? time. These nine were chosen to record their thoughts in diary form. Described as musician, writer, poet, sculptor, composer, choreographer, theatre director, performance artist and playwright, they mostly write of multifaceted careers, juggling their own and collaborative projects.
Paul Allen talks about the contemporary artist travelling ?the cultural trade routes, making a transaction here, selling a performance there, charging whatever can be got for a sight of the tricks and trappings and truths in the carpet bag of his or her mind, filling in tax forms, and trying to comply with local law and lore?. And their evidence confirms, as Sian Ede says in the introduction, that ?while there are orthodoxies of good practice ? there are no set rules?. Entrepreneurs, perhaps, but not as currently perceived by many.
(*To order, see SAM?s Books in the ArtsDirectory. page 12)