Making predictions about the year ahead is usually a far more productive exercise than making a New Years resolution. As arts organisations finalise their budgets for the year from April and look at their programmes and plans for 2007, a few accurate forecasts about the future can be invaluable in preparing for the year ahead, and there are a few clues in this issue to help the process. In Scotland, it now seems increasing likely that all the debate, rancour and argument over the past few years about the future direction for the arts (p1) will finally culminate in& no change. It will only take a small stumble at the ballot box for the Labour party to lose its grip on the cultural policy reins, and excitable talk of government encroachment on the arms-length principle will feel as dated as speculation south of the border about Englands hopes of winning the World Cup (or indeed the Ashes). Meanwhile, in Wales, an expectation of standstill funding and heavy hints that the Arts Council is in the mood for more efficiency savings (p3) could mean that this is a good time to start eyeing up potential suitors of choice, rather than sit around waiting for an arranged marriage. Clearly encouraged by an estimated £45k administrative saving achieved through the merger of three marketing agencies to create Audiences Wales, ACW has acquired a taste for strategic alliances, and seems to be sniffing around for more.
At the business end of the arts, though, away from the guff and bluster of politics and policy, there is much to look forward to. Changes in the digital realm are set to dramatically affect arts organisations. In noting Suzanne Vegas performance in Second Life, Hannah Rudman (p20) highlights the fact that, in the coming year, artists of all sensibilities and any sense will be exploring the ways in which new technology provides not only new ways of presenting and promoting work but new ways of making it. New artists will emerge with fresh agendas and approaches and it is not overstating the case to suggest that these developments will act as a midwife to new artforms. The landscape is changing and just like the avatars in Second Life the limits to the landscape are simply the limits of our imagination. Happy New Year!
Liz Hill and Brian Whitehead
Co-editors