Changes in EU rural policy present arts organisations with new creative and intellectual challenges. Ian Hunter examines the impact of Common Agricultural Policy reform on cultural policy.
Recent articles in ArtsProfessional, and Arts Council England (ACE) studies of arts activity in rural areas, indicate a growing awareness on the part of arts professionals of the significance of the radical changes now taking place in the countryside and rural communities. Reform of the EU Common Agricultural Policy, as well as other demographic, environmental and economic pressures now acting on rural communities, are bringing about major cultural change in the countryside.
New contexts
EU and government policy initiatives for rural development and environmental sustainability are increasingly referencing culture, arts and the media as a creative means of delivering the socio-economic elements of the new Rural Development Programme England (RDPE) 20072013. EU agricultural policy documents also urge the need for a major cultural change throughout rural Europe, and Dutch, Italian and German agricultural and rural development agencies are well advanced in new work on the creative rural economy, arts in rural tourism, and crafts and design initiatives in support of farm diversification. There are many other examples of the employment opportunities and other creative and intellectual challenges now emerging for arts professionals in the rural sector. Cultural policy commentators, recalling the significant arts engagement in support of Government post-industrial urban regeneration programmes in the 1980s and 90s, are now advocating a similar strategic arts sector engagement with the new rural agenda and farm diversification.
In this context, the rural can no longer be considered as a marginal discourse, and the proposed arts engagement with the new rural and agricultural agendas also imply the formation of a new overarching cultural discourse for global sustainability. This has the potential to challenge and supplant the failed discourse of urbanism and the spectacle of consumerism as the basis for future cultural policy. It also opens up new ethical debates surrounding Genetically Modified Organisms, animal cloning and animal welfare, and introduces the possibility of a new rural aesthetic and theoretical discourse. New thinking along these lines could be advanced by addressing some of the constraints holding back this work, and a brief review of relevant rural policy and arts research work may help suggest some practical areas for further research.
Constraints
The main constraints are:
- the lack of a strategic framework for connecting cultural and rural policy
- the lack of formal rural arts academic research and pedagogical tradition
- the dominance of the urban cultural arts development model
- the failure within the rural sector to recognise the wider potential of the arts and culture in rural development; and
- some rural arts organisations reluctance to engage with core rural policy issues, i.e. the legs akimbo mindset.
In short, the professional arts sector needs to radically rethink its relationship with the rural community, and to embrace change from within, if it is to play a role in supporting future strategic rural development and environmental sustainability initiatives.
Exploring new partnerships for the arts with some of the lead rural statutory agencies could be another way forward. While the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Natural England and the Commission for Rural Communities (CRC) are in principle supportive of rural culture, they currently have no statutory obligation to support arts or cultural work in rural areas. This might well change, and DEFRA has recently designated a cultural contact officer for the department.
Meanwhile the Rural Cultural Forum has published recommendations for a cultural strategy for rural England (2006), and the Countryside Agency (now CRC) published a strategy for Crafts in the English Countryside in 2004. Both are potentially useful templates for developing a rural cultural strategy. LEADER+ (the EU programme for bottom-up, community-led rural regeneration) also has extensive experience of arts, media and cultural work in the context of rural development, and is ready to do more with professional arts groups.
Citing culture
Arts organisations working in both urban and rural areas have already pioneered many of the new rural arts development practices, but lack the resources and strategic framework to take this work forward. Devon-based Aune Head Arts, for example, is working on proposals for a new Arts in Rural Contexts MA course with Dartington College, and the Rural Media Company in Hereford has developed a sophisticated range of new media and cultural inclusion projects with young people, Travellers, and marginal rural communities.
ACE recently convened a forum of rural arts officers, and prior to that had commissioned two major studies on the future of the arts in rural England: the New rural arts strategy, (October 2003) and The Arts in rural England (November 2005), to address these issues. The latter report advocates support for professional arts and audience development work in rural areas. The New rural arts report is probably the more useful in terms of articulating a practical scheme of action for a co-ordinated rural cultural strategy.
This includes proposals for:
- a rural tourism arts and cultural heritage research and development programme
- artists interventions into more controversial aspects of rural and agriculture policy
- a new rural aesthetic, and associated rural design and architecture initiatives
- more support for arts in rural health, youth, disability and social inclusion projects
- Grains of Truth, a national rural documentary photography, oral arts and film initiative
- arts work about rural migrants, and rural anti-racism and cultural diversity work
- a farmer-led rural biennale of arts and agriculture, and a national rural cultural centre
- a new role for the arts, crafts and design in the creative rural economy.
New partnerships
Since the Department for Culture, Media and Sport takes the lead on framing cultural policy in the context of Government initiatives, it seems logical that they should now work with their colleagues at DEFRA, in formulating a strategic response aimed at integrating the new rural development and cultural agendas. Other areas of common interest they might also explore include:
- the creative rural economy
- rural tourism, rural design, architecture and heritage initiatives;
- sustainable rural communities and economies; and
- rural new media, cultural communications and broadcasting initiatives.
Similarly, ACE and CRC have a potential synergy in widening rural service provision (arts, social, health, etc.), and also in enhancing rural community cultural capital and creativity. In terms of an appropriate rural policy context for this work, the RDPE and LEADER+ would seem to offer an ideal opportunity for the arts and rural sectors to now work together to test out these ideas in practice.
But, in order to do this, we will first need an agreed strategic or policy framework to guide future research and arts development work in this area. Support for the Rural Cultural Forums rural cultural strategy and the proposed rural cultural policy thinktank, involving all the relevant rural partners statutory, community, and professional arts, might be a good way to start.
Ian Hunter is Project Director of LITTORAL, a non-profit arts trust which researches issues about rural social, environmental and economic change.
For copies of The new rural arts strategy report, and the Rural Cultural Forums Cultural strategy for rural England, go to http://www.littoral.org.uk/html01/pro_rural_arts.htm