Necessity is deemed to be the mother of invention, and in these times of arts funding cuts, it will be interesting to see just how inventive arts organisations can be in their attempts to secure their futures. As public funding begins to evaporate before our eyes, creative entrepreneurship (p10) is likely to start heading the list of must-have skills on the person specifications for top jobs in the arts. However much money the SNP promises to throw at the cultural sector in Scotland (p1), its never going to be enough. Whats more, its never going to be as much as could be generated by entrepreneurial arts managers looking to their own futures and making serious attempts to secure finance through a plurality of routes many of which already exist. Watershed Media Centre (p3) provides the perfect example of what can be achieved when a spoonful of imagination is sprinkled over a thorny capital development problem.
With the Lottery capital fund exhausted, how many leaders of arts organisations would have the foresight (and courage) to a pursue a £6.4m building purchase project? And more inspiring still is the concept of a Regional Development Agency with the vision to invest in an arts building and through that investment create a sustainable endowment fund that will support the South Wests creative media sector for the next 100 years.
As its action research programme investigating the sustainability of the arts and cultural sector draws to a close, Mission, Models, Money (pp7-9) makes it clear that creative funding is a vital part of the solution to the long-term financial stability of arts organisations. Its not always lack of money that constrains the flow of funds into the arts sector. A lack of vision and an inappropriate rule-book, coupled with a failure to empathise with the long-term needs of the sector, can turn even the wealthiest of arts funders into objects of suspicion rather than partners in development. Their schemes will be manipulated by arts organisations contorting themselves to meet their funding criteria and they will be quietly tolerated while they pay up. But when their pots run dry, they will be treated with contempt. Its not a great recipe for a healthy and sustainable funding ecology, is it?
Liz Hill and Brian Whitehead
Co-editors
In Scotland the SNP has pledged more funding for the arts if elected on 3 May. But will the upcoming elections make any real difference to arts funding?
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