Arts programmes on TV need to be as diverse and interesting as the arts themselves, while being specifically tailored to the small screen. Mark Bell is up for the challenge.
As the nation’s biggest producer of arts programming and, arguably, the inventor of arts television, the BBC has a heritage to live up to. Arts programmes can change the way we see the world. The Shock of the New was the series that opened my eyes to the transformative power of arts television. Robert Hughes gave modern art a narrative, and this encouraged me to make up my own mind. But television and the arts don’t always get on. It can be difficult to engage audiences, and some of the most enthusiastic consumers of the arts are the most vocal critics of arts programmes: art doesn’t always look its best on the small screen; the immediacy of the arts can get lost the moment a camera is pointed at it; television is reductive, offering simplistic narratives and interpretations. The experience of art is frequently very personal, and this does not always sit comfortably in a medium associated with mass entertainment. But television has a huge advantage - it can offer plural viewpoints and provide access to the arts in a variety of ways.
Poetry in pixels
In November, BBC Two and BBC Four will broadcast a season of programmes asking the question: where did beauty go when modern art arrived? Waldemar Januszczak, Roger Scruton, Matt Collings, Sue Perkins and Gus Caseley-Hayford come to their own conclusions. In spring 2009, hundreds of thousands of people engaged with the BBC’s poetry season, a large number of people who work in the arts and education got involved, and a surge in poetry sales resulted. ‘Off By Heart’, a film about a national children’s poetry-reciting competition, linked up primary schools, the Poetry Society, libraries and the Oxford literary festival.
Television can sometimes take the life out of a live event, and we have to be realistic about what will work. When stage drama is filmed for television the resulting experience can often be flat, and as a consequence not many people watch it. We need to find imaginative ways to make theatre come alive for the television – Gregory Doran recently directed his ‘Hamlet’ with David Tennant on location for television – it is not the same as the stage version, but it works.
Challenges and opportunities
Broadcasting is changing fast, and this is presenting challenges and opportunities. Viewers want to watch programmes when they want, and many want to engage with the arts more actively. Obstacles of technology and copyright have to be overcome if these treasures are to be viewed by people who are avid to explore them, and quite rightly feel it is their due. The challenge that a national gallery or museum faces in making its collection more open to the public is not unlike that which the BBC faces in opening the door to its archives. These challenges are opportunities, if our resources are linked.
The recent Tate Britain exhibition of the work of Francis Bacon provided the opportunity for the BBC to show the archive of the artist online, and we continue to look for more collaborations like this.
The Public Catalogue Foundation’s ongoing project to photograph and catalogue the oil paintings in public ownership aims to give the public access to 200,000 paintings, the majority of which are not on show. How much more accessible this art would be if it were placed online and made available to people via the BBC website, giving visitors to the site the opportunity to comment on and tag the artworks. Access to these images will in turn drive people to the galleries and the artworks themselves.
Recently, as part of the BBC’s commitment to the arts, we appointed an Arts Editor, Will Gompertz. He will bring an insider’s knowledge and a critically objective eye to arts stories on the news. ‘Imagine’ and ‘The Culture Show’ will continue to profile cultural figures and capture for posterity cultural events for people who are interested in what is going on.
Joining forces
The BBC wants to join forces with arts organisations to help them reach out to more people. Commercial arts organisations share many of our objectives – from series to cast the lead for a West End musical, to a forthcoming series in which young artists compete to exhibit their artwork in a Saatchi show, we are looking for ways to give people a sense of the creative process. The BBC’s aim is to make the arts accessible to anyone who wants them. Not everyone will watch, just as there are people who don’t regularly go to galleries or the theatre. We must make programmes reflecting the full spectrum of the arts, we must find new voices to make the arts on the BBC as enticing and varied as the arts themselves, and we need to make sense of material that we produce across television, radio and online. But above all we must make programmes that appeal to people who care about the arts, and we won’t get anywhere without the help of the people whose working lives depend on them.
Mark Bell is Arts Commissioning Editor for BBC Vision and the BBC’s Arts Co-ordinator, charged with championing the arts across the BBC.
e mark.bell@bbc.co.uk
t 020 8576 7094
Last week Mark went to see ‘District 9’ with his 15 year-old son, and saw Massive Attack at Brixton Academy. This week he’s going to ‘Turner and the Masters’ at Tate Britain, the Art Fund dinner at the National Gallery, William Dalrymple’s book launch, and an Indian sacred music concert at the Barbican.