Micro-scale cooperative developments building localised capacity are far better placed than our current clique of regularly funded organisations to tackle the uncharted territory of the ‘new arts normal’ ahead, says Susan Jones.
It’s hard to imagine now, in the midst of the arts emergency triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, but one of the Arts Council of Great Britain’s founding aspirations was to enable artists’ pursuit of art for art’s sake. Back in 1945, giving artists ‘courage, confidence and opportunity’ to ‘walk where the breath of the spirit’ took them was a guiding principle. But three decades of arts policies dedicated to forging a hierarchy of building-based arts organisations, in the expectation that social and economic benefits would trickle down to artists, has side-lined concepts of keeping their interests at heart or putting arts policy at the service of improving artists’ social status.
Even in the 1980s the Arts Council in England believed passionately that ‘all artists should benefit from public consumption of their work’, so much so that they instituted payments to artists presenting exhibitions in public galleries. Nationwide application of this as an ‘Exhibition Payment Right’ for artists came with the threat in one English region at least of pulling grants to galleries who didn’t comply. The millennium saw expansive arts policy claims for the one-off ‘Year of the Artist 2000’. Dreamed up by a consortia of arts councils and regional arts boards, 1,000 artists’ residencies promised to provide ‘lasting opportunities for artists creatively, structurally and financially’. Both these grand levelling up strategies failed... Keep reading on ArtReview
It’s hard to imagine now, in the midst of the arts emergency triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, but one of the Arts Council of Great Britain’s founding aspirations was to enable artists’ pursuit of art for art’s sake. Back in 1945, giving artists ‘courage, confidence and opportunity’ to ‘walk where the breath of the spirit’ took them was a guiding principle. But three decades of arts policies dedicated to forging a hierarchy of building-based arts organisations, in the expectation that social and economic benefits would trickle down to artists, has side-lined concepts of keeping their interests at heart or putting arts policy at the service of improving artists’ social status.
Even in the 1980s the Arts Council in England believed passionately that ‘all artists should benefit from public consumption of their work’, so much so that they instituted payments to artists presenting exhibitions in public galleries. Nationwide application of this as an ‘Exhibition Payment Right’ for artists came with the threat in one English region at least of pulling grants to galleries who didn’t comply. The millennium saw expansive arts policy claims for the one-off ‘Year of the Artist 2000’. Dreamed up by a consortia of arts councils and regional arts boards, 1,000 artists’ residencies promised to provide ‘lasting opportunities for artists creatively, structurally and financially’. Both these grand levelling up strategies failed... Keep reading on ArtReview