Decimating Culture
The Scotsman reports: “The nation’s crisis-hit cultural sector is facing major upheaval after the Scottish Government declared that it wanted to roll out cost-cutting reforms across the country’s major arts organisations.”
“Work is underway on a spending squeeze expected to affect Scotland’s national museums, galleries and performing arts companies, as well as the national agencies Creative Scotland and Screen Scotland.”
“The possibility of wide-ranging cuts has emerged as industry leaders warned of growing evidence of an exodus of talent from performers and arts workers seeking more stable careers due to Scotland’s “extremely precarious” arts funding environment.”
On top of this, Angus Robertson, the Cabinet Secretary for for the Constitution, External Affairs & Culture writes in The Times: “Disinvestment campaigns are fundamentally undermining the arts sector causing immediate financial challenges and now face contagion by deterring further private sector and philanthropic support.”
The news will come as a shock but perhaps no surprise to a sector already reeling from cuts and precarity. But is both disgraceful and disingenuous for Robertson to attempt to shift the blame for the arts crisis on some protestors demanding some ethics in sponsorship. This is a complete red herring and a desperate attempt to shift focus away from his own government’s disastrous handling of the arts and culture.
Why have they been so bad at this?
As anyone who has watched the thriving Irish film industry which connects writers and actors in an ecosystem underpinned by valuing culture will also know this is Soft Power writ large, this is Ireland projected onto the world. Why not here?
You can only imagine why such a clear open goal is missed. The only explanation is the same as broader political crisis: a lack of any real aspiration or ambition, or nerve. A strong commitment to what is euphemistically called ‘economic orthodoxy’ and a inability to think from, or to, a ‘bigger picture’ of what they are actually doing.
It’s odd though, historically the countries who aimed for self-determination almost always had a strong cultural movement behind it or adjacent to it. We’re not talking about propaganda but art and culture that speaks to the moment or the movement. What serious movement for independence wouldn’t expect/demand a thriving literature, theatre, film, tv and art world?
But we don’t. Or rather this particular iteration of nationalist leadership don’t.
Anyway, who cares?
What is interesting is that much of the cognoscenti will agree with Angus Robertson about the terrible protestors. The world is dividing into two tribes, one who comfortably think that everything is okay, needs preserved and protected as it is. The other realises that everything needs to be transformed in the face of enormous, unprecedented existential change we face. In other words one group sees the system as being broken and needing fixed, the other sees the system as functioning as intended and needs destroyed and replaced.
No clearer could this be seen than at the debate about Baillie Gifford sponsoring book festival and the arts in Britain.
It all started with Greta Thunberg last year refusing to attend a keynote event for the Edinburgh Book Festival. Since then Baillie Gifford have withdrawn from sponsorship of the Edinburgh Book Festival and the Hay Festival as the writers protest had an effect.
For one group of people this was a calamitous event. No other sponsor globally was conceivable, Baillie Gifford’s sponsorship was really fine, and the protestors had ruined everything. For many of the defenders of the status quo any alternative was, literally unimaginable, a strange state for creative people. The book festival, which many consider to be an often bougie bromide was an event that needed defended in its entirety, and any critical thinking about who or what it was for was a form of heresy. Thinking about sponsorship of the arts in a time of climate breakdown was something that should not really be considered, or if it should it should happen at some possible future date. This mirrors the dead orthodoxy that ‘change’ must be put off interminably, even as the consequences of inaction play out in real time.
Marina Hyde articulated this pearl-clutching orthodoxy better than many when she rolled out this completely incoherent ramble on some radio station or other …
This is essential viewing if you have watched in horror #BaillieGifford’s withdrawal of funding to several #literaryfestivals.@MarinaHyde brilliant as ever “if you insist that all art must be politicised..you are wishing for a contraction of the human experience “. pic.twitter.com/LoBiqvH4wx
— Jonny Geller (@JonnyGeller) June 17, 2024
The narrative is basically, the status quo isn’t political, it just is. Don’t politicise art, that’s bad. Corporate sponsorship of arts is the only model that we can conceive of. Such is the commitment to things exactly as they are, and such is the virtual abandonment of state funding this is a self-fulfilling prophesy: there is no funding therefore, logically, ‘art’ and ‘culture’ is by default dependent on corporate sponsorship and mustn’t ask any questions about what or who this is.
It’s a desultory predicament and argument to put forward, but that’s what we’re told. Artwashing is the future. If you oppose this you need to shut up.
Meanwhile, Leith Theatre remains closed, as does the Brunton in Musselburgh, Summerhall is for sale and the Filmhouse is shut down waiting on some form of re-opening. This perilous state of venues is mirrored throughout Scotland,. Major arts organisations face terminal funding futures. The idea of announcing further cuts to an already decimated sector is so bizarre, unthinkable and such a tragic waste of a talent it’s unconscionable, but that’s where we are.
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“Why have they been so bad at this?”
Because the ‘grown ups’ think that the arts and culture are an ‘extra’; and – clutches pearls – productions, of all kinds, may criticise the prevailing
cultural hegemony (TM – Gramsci).
I thought Marina Hyde made her case articulately and coherently, without any ‘pearl clutching’.
You seem to be arguing that we do not have the right to express our opposition to particular forms of protest. Some forms of protest are counterproductive. Indeed, the the agent provocateur has a long and fairly successful history in sustaining support for the status quo or for reaction because some actions of protest can have the opposite effect.
Extinction Rebellion protesters on the roof of London tube trains at rush hour provoked pretty strong opposing reactions from people who were trying to get to or from work. Those pulling protestors from the roof of the train, were probably as aware of the dangers to the planet as the protestors were, but wanted to get to work to earn pay or get home to have their dinner, get to bed, go out to the pub, etc.
I have protested and been on demos. I think the arts are essential to human existence and I support increased public investment in them. But, when I am at Sadler’s Wells, for example, and enjoying the ballet and some self righteous eejits hold up the performance for half an hour I feel annoyed and do not apologise for feeling so nor do I feel guilty because I am, allegedly, supporting some malign cause.
I support the right to protest and protesting has brought significant change, but, let us recognise that protesting can also be counterproductive.
Ms Hyde used Shakespeare as an example. Had he protested too overtly he would have ended up like his china Marlowe dead in a hole in the ground in a Deptford churchyard. He was much more subtle in his protests against the order of things.
A lot of protest is about the vanity of small differences. I am not immune.
No, you have the right to oppose whatever protest you like, indeed I and various other protesters have been ridiculed and attacked for weeks. That’s fine, I couldn’t care a less.
@Alasdair Macdonald, your point about Shakespeare living under an Elizabethan (later Jacobean) terror-state is surely correct, encouraging ‘wax-and-gold’ hiding of political statements in art which seems innocuous to censors, but that just makes Marina Hyde’s binary view of political and non-political art even more ridiculous.
I find it fascinating that Hyde chose The Taming of the Shrew as her example. In some plays, I think Shakespeare is writing strong rebukes to domestic violence, which is political, but in the rather problematic Shrew, one reading would be along the lines of “nobody is free until everybody is free”, as Kate (who understands her own oppression) is forced to understand the oppression of others (primarily the servant class in the patriarchy). If only all the subaltern classes could unite… and of course this theme is much used by protestors today to join the dots connecting our polycrisis, and identify the common enemy alliance behind business as usual. Of course, in the play, Kate doesn’t join a revolution, that couldn’t safely be staged, and even then the action is presented as a fantasy performance within the play. Shakespeare goes further in other plays than this, sometimes suggesting that non-human animals should have rights and may be better governors of the world than humans.
I think your Extinction Rebellion example is a poor counterargument for their campaign since they apologised for that incident, if memory serves. Perhaps ballet is typically difficult to freight with political meaning, but it surely had some in the Cold War, at least. I think the alacrity with which BBC drama seems to have embraced Brexit values is more concerning (I have seen no show as virulently xenophobic as Modern Doctor Who, for example).
So were campaigners wrong to draw attention to Baillie Gifford’s questionable investments and associations and seek to put pressure on it to change its ways? What ‘more subtle’ campaign strategy should Fossil Free Books and those concerned about Israeli links have adopted? What would have delivered a better outcome? It seems to me that the people who have behaved least sensibly in this episode are Government ministers, book festival organisers and the corporate sponsor, almost certainly in that order of culpability.
But the silver lining is that, with the state divesting of its cultural holdings, this will open up entrepreneurial opportunities for individual creators and their communities. Instead of producing work for a market administered by the state through its national agencies, creative practitioners will be freely create work that speaks directly and immediately of themselves to their audiences, much as the deconstructive punk subculture – a ‘bricolage’ of almost every previous subculture in the Western world since World War II, ‘stuck together with safety pins’ – did in the 1970s.
There are literally thousands of DIY festivals and other platforms for makers and their audiences all over the country. Creative life in Scotland has never been more diverse, vibrant, widespread, and accessible than it is today, even with (and perhaps even because of) its decline as a ‘national economic sector’. Scotland is currently bubbling with creativity, and increasingly so.
I’m not sure your description would find much favour with playwrights, theatre-makers, artists and film-makers
I’m sure it would find favour with some but not others.
Anyhow, I still don’t see how the state divesting of its cultural holdings is stopping anyone (including playwrights, theatre-makers, artists, and film-makers) from making art.
Punk was enabled by council housing and a dole payment you could actually live off of. None of this exists now, and these creative practitioners you think will leap in to fill the void are actually too busy making your coffees and cleaning your toilets for 40+ hours a week in precarious minimum-wage jobs just to survive. That doesn’t leave much time for creativity, which is why we find these industries now utterly dominated by the banal outputs of the wealthy, privately-educated, and mediocre of mind.
As I recall it was New Labour who initiated the abolition of the Scottish Arts Council around 2005, and the SNP completed the task in 2010. Neither the Labour party nor the SNP has a good record on arts funding nor do they have any kind of properly coherent policy towards the arts. Much like steel, coal-mining, and just about any other industry that involves actually making things, the arts have to fend for themselves, and compete with each other in the unregulated free-market. This model is acceptable where The Arts is concerned, though not so with water and railways (recently). The NHS in Scotland has by and large escaped much of the market madness, though social care is ridiculaously marketised and hugely expensive. In my experience the Socttish Arts Council though far from perfect, operated much closer to grass-roots artists than do our present organisations. The average writer earns £7000 per year from writing, yet there has never been a more vibrant and active grass-roots writing culture in Scotland than at the present time: this is mainly because artists often work for nothing or very little pay. It is due the tenacity and persistence of arts practitioners who find ways to get things done in spite of very little support from either gavernment or the mainstream media that the arts thrive. Local authorities used to contribute substantially to The Arts, though much of this funding also seems to have disappeared. There are a lot of complexities involved but blaming artists for discouraging the ‘philanthropic’ giving by wealthy corporations and/or individuals only shows what a mess many mainstream politicians have been making over the last three or four decades.
“The world is dividing into two tribes, one who comfortably think that everything is okay, needs preserved and protected as it is. The other realises that everything needs to be transformed in the face of enormous, unprecedented existential change we face. In other words one group sees the system as being broken and needing fixed, the other sees the system as functioning as intended and needs destroyed and replaced.”
I make that three, possibly four tribes you’ve identified, Mike. Either you’re confused or I am. People who think that “everything is okay, needs preserved and protected as it is” are not the same as people who see “the system as being broken and needing fixed”, who are not the same as people who see “the system as functioning as intended and needs destroyed and replaced”.
In the context of the Baillie Gifford affair you seem to be placing those who hold a different view to yours (including myself and another 66 writers who signed an open letter expressing the view that the Fossil Free Books campaign was short-sighted and likely to have more negative than positive effects) into the camp of “everything is okay, needs preserved and protected as it is”. That is not a reasonable representation of our position, nor does it mean we (if, that is, we’re included in the term “the cognoscenti”) agree with everything Angus Robertson says or think that the Scottish Government’s handling of arts and culture is beyond criticism.
Which is unfortunate because comparing the different attitudes and approaches to the arts and culture in Ireland and Scotland is, as you rightly point out, a useful exercise. But take look at some of the sponsors and partners of, for example, the Dublin International Film Festival. I’m not convinced that Baillie Gifford’s hands are less carbon-clean than those of some of those named.
Hi James
no, there’s two
1) one who comfortably think that everything is okay, needs preserved and protected as it is
2) other realises that everything needs to be transformed in the face of enormous, unprecedented existential change
I saw your letter – and that of the others – and respect a difference of opinion. The action has created a very good public debate about the issues at stake. I do feel that the defence of the Book Festival (and its funding) does end up in some very defensive uncritical thinking and I think its fair to point that out. My criticism of the EIBF and Baillie Gifford is not just about the ethics of sponsorship but the nature of corporate culture, which seems to be defended in its entirety.
I’m with you there, Mike. The EIBF markets itself as a literary event. But isn’t it really just trade fair to help publishers flog books?
Are not such events always about this though? The real question is about how much. Any ‘literary event’ is in part going to be about selling books since literature would not really exist without selling them.
Commerce and art cannot help but run parallel paths that must cross at some point because any artist has to be able to make a living, somehow.
State funded art is a form of patronage, a system that has existed for hundreds of years, though funded in the past more by rich benefactors. But if the patronage comes with too many strings it stifles creativity. The impression is that the State imposes more strings (including ideological ones) presumably due to it using public money and the need for accountability. But also the ideology of those heading the funding. The private benefactor is also open to scrutiny as is very clear with the Gifford sponsorship – tainted money will no longer be overlooked. The justification for that scrutiny, and the consequences for the artist can be as problematic as the State’s strings.
But this makes it seem insurmountable. A balance of freedom and accountability is possible I’m sure but we need to accept messiness in such matters, just as art itself is by definition.
I see what you’re saying. But there’s a world of difference between a bunch of people who get together to read and write and/or share their reading and writing (and perhaps exchange some of their merchandise on the side) and an industry-driven, commercially-focused event like the EIBF.
And, yes; artists need to make a living like everyone else. But artists have throughout history made their livings outside the buying and selling of their work. Indeed, those who live by the commercial exploitation of their art alone are the rare exception rather than the rule; T.S. Eliot, for example, made his living first as a schoolteacher, then as a bank clerk, then as a publisher.
And, yes; being independent of patronage (e.g. by supporting themselves and their work by other means, such as bussing tables, flipping burgers, dispensing prescriptions, or selling books) does make it easier for artists to retain their integrity and authenticity as artists instead of gearing their production to the demands of a market.
But very many have also earned their living directly via their art whether that be a roving minstrel, a comic book artist or hack writer for an airline magazine. People us their art in various ways to earn an income and some of that will be highly commercial by necessity and thus involve the encroachment of potentially tainted mammon.
This is not an either / or and I reject the privileging of an artist who does it in only in their spare time as somehow purer. There is nothing wrong with it either but you will be aware how such an argument is used by those who think art should not be subsidised at all as artists should simply fine their own way, or no way.
I’m not suggesting that makers must either make money or make art or that the two things are mutually exclusive. I’m saying only that the two things are distinct AND that neither is dependent on the other.
Lack of funding doesn’t preclude art. Indeed, having to produce work on a shoestring budget can drive the creative improvisation (using what you have at hand in imaginative ways) that’s a hallmark of art.
I don’t think artsts should be subsidised. After all, roving minstrels, comic book artists, and copywriters aren’t subsidised. But I do think every citizen should be guaranteed a minimum ‘liveable’ income in the form of a regular unconditional payment from our common wealth, which would free artists and their work from their dependence on public and/or private patronage.
All art is dependent on money since no-one can create anything if they do not have enough money to do more than simply stay alive.
Universal income / subsidy / sponsorship. It is all a form of patronage. I agree they are different types and come with different issues, but at root they are the same and are opposed to those who sell their art to continue (thus relying on publishers and their foibles) or indeed don’t but earn a living another way.
@Niemand, but non-humans can create art without money. Unless you don’t want to credit birds with music, dancing and architecture? Human prisoners can also create art without money, I guess. Human children can create art before handling money.
Well, no; art is dependent only on our having leisure time, time that we don’t have to spend in meeting our immediate material needs.
And the difference between a universal basic income and both private sponsorship and public subsidy is that the latter come with conditions attached while the former does not. In effect, UBI affords every citizen an equal amount of leisure time they can spend doing what they want to do (making, playing, socialising, caring, volunteering, etc.) rather than the activity that’s being sponsored or subsidised by a patron.
If you’re a trained musician, artist, film-maker or theatre producer you’re not producing art in your ‘leisure time’, are you?
This seems an absurd argument to defend the cuts in the arts which make Scotland completely out of step with other countries in Europe. Why is this good?
@Editor, but what is ‘good’ art (and what is not)? What are your criteria? How do we measure value-for-money or improvement/degradation over time? What do art-patrons want or get out of it?
Can we really look at your preferred comparison (Europe) and say: yes, they’re really doing a good job there? If we are just focusing on adult human European art, isn’t there at least one ideology behind every piece? Even in what is commonly termed ‘Naïve art’?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naïve_art
Isn’t the basic point that artists are overwhelmingly illusionists in the Cave of Shadows, rather than truthtellers? And how does patronage help? Isn’t ‘soft power’ really part of the problem, not the solution?
Isn’t the ‘cult of the artist’ a really problematic phenomenon?
“The modern stereotype of an artist is of a uniquely gifted visionary genius whose difficult temperament and non-conformist lifestyle leads to isolation from society.” (Royal Collection Trust)
One that is closely allied to European imperial propaganda, the Great Man (Occasionally Woman) View of History, eugenics pseudoscience and Renaissance hogwash? But if everyone is an artist, why subsidise only a minority (and often keep paying them again and again)? And why subsidise an industry, in such an inefficient manner that only a minority of funds go towards living costs of artists? Why create a biased system of privileged gatekeepers and powerful administrators?
SD I will give you birds if we count birdsong as art which is dubious.
Prisoners are kept locked up by state money giving them the time to do art. Children do art because their parents or carers have money to look after them.
We cannot have leisure time without the money to pay for it.
There is no way out of it, you need some level of basic income to have the time to do art.
Beyond that, it may well be you can do it very cheaply indeed but many art forms require money to actually do them, some lots of it. Mike mentions film, one of the most expensive. Other forms require expensive and long training. This idea of a purely ‘people’s art’ that can exist totally without any form of subsidy and / or training certainly exists and can produce powerful things but it rules out a huge amount that is impossible that way, leading to an impoverished culture. I thought we had gone beyond such naive notions.
The behaviour of some non-human animals may be interpreted as ‘creative’. Non-human animals often use creative behaviors, innovative tools, and social learning to increase evolutionary fitness. This creativity can result in better foraging, higher mating success, increased social standing, better problem-solving abilities, or any number of other adaptive traits.
But do they create ‘art’? Do non-human animals use their creativity to communicate meaning, or to explore and appreciate form for its own sake, or to represent their perceptions and/or express their emotions, hopes, and aspirations, or to develop for themselves media through which they can communally express and interpret their own special genius as a race or nation? If they do any of these things, how do you know that’s what they’re doing, not being a non-human animal yourself? Do non-human animals have institutions that confer on their artefacts the status of ‘art’?
Chimps have been known to daub paint on canvas, birds sing, bees dance; in what sense is that ‘art’ other than anthropomorphically, by analogy with human art?
Yes; prestigious art institutions like a film industry, national collections, conservatoires, colleges of art and design, etc. are expensive. But in what non-eurocentric sense are cultures that don’t feature/can’t afford such institutions ‘impoverished’?
If the EIBF folded tomorrow, Scottish literature would be no poorer than it is today. Writers would still write, and that writing would still find its readership.
So the years of training Indian musicians undergo to be able to play their music is ‘eurocentric’? Ditto those who master south American forms, Indonesian Gamelan, the Japanese shakuhachi and so on. They do not require hugely expensive institutions (and in fact neither especially does learning to play or write European classical music or jazz since it can be learned with a private teacher and enough money to buy an instrument). But what all of them need is much time and dedication and that needs financial support of some sort of many years, decades even.
Most cultures across the globe have musicians who must dedicate a great many years mastering their music. That cannot be done without finance. Take that way and yes, cultural impoverishment is the result as those art forms wither in all those places.
But I’m not defending cuts in the arts. I’m criticising the unjust distribution of wealth in the arts, which as a social institution replicates the unjust distribution of wealth in society generally. In particular, I’m criticising the use of that wealth to fund prestigious projects that embellish our status as a separate and sovereign nation in imitation of ‘other countries in Europe’ rather than support ordinary people making art in their communities as writers, painters, musicians, film-makers, performers, etc. Using that wealth to guarantee every citizen a basic liveable income would provide that support.
‘Most cultures across the globe have musicians who must dedicate a great many years mastering their music. That cannot be done without finance.’
Which is why so many musicians buss tables, drive Ubers, play gigs, pull pints, etc, etc, to support themselves while developing and practising their art. A UBI would enable them to dedicate less time to earning a living and more time to making music.
I’m afraid you do not understand or have enough knowledge of certain art forms to be making such statements.
Firstly, many music students already have to subsidise their work whilst studying at what you call ‘prestigious’ institutions by doing some of the kind of work you cite. Secondly you cannot become, for example, a master of the sitar or tabla in your spare time any more than you can a classical violinist since the time dedication required excludes it (it is not the same as writing a novel in the small hours over many years). You have a very unrealistic understanding. Maybe you do not value such art forms and think if they cannot be self-funded or made possible on a basic universal income (which is a fantasy anyway and barely exists anywhere) then they must be consigned to the dustbin. Fair enough, but I disagree – such art forms are very highly valued and with good reason. But they need proper support to survive, let alone flourish.
I’m not a musician, but I’d imagine the way to ‘master’ any instrument is to learn its techniques and practice, practice, practice… To do that, you need leisure time (as I said: time that you don’t have to spend meeting your immediate material needs or ‘working’). A UBI would give you that leisure time.
I know that our existing social security regimes don’t guarantee everyone, unconditionally, a basic ‘liveable’ income. That’s the problem; they should. If everyone did have that guarantee, then people could study music, care for their children or elders, volunteer, write a book, or do whatever it is they chose to do in pursuit of their human ‘flourishing’, free from the fear of want. The fact that UBI barely exists anywhere in capitalist society as a means of wealth distribution is no impediment to pursuing it as a political aspiration.
‘I’m not a musician, but I’d imagine . . .’ I mean it would be justified to not read further.
However, who is funding the orchestras, the ensembles, the venues, the management, the repertoire, the programme development, the publicity and so on, that those nascent musicians beavering away in their bedsits on a subsistence income with no hands-on tuition at all (but who presumably have rich enough parents to spend the few grand needed for a basic instrument and who will somehow get to be national or even the world class standard needed to pass muster as a professional), will need to actually make any of their isolated practice worthwhile in the first place?
I think you need to admit it. You think if an art form needs subsidy of some sort to be (and a classical orchestra literally cannot exist without it no matter what you ‘imagine’ which should actually read ‘invent’), it is not something you can support. And one could say exactly the same about many types of music in many different countries.
@Niemand, presumably you are talking about the likes of Venezuela’s El Sistema?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Sistema
I can support publicly-funded universal musical education (a music teacher, instruments and studio in every secondary school etc). But I’ve also watched Cornel West’s Jazz-soaked Philosophy lectures, and there is rather more to be said about different kinds of musical traditions (the Blues, for example), counter-culture, state propaganda, militarist and commercial music, amateur-professional distinctions, how traditions are passed on (or die out), and what kinds of cultural appropriation are good, bad or indifferent.
Have you watched Pixar’s animated feature Soul (2020)? I think it raises some relevant issues here, but ‘solves’ the variability of human talent in a very problematic way.
I could ask lots of questions about where funds should be targeted given finite and scare resources, what criteria are used to judge musical worth and identify skill shortages, what ties should funding have (perhaps in some cases a teaching component). Maybe public funding of music ends up subsidising the dangerous behavioural-modifying advertising industry, or the old crowd-drawing power of church choirs, or the drum-beats of war? That is, if music changes behaviour.
But as a thought experiment, do you think the Matthew Effect applies in the music industry? That by selective funding you create a positive feedback loop, and your selection gets more popular, attracts more funding, and creates a self-sustaining hierarchy in music which may end up reducing rather than increasing opportunities?
Of course some productions need to be subsidised (by statutory funding and/or charitable sponsorship); their costs are so enormous that, if they were to rely on audience sales alone, they would not be feasible. I don’t deny that. But I can’t think of an art form whose productions need to be made on such an enormous scale.
I used to manage a small theatre (my last job before a retired), which didn’t have access to either statutory funding or charitable sponsorship because our productions weren’t ‘big’ enough; supporting its productions didn’t bring sufficient prestige to potential funders to merit their support. We relied rather on putting bums on seats to meet our overheads and production costs.
So, to put those bums on seats, we used to design our productions around our target audience and the productive capacity of our (modest) infrastructure. We produced theatre, music, cinema, stand-up, exhibitions, readings in formats that were both accessible to the general public and relatively inexpensive; even opera, which is arguably the most expensive art form of them all.
The problem is, as I said above, that investment in the arts is largely siphoned off into expensive ‘prestige’ projects and the establishment’s so-called ‘culture industries’. Very little of it finds its way into the pockets of artists, other than those which some qualified person or persons (acting on behalf of the social institution commonly referred to as ‘the art world’) conferring on a writer and/or their work the status of a ‘candidate for appreciation’.
And, as I also said above, I’m not defending funding cuts in the arts. I’m criticising the unjust distribution of wealth in the arts, which as a social institution replicates the unjust distribution of wealth in society generally. In particular, I’m criticising the use of that wealth to fund prestigious projects – like the Edinburgh Book Festival – that embellish our status as a separate and sovereign nation, in imitation of ‘other countries in Europe’, rather than support ordinary people making art in their communities as writers, painters, musicians, film-makers, performers, etc. Using that wealth to invest in local infrastructure and guarantee every citizen a basic liveable income would provide that support.
@SD Yes I have some basic familiarity with that Venezuelan orchestra. I think I saw them at the Proms once, very good too.
Of course there are many issues surrounding who gets funding as you rightly highlight but 24062020 has a very blinkered view of who gets funding since it is by no means ‘largely siphoned off into expensive “prestige” projects and the establishment’s so-called ‘culture industries’. Very little of it finds its way into the pockets of artists . . .’ It may depend on what you look at but, for example, ACE (via the Lottery and includes Scotland) gives out large sums of money in small grants to many artists including small groups and individuals who are by no means ‘prestige’ or establishment. It is all too easy to believe the Daily Mail-style BS about this sort of thing, though it may be true of some funding bodies. I got a small grant myself from ACE for a poetry, music and film project.
https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/NLPG_Guidance_30k_and_under_02112021_0.pdf
The notion of human talent is an interesting one and I don’t know the film you mention SD but I have studied some work by anthropologist Steven Feld who worked with the Kaluli of the Papua New Guinea rainforest who make music (though they do not call it that) but have no real notion of talent. Their society is surprisingly egalitarian and they make music collectively and everyone does it. They do not recognise the idea of a specialist talent at all. This is intriguing though my mindset could not realistically adjust to the idea as I love to see exceptional individual and group talent (and try and develop it in myself).
I had not heard of the Matthew Effect but am quite familiar with the idea. I think it is a phenomenon that happens right across many aspects of society, often inadvertently. The only real answer to it is try and stop those hierarchies developing by changing the selectors regularly and making sure they are themselves diverse and representative but also not too ideologically driven (the last bit tends to get forgotten).
24062020 says:
‘Of course some productions need to be subsidised (by statutory funding and/or charitable sponsorship); their costs are so enormous that, if they were to rely on audience sales alone, they would not be feasible. I don’t deny that. But I can’t think of an art form whose productions need to be made on such an enormous scale’.
Need not to be made says who? Many people love and value those type of production. And it is not either that or survive purely on ticket sales is it? There is a huge middle ground of medium and smaller projects where both can happen to ensure sufficient funding – sponsorship and sales. I agree there are questions to be asked about how much public money should be spent on single big productions with relatively small audiences (major opera productions are often cited in that regard; there was a classic Yes Minister episode about that and Pierre Boulez notoriously said all opera houses should be blown up!) and I have some sympathy to some of the objections but there is no need to throw the baby out with the bath water.
I never said that such expensive productions should not be made. I said that productions need not be so expensive; even opera can be produced in more affordable (and inclusive) ways.
I know that many people love and value the spectacle of productions on a grand scale (but clearly not enough or in sufficient numbers to meet the cost of those productions). The question is: why should the general public subsidise their enjoyment of those spectacles?
Opera comes in all shapes and sizes and some of it is very big and expensive, some can be done very simply. The main question here is not about that kind of project and its funding though you focussed on that to attack all state subsidy (saying sales alone should be enough and if they are not, change the production), a classic tactic of those who think like that. As I have pointed out and shown already that is misleading and unfair and would have negative consequences for many, so I see no point in arguing about opera though FWIW I would prefer that money was spread around more.
I also think that the money should be spread around more. As I said, it’s obscene the amount of public money that’s siphoned off into ‘prestige’ projects and the establishment’s so-called ‘culture industries’; it should be prioritised instead on making participation in the arts, whether as maker or audience, less exclusive and more accessible to the culturally disadvantaged.
Right so now you are saying public money should be used to subsidise the arts after all? You just have a problem with opera and prestige projects siphoning it all off, which is actually a fantasy you have invented that ignores the evidence, some of which I have actually presented?
There comes a time when to be taken seriously, an intelligent person needs to back down from their prejudices when faced with sound argument to avoid stubbornness looking like stupidity.
I’ve never had a problem with public money being used to subsidise the arts. For example, I’ve argued that every citizen should receive a basic liveable income from the commonwealth, which would enable artists to pursue their art free from the fear of want. I’ve also suggested that the state should invest in the infrastructure necessary to ensure than no citizen is excluded from participating in the arts, whether as practitioner or audience.
But I do have a problem with public subsidy being diverted to fund arts projects primarily because of the value they add to the national economy or for the sake of the cultural prestige they bring to Scotland as a distinct ‘nation’; with cultural prostitution and cultural nationalism, in other words. I’d much rather see that funding being used primarily to directly support artists and to widen access to the arts.
Yes it is.
No, it isn’t. A trade fair is an event like the Frankfurt or London Book Fair, where publishers and literary agents and other commercial enterprises in the international book world meet and do deals with each other. A few (usually very big-name) authors make appearances, and there are occasional ‘special’ events on particular themes, for example, where one country’s publishing industry (and by extension its literature) is highlighted, but a trade fair is fundamentally about businesses doing deals with one another and a completely different thing from a book festival, which is where authors meet and interact with readers and with each other and, yes, as a consequence, sell books. Selling the product of their labour is what enables writers to make a living and therefore go on writing. If they can’t do that then their voices are unread and unheard.
The point has been well made in many of the comments here that literature and the business of selling books are not separable, and anybody who seriously believes they are in the prevailing economic system is deluded. You can argue that, say, Franz Kafka is a prime example of a great writer and yet died long before he attained that status and so was never tainted by commercialism, and this is true, but the publishing and selling of his books years after his death was still necessary for him to attain that status. The greatest literature in the world may exist in some unpublished writer’s notebooks, but who knows about it? If it isn’t known then it isn’t read, and if it isn’t read then effectively it doesn’t exist as literature.
I haven’t argued against book festivals or events – neither has Fossil Free Books. I have argued that the model of culture that seems to be being defended as a sacrosanct good – is imho – deeply flawed. I think it is extraordinary that the Scottish Government are abandoning the arts – while simultaneously claiming to increase their budget by £100m a year.
‘…in the prevailing economic system…’ being the crucial phrase. We might aspire to an alternative economy, wherein literary status isn’t determined by book sales.
(And is it in fact so determined? By the market? Or is it determined rather by some qualified person or persons, acting on behalf of the social institution commonly referred to as ‘the literary world’, conferring on a writer and/or their work the status of ‘candidate for appreciation’?)
Lot of disparate issues being conflated here.
Meanwhile there’s public investment of £40m in The King’s Theatre, £20m in The MacMillan Hub, Leith Theatre’s turn will come and there’s no ”waiting” about The Filmhouse, it’s happening. Then there’s the money funnelled into the Granton Collections Centre and WASPS, or the £20m on the gas holder. Not to mention the two Dunard funded projects. Only fair to paint a fuller picture.
I’ll be appalled if public money goes to Summerhall (even though I’m a regular) when Bridgend, Ripple, WHALE, Venchie and others should be the priority.
Sure. I mean the Kings needed work done and its being done. Agreed about priorities over Summerhall.
It’s not that there’s no money, as in zero, its just that several core organisations face bankruptcy and closure and many just don;t know.
Of course public money should rather be going to grassroots groups that use art to develop disadvantaged communities. It’s obscene the amount of public money that siphoned off into ‘prestige’ projects and the establishment’s so-called ‘culture industries’.
Art isn’t what it used to be. I’ve just been reading a book on Celtic Art (yes, it interrogates that term) which describes how finds were sometimes bought up by jewellers to make copies to sell. Nowadays, perhaps we need to talk about digitising culture, and how that accelerates sharing, collaboration, appropriation and ripping-off that may exceed all past legal frameworks and funding models.
Open source and free software particularly is a game-changer (for example, the 3D application Blender). If you want to level a playing field, you could look at providing artistic digital toolsets. Digitisation also greatly empowers separation-of-concerns and provides art-bases (like game engines) which vastly eases and speeds up developments. To think artists used to mix their own paints.
Then again, AI is currently being used to rip off artworks at scale, and is probably more of a threat to artistic earnings than anything else described here. How many literature award judges will be fooled by AI-generated novels until that system crumbles? A deeper issue is that AI both mystifies and demystifies human art; if the creative process can be machine-learnt and proves to work largely on copying and reassembling rather than some ineffable sparks of creative genius, what does that say about Art?
If British courts can convict creatives for lying in art at the personal defamation level, should we be paying more attention to artistic lies rather than swooning before artistic licence? What about historical lies, silences, distortions, mythologisations, hagiographies? I happen to have been working on an example case myself.
What about all the art and inspiration taken (sometimes literally looted) during Scotland’s participation in the British Empire’s hundreds-years global crime spree? Should reparations include giving voices and funding to those outside Scotland who have something to say about us and themselves?
What is good art and what is bad? This is a philosophical question, and (for funding purposes) goes beyond aesthetics:
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/arts-blog/artistic-licence-how-make-masterpiece
But what if machines can 3D-print sculptures and architecture, and these skills are no longer hard to perform? What if aesthetically-great art can be pulled like a rabbit out of a hat, drawn fee-less from world culture, AI-trained to push our buttons? Are we fund-feeding the monster that will devour us all?
It is inevitable that companies like Baillie Gifford, who exist solely to turn money into more money, will at some point come up against a contradiction when they try to sponsor Art.
One is concerned with the worship of Death and the other Life.
Just so.
As far as new and young music goes, the Scottish government have stopped supporting it, and hived support off to the likes of the PRS Foundation (but at least they are way better than the government).
Corporate sponsorship of arts has existed since the beginning of time, and the fossils sponsoring book festivals, or anything, is inconcievable.
I agree that Marina’s interview is lucid and interesting, and Mike Small is misrepresenting what she said about art, politics, and getting paid.
I would also point out that the fossils haven’t achieved anything good unless they have a thing about cancelling children’s book events. And yes, they look like spoiled upper middle-class brats with a huge sense of self-entitlement but zero empathy.