— read write play

The current flurry of political rhetoric surrounding arts funding needs to be examined carefully, not least because ideological choices are being justified in terms of economics: affordability, value for money and efficiency. I’ll state the obvious – economic arguments concerning the funding of the arts (on the left and right) express particular political and cultural values.

It’s reason enough to be wary when adopting the language of neo-liberal economics in defence of arts funding: we risk accepting and reproducing of the (often unmarked) assumptions on which such logic rests. Case in point may be the Adam Smith Institute’s free market proposal for arts funding, published in March of this year. David Rawcliffe’s paper – which critiques an existing, expensive bureaucracy for distorting priorities and reducing innovation – proposes ‘consumer-side subsidies’ in the form of vouchers to all citizens. You can read the paper here. Leaving aside (for now) the paper’s extremely partial representation of arguments in favour of arts funding, I want to suggest a few problems with that model, and the assumptions on which they rest.

First, the paper appears to argue that a voucher scheme would operate outside of an existing history of practice and institutions. In its conclusion, it argues:

Any new producer could establish itself and instantly compete for customers on a level playing field with other arts producers.

But the playing field as it exists – and would exist under the scheme – is far from level: the National Theatre or the Royal Opera House does not and would not start from the same position as a small regional theatre company, or a new practitioner beginning her career. Some institutions and companies are comparatively wealthy: a few own property and have significant, independent income. Others are dependent on the ability of practitioners to subsidise or wholly cover the cost of their participation; more still are only able to make work through the generosity of their communities.¹

It would follow that a voucher system would favour already established companies. While the paper argues that

No new producer can hope to compete against incumbents enjoying subsidies at the level the arts councils provide.

the voucher scheme would start with those hierarchies in place, and likely exacerbate that problem by favouring established companies, who would be able to mobilise their pre-existing profile to capture the largest share of revenue. A further economic barrier – beyond that which already exists – would be created for anyone entering the profession: in short, if you could not afford to make the work and pay for it independently in the first place, the work would be unlikely to get made at all (and the market cannot then reward that which does exist).

Accordingly, and rather than encouraging competition and diversity, culture-making would move into the hands of the few – who would in turn be incentivised to reproduce existing, known practices in order to protect their income. Experimentation and innovation would be dulled by the knowledge – or rather fear – that a mis-step could lead to financial disaster, and the end of a company’s existence.

To make these arguments is not to unthinkingly defend the status quo, but to challenge the terms on which alternatives might be imagined. If, as the report argues, that free expression – free from political interference – is central to liberty and the healthy operation of civil society, do we want to entrust the machinery of cultural production to the vagaries of the market, and the interests of intrenched producers instead?

1. You could make the argument that the community-driven model is preferable – communities get the art they’re willing to find the energy and resources for – but that isn’t an argument for a level playing field. [↩]

The version of Mark Ravenhill who seems to think that arts organisation marketing departments should be targeted as examples of wasteful spending might want to have a chat with the Mark Ravenhill who wrote the following, 14 months ago:

Those of us who started working in the arts during the Thatcherite 1980s were taught that the economics was easy. It was all about supply and demand, in the arts as in everything else: you had to identify who your audience was, work out what they wanted, market yourself to them – and all would be well.

We’ve learned to do this brilliantly. [...] The occasional play would capture the public’s imagination and, largely through word of mouth, the theatre would be packed. The rest of the time, there was row upon row of empty seats. Now there is a regular, and large, audience. Many artists are reluctant to acknowledge it, but this is largely the result of new developments in marketing. Theatres have got much better at building loyal audiences, and at bringing in new audiences – people who might not have previously considered theatre part of their cultural life.

In other words, not just a soulless exercise in gaining market share – the ‘arms race’ setting one organisation against another – but part of bringing art to a broader audience. So what has changed?

Hat-tip to Tim Wood for catching Ravenhill’s earlier comment piece.

Mark Ravenhill’s call for arts cuts by way of firing faceless marketing administrators paints a picture of arts funding that smacks of elitism, with the seemingly easy dismissal of the attempt to reach any audience that isn’t already consuming art.

It’s certainly misleading to claim that £10,000 a week (that’s over half a million a year) is in any way representative of the marketing budget for most UK arts organisations, or that such level of spending (in the small number of places it exists) is automatically wasteful. Similarly, the idea that all arts organisations have acquired hugely inflated marketing departments is dubious at best. If there’s a grain of truth to these claims, Ravenhill doesn’t offer any examples to illustrate it.

There’s also the unmarked assumption that all arts organisations – big and small, urban and rural – are involved in the same kind of work with the same priorities. That a theatre might have the budget for reaching out to new communities but not the money to commission a new play from Mark Ravenhill is not evidence of bad management.¹ It helps to remember that Ravenhill’s commission-based business model is not the only one in town.

More confusing is the insistence on separating marketing, outreach and development from the lofty business of making art – as if the processes didn’t influence each other, or weren’t often carried out by the same team of people.² It’s puzzling because it assumes that the work of making “effective” projects (to use Ravenhill’s term) is wholly separate from the question of the kinds of audience that art reaches, and the ways in which that audience can engage with it.

In fact, a truly collaborative, co-operative approach to arts organisation and funding of the kind Ravenhill advocates may depend on a conscious awareness of the different kinds of relationship that exist between pragmatics and aesthetics: where different priorities in and between organisations can be made to complement (rather than compete with) each other. Ravenhill’s diagnosis of a marketing “arms race” speaks to a culture of arts funding that’s been on the way out for a decade (if it ever existed) and claiming that we’re all still in thrall to it doesn’t help its demise.

Update 27/7/10:

24hrs later and I’m thinking that the opinions of one playwright is something of a sideshow, whatever his profile might be. Dip into the comments below Ravenhill’s piece for a taste of the truly impressive loathing some people have for public funding of the arts. How do we challenge those beliefs, particularly if it’s not as simple as inside the arts community versus outside? If those strongly held beliefs can’t be changed, who in the wider community should we be talking to instead for support?

1. Though it might be evidence of how that theatre feels about Ravenhill’s plays. [↩]
2. If the #artsfunding twitterfeed is any measure, the marketing, outreach and development “departments” are often the same, singular person who does two other jobs as well. [↩]