Dark measures for drastic days?

[Emma Courtney]

Ok- maybe it's the Irish rebellion in me but I was just wondering - in these dark days which are likely to get darker it struck me that drastic measures may need to be taken - I've been racking my brains as to what might actually strike a chord - what are all the other sectors threatened with losses doing?

 

So here's a thought - what would the country do if the arts and I mean the entire sector went dark for a week - no arts at all anywhere in the UK and Ireland for a set time - we down tools, shut our doors (where we have them) and we congregate/march/demonstrate? Imagine the whole of the Southbank devoid of cultural life; no music, no galleries, no theatre, no film, no street arts etc etc And imagine that scene in every village, town and city, far and wide across the land…an arts Armageddon!

 

What are we afraid of? Losing our own tiny slice of the funding pie? If we don’t act soon there ain’t going to be any pie to slice from.

 

I think the 'I value the arts campaign' is inspired and inspiring but will it permeate Joe Public (past the usual suspects arts supporters)? I certainly hope so and it undoubtedly deserves to but if it doesn't then perhaps we need a more radical solution – obviously strategically planned with highly honed key messages, sympathetic public positioning and a compelling call to action. 

 

There’s some really brilliant advocacy work going on now not least the upcoming ICA debate and artsfunding’s own campaign - I’m not undermining the validity of any of this but thought I should throw this out there into the mix – a bit of scenario planning – what’s our plan B if plan A doesn’t work?

 

Any ideas/thoughts/feedback welcome...

[Marcus Romer]

we had this discussion at the devoted and Disgruntled Satellite event today - more news to follow soon...

But yes plans afoot

:-)

[Adam Lopardo]

I suggested this a few weeks ago and people didn't seem as opposed as I thought they might. Be interested to hear what the plans are Marcus.

What might be hugely effective but too far away and I bet people wouldn't go for is to close during the 2012 Olympics..... or at least threaten to.

[Adrian Lochhead]

not just throwing a spanner - but...villages not having any arts provision is what i spend all my time trying to deal with! i work as director for arts development for the largest district in England, it already has no arts centre, no public gallery, no theatre...withdrawing cultural provision here for a day, a week, whatever, would hardly be noticed - hurts to say that.
there is no one size fits all in our fight for arts provision, yep shutting the southbank is a big statement - but it doesn't affect everyone everywhere eg outside of urban centres.
really think we have to focus our attention on gathering our evidence of our positive impact, telling our stories of what we do that is good and should be supported. we are crap at showing our evidence of impact (yes I know its difficult to count/measure, but we have to find better ways than we currently have. withdrawing our labour is a last straw and quite urban-centric (not saying that it shouldn't be considered - impact actions can be good thing!)...
are we really as embedded, as essential to people, as we think we are? can we do better as a 'sector' to find ways of showing that? we definitely can and need to.
to lob in an anecdote: i gave a presentation to rural councillors and they said: "yes we like arts, but if we are making a decision about cutting arts or not filling in more potholes in the road...our constituents want the potholes filled in, give me the EVIDENCE for supporting the arts". they do not instinctively see what we do, particularly in non-urban areas (ie the majority of the country!)

[Emma Courtney]

Hi Adrian - appreciate this and how depressing for that village. I'm currently working with Ludlow Assembly Rooms in Shropshire - they're doing some brilliant rural programming and provision and when their funding was drastically threatened and they had an alarming deficit the local community raised over £20k in three weeks to help save them. A museum and gallery I've worked with in North Wales had a similar story - it seems where cultural provision exists rurally it's highly valued but people don't seem to voice this until they have a very real threat of losing it. I agree and know you're talking about some places where there is just no provision at all and in those places this sort of action may fall on deaf ears but ... if it's co-ordinated and the entire sector genuinely embraces it, it could just get enough coverage and debate going to be the catalyst that gets your pot holing councillors, and more importantly the community of those villages, thinking - here - what's all this fuss about and why don't we have any sort of arts stuff going on here so we can be part of this big debate and see what on earth everyone's talking about right now. Maybe that's naive of me (Of Keirsey's four temperments I'm an idealist!) but that is the sort of strength of impact I think we should be aiming for if we do decide to do something drastic.

We also need to recruit some high public profile champions. The likes of the Nicolas Serota and Nick Hytner's of the world are obviously useful internal lobbying voices but Joe Public doesn't care what they think. So as well as people the public recognise and respect (and dare I say it - these could be people like footballers not just actors, artists and musicians) we should also be recruiting an army of people -'just like me'- the ultimate arts peoples champion's. Could we take a selected, representative group of influencers (the person that runs the village shop/post office, local farmer, mother, grandfather, teacher, parish rep etc) from your village and take them somewhere great art is happening and let them talk to the people in the village that has arts provision about how it makes a difference and then bring them back as your own personal advocates for arts provision? One of the things we worked on in Wales was working in partnership with the local bus company to bus in the really remote access audiences with no immediate cultural access to weekly sessions inspired by the collections/exhibitions.

You're right and I couldn't agree more - it's our presentation of evidence that's at the heart of it and I do think the last couple of years have seen great improvements in that but actually - past the figures, it's the human stories which are most powerful. A (rural) arts client I'm working with at the moment have three volunteers working with them who've said that the organisation has quite literally saved their lives - three people who were suicidal and now have a purpose. Another organisation I've worked with does amazing work with learning disabled actors - again - i'm not sure how stats capture quite how important that work is in giving individuals the enormous satisfaction that comes with doing something you're born to do - really well -with nobody telling you're not good enough or can't do it. I mentor a fantastic young man originally from Ghana who used to walk around with a knife in his pocket and now runs a brilliant theatre company with other young people talking about issues that are important to them. So yes - the stats are hugely important but we've also got to find ways to tell the human side of it. If you look at any of the ads for various charities, the cancer charities, third world etc - there's a reason they give you the human side of it, give people names and show you that there but for the grace of god...so I think what I'm saying is that any strategy at all for action needs to plan for and respond to everything you've said and some of my points above but that taking direct action (above and beyond behind the scenes sector dialogue) is still an imperative - within that we must plan for changing the mindsets of both urban and rural communities. In the end, what the decision makers really care about is what the majority of the public really care about (and make voting decisions on) - at the moment it feels like the arts and heritage just aren't anywhere on anyone's agenda (past the usual bluff and tokenism) and time is running out for us (because nobody else will) to put it there.

Best,

M

Adrian Lochhead said:

not just throwing a spanner - but...villages not having any arts provision is what i spend all my time trying to deal with! i work as director for arts development for the largest district in England, it already has no arts centre, no public gallery, no theatre...withdrawing cultural provision here for a day, a week, whatever, would hardly be noticed - hurts to say that.
there is no one size fits all in our fight for arts provision, yep shutting the southbank is a big statement - but it doesn't affect everyone everywhere eg outside of urban centres.
really think we have to focus our attention on gathering our evidence of our positive impact, telling our stories of what we do that is good and should be supported. we are crap at showing our evidence of impact (yes I know its difficult to count/measure, but we have to find better ways than we currently have. withdrawing our labour is a last straw and quite urban-centric (not saying that it shouldn't be considered - impact actions can be good thing!)...
are we really as embedded, as essential to people, as we think we are? can we do better as a 'sector' to find ways of showing that? we definitely can and need to.
to lob in an anecdote: i gave a presentation to rural councillors and they said: "yes we like arts, but if we are making a decision about cutting arts or not filling in more potholes in the road...our constituents want the potholes filled in, give me the EVIDENCE for supporting the arts". they do not instinctively see what we do, particularly in non-urban areas (ie the majority of the country!)

[Clare McManus]

Just picking up on "what are all the other sectors threatened with losses doing?". I'm on a number of boards of charities and social enterprises covering the arts, health and environment and at the moment everyone is desperately scrambling to arrange Board meetings in November following the Spending Review so that 90 day redunadancy notices can be served. My frustration is that the successful comms. message about public sector baddies is completely obscuring the reality that huge swathes of community, voluntary organisations and charities (including the arts) are about to disappear because of the interdependence between public sector contracts and earned income and the voluntary sector. We absolutely need to be getting the message out about the arts, but we are also part of the bigger picture, and that really isn't hitting the national media at all.

[Nick Sherrard]

I also think it is hard to talk about 'the arts sector' without talking about also talking about education, regeneration, and other areas. And that is a good thing as arts organisations with public funding should be a key part of the places in which they operate - thats one of the reasons they are so important.

At the Devoted and Disgruntled event last week one of our groups was talking about making more common cause with other areas. In that instance people were talking about building links to other unions etc.

Given the timescales we now have before the conclusion of the spending review, and the narrow window after it while public bodies choose how to implement it, seems to me the best focus for us should be campaigns in local areas - making a clear case for the impact you have in your area to the people who live there, and connect to local councils and MPs. So we need to really turn the local arts networks we have into campaigns as much as (dare I say more than) look to things such as 'I Value the Arts' to achieve something on a national level. But yes I do think we should be as radical as thinking of things such as strikes if it helps deliver that message!

[Mike Gibb, Operabase]

If you don't want to go dark (or if you have no performance space), what about a work-in? .. free performances on street corners, professional musicians busking in parks. "Artists Out on the Streets" might be a suitable name.

One suitably pointed work (if rumours of 40% cuts are true) is Chandler Carter's Mercury Falling, a 45' monodrama for tenor, solo dancer and chamber ensemble. It's a fanciful interpretation of the last night in the life of Parisian sculptor Jean-Louis Brian (1805-1864). In the winter of early 1864, Brian attempted to protect his clay statue of Mercury in Repose from the bitter cold by covering it with his only blankets – and subsequently froze to death beside it.

“The only work exhibited at any of the Salons that Rodin ever singled out for praise was Jean-Louis Brian’s Mercury. This statue won a Medal of Honor at the Salon of 1864. Rodin called it ‘one of the finest things in the world… Such force and beauty!’ The figure is a simple male nude at rest, in a conservative classical mode. Part of Rodin’s enthusiasm was an empathetic response to the story known by almost everyone in Paris: Brian had frozen to death in his unheated studio, having wrapped Mercury with the blankets from his bed so that it would not freeze and break apart.”

— Ruth Butler, Rodin: The Shape of Genius

[Adrian Lochhead]

how about arts orgs wearing corporate logos on our kit like football teams:
eg hamlet with 'Lurpak' across his chest, an announcement before the show that tonight's skull has been sponsored by Reebok etc Macbeth with Irn Bru logo on his helmet
R +J with www.loopylove.com across their backs or 'Virgin' (arf) or 'Talktalk''

etc etc

post your suggestions?

just how pissed off would the chatterers be then? this is what corporate sponsorship means...