MEASURING THE EXPERIENCE #24
Although there are advantages in becoming a charitable trust if a group needs capital or other major funds to take on a building, in that this status gives them access to a wider range of funding sources and offers relief from business rates, not all groups need to take this approach. Neither should an expansion of operation and becoming formally constituted be perceived to be something which automatically has to happen after a group has been running for a period of time.
It is pertinent here to refer to the experiences of artist-led organisations in the USA. In a report for the National Association of Artists’ Organisations, Don Adams and Arlene Goldbard described the tendency for arts funders to seek to deal with organisations which look and act like them and who speak their language. “They tend to be organisational technocrats… treating management structures and techniques as handy, value-neutral tools for making things happen. You don’t encounter a lot of debate in funding circles about alternative modes of organisation…. That’s because… the board-led structure is [thought to be] the best tool for getting just about any job done.”[1]
A report which reviewed the development of organisational structures in US arts organisations concurred with this analysis, commenting that “The most commonly applied model for organisational stability, that of the board driven, hierarchical model is not applicable to arts organisations and is, as it is applied as a funder’s ‘ideal’ and academic model, counter to the realistic model of growth needed by the field. The pendulum towards administration has swung too far… to the point where the commonly-accepted models are not in sync with the realities of growing organisations.”[2] It is significant that the author’s comments referred to arts organisations as a whole rather than just to those led and managed by artists.
Nevertheless, the trend in the US and the UK over the last fifteen years has been to endorse artistic credibility through setting up institutions with charitable status. The boards of such organisations comprise professional people such as accountants, lawyers and upstanding members of the local business community who will ensure that an organisation’s finances are properly handled and crucially, that all aspects of the organisation’s work can be publicly accounted for. The broad guidelines which pertain to the selection of members for a trust board serve to indicate why the artists who originate an organisation tend not to sit on the board which assumes responsibility for running it.
[1]Organising Artists: a document and directory of the national association of artists’ organisations, National Association of Artists’ Organisations, USA, 1992
[2] ‘Stages in Growth in Cultural Organisations’, paper presented by Louise K Stevens at 5th International Conference on Cultural Economics, USA, 1988 as part of a three-year research study of small arts groups in the US, published as The Road Map to Success: A Unique Development Guide for Small Arts Groups, Massachusetts Cultural Alliance, USA, 1988.
