Measuring the experience: the scope and value of artist-led organisations

MEASURING THE EXPERIENCE #32

Yet as Landry and Bianchini have commented “Failure may contain the seeds of future success if it is analysed and not automatically punished”.[1] Within the business world, research and development offers a mechanism in which failure becomes an important learning device, and the arts world would benefit from a similar approach. In recognition perhaps of the lack of attention given to personal artistic development within current arts strategies, it has been suggested that in preparation for the Year of the Artist that “more opportunities should be made available for artists to have time to reflect and experiment”.[2]

Furthermore, ‘innovation’ is often used as a way of describing an important aspect of the arts which the funding system should therefore seek to support. However, it has been argued that whereas “creativity is a divergent process which generates ideas and is non-evaluative” and thus acknowledges that failure might occur, innovation does not because it is a “convergent process concerned with selection and implementation of ideas”.[3] Although funding bodies are constrained because planning time-frames and strategy developments are dictated from higher up the system, it should nevertheless be possible for these bodies to adopt approaches which tolerate artistic failure and which acknowledge this to be part of the need for creative people to experiment and to make “competent mistakes”[4] in order to move forward.

Significantly, in a number of debates over recent months the arts and education infrastructures and others have been urged to embrace ‘unpredictability’ (rather than talk about risk) in order to achieve a heightened artistic outcome and more fruitful relationships: “Art education must avoid conformity and encourage unpredictability as an essential aspect of creative and critical thinking”[5]; and “It is never going to be possible to produce a model arts project which can be applied to social problems like a tablet. But that is their strength – it is in the creativity unpredictability of their outcomes that arts projects add an essential tool to the range of social action”.[6]

This study has indicated the important role which artist-led organisations can play in arts development through their experiments with different approaches to the presentation and distribution of the visual arts. However, within the funding system there is a tendency to seek to control artist-led practice by defining it closely to existing methodologies for arts delivery rather than acknowledging that “frameworks [should be] sufficiently flexible to allow for unpredictable outcomes to occur.”[7].

[1]The Creative City, Charles Landry and Franco Bianchini, Demos, 1995

[2] From a summary of the Arts Council of England think-tank on the Year of the Artist 2000.

[3] Andy Burnett, Centre for Creativity at the Cranfield School of Management, quoted in The Creative City, Charles Landry and Franco Bianchini, Demos 1995

[4] Discussion on the requirement for the arts world to address “wastage, risk-taking and competent mistakes” occurred in the ‘Round Midnight colloquium on ‘Art, Industry & Commerce’, organised by AN Publications, October 1996

[5] Arising from discussions at the ‘Round Midnight colloquium on Education (organised as above) and noted in the report to think-tank members prior to published papers.

[6]Defining Values: Evaluating arts programmes, Francois Matarasso, Comedia Working Paper 1, The Social Impact of the Arts, 1996.

[7] ‘Valuing the Arts’, Southern Arts Bulletin report on an arts and education conference held in July 1996.

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In looking at the practices and intentions of artist-led organisations, this study has highlighted the notion of a ‘life-style’ approach and of a visual arts practice which may have different aspirations and operate over different time-frame than other kinds of visual arts practice. Clearly therefore, the evaluation methods used to measure of the impact of the work need to be appropriate to this context. Thus, consideration needs to be given to the work’s value within the artists’ own personal and artistic development, the quality of its relationship or engagement with other people, the impact the work may have on social and environmental well-being and regional or local identity, and the time-scale required to create that impact. In considering the benefits to an audience, evaluation would need to take into account not only the numbers of people who saw an event, became collectors of art and craft work, who worked to make a community mural, etc – but also to consider the notions of change in perceptions and empowerment of people, as these have been described as the “more subtle, creative and sensitive benchmarks by which we can measure our progress as a society”.[1]

The Integrated Advisory System has been referred to earlier as a means by which artist-led organisations might gain practical support from arts funding bodies. This system also offers a mechanism by which the work of artist-led organisations could be more firmly located within the arts infrastructure. A closer relationship would enable the vitality and originality which artist-led organisations have to feed more directly into the activities which take place across the rest of the arts infrastructure. As artists are listed amongst those who can be called on to be advisers, it is suggested that some of those artists be chosen because of their involvement with artist-led organisations. By contributing to policy discussions, assessment of visual arts work and through interaction with other advisers and officers, this area of practice would be then be more likely to be acknowledged as an integral and valuable aspect of the arts infrastructure, rather than as a relatively minor aspect in terms of the resources allocated to it. These artist-advisers would also be in a position to contribute to reviews and development of the evaluation mechanisms which are employed by the funding system and by doing so, help to ensure they are in tune with artist-led practice.

As the case studies show, devising and implementing evaluation is familiar territory for artists, for whom it is an automatic and integral part of artistic practice. Artists have to review and assess the quality and resonance of an artwork or project and the working methods used to achieve it before moving on to other work. Evaluation is a continuous process which, over a period of time not only provides artists with assessment of the quality of their work, but also determines why and how their practice will develop within their overall artistic vision and within the framework of their particular situation and life-style. This self-critical approach also runs through the work of artist-led organisations, with the case studies demonstrating their commitment to evaluating for themselves the outcome of their projects, both artistically and organisationally, in order to improve what they do in the future.

It is significant that many contributors to case studies commented that artist-led organisations are well-placed to “take greater risks”. It follows, therefore, that there needs to be an acknowledgement within the funding system that artists have the right to fail, however unpopular this may be with those with interests in the outcomes of a venture. Case studies reveal a certain uneasiness with artistic failure, particularly when public funds (and thus public accountability) are at stake, and especially where an organisation’s activities don’t take place very often (meaning a ‘failure’ may not be replaced with a ‘success’ for a good while). Artists sitting on this knife-edge are in an unenviable position in that they “Seem to be constantly sitting exams. They make work, they are tested on it and if they fail to meet the mark, it’s not just the work but their whole creative personality which is judged to have screwed up”.[2]

[1]Defining Values: Evaluating arts programmes, Francois Matarasso, Comedia Working Paper 1, The Social Impact of the Arts, 1996

[2] From a text by David Butler in Taming Goliath, a publication arising from a research project dealing with artists’ public interventions in Aberdeen in August 1996.

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Measurement of the value or success of artist-led practice

“The qualities that really empower are not quantifiable. Passion, enthusiasm, inspiration, creativity, tenacity and ambition are the qualities that shape our lives and these are the qualities needed by the entrepreneur.”[1]

Case studies indicate a varied approach to monitoring and evaluating the work of artist-led organisations. In formally constituted organisations, arts officers are often ex-officio on trust boards and thus derive a detailed knowledge of an organisation’s work from attendance at meetings or receipt of board reports. Officers tend to operate a more ‘hands-off’ approach in their dealings with informally-constituted groups, especially where grant aid is at a low level. In both cases however, qualitative judgement of a group’s activities is largely subjective, tending to rest with officers’ and advisers’ professional opinions and on reports produced by groups themselves.

The low levels and irregular nature of public subsidy are sometimes perceived as being an advantage, as exemplified by a contributor to one study who commented that by being project- or occasionally-funded, artist-led organisations were not “required to negotiate public expectation in the manner required [by other types of organisation]” and therefore had more freedom. Conversely, however, such funding places artist-led organisations ‘outside the system’, that is largely excluded from the discussion and decision-making structures that shape visual arts policies and which subsequently lead to development within the arts infrastructure, of which their work is part.

In real terms, there are currently relatively few ways in which practitioners – individually or collectively – can influence the development of arts policies. Although the arts councils in England, Scotland and Wales continue to maintain artform panels which include artists and which discuss and review policies, this is no longer the case in many regional arts boards. In these, the board advised by officers oversees development of policy. Although boards contain some arts specialists amongst influential professionals from business, education and elsewhere, these are drawn from all artforms and include professional managers and directors and occasionally practitioners. Although regional arts board officers may regularly consult individually with key clients as regards reviewing and revising policies, there would appear to be few opportunities for collective or peer group discussion between clients and those who aren’t in receipt of funding on the subject of policy and artistic direction at a regional or national level. This means in practical terms that although an artist-led organisation instigates a project to fulfil particular aspirations and expectations as regards audience and outcome, because their values are not able to influence policy development within funding bodies, these aspirations and values are not necessarily going to be the ones by which a proposal is judged and subsequently, the quality or success of the outcome assessed.

The authors of Creative Accounting: Beyond the bottom line[2] have argued that the methods which are generally used to measure the impact of the arts are flawed because by concentrating on economic measurement and ‘number crunching’, they have failed to measure the wider impact that the arts are capable of having. Their proposal for a more effective way of measuring this impact acknowledges that because the way the arts enriches people’s lives is not a scientific process, a more creative approach is required. Such an approach focuses around the notion of recognising who the various constituencies for, or ‘stakeholders’ in, the arts activity are, and the need to involve these people in developing the methods by which the arts activity is evaluated. Such an approach could be likened to good business practice, in that interaction with both the workforce and with customers or clients feeds into the development of a company’s strategies and future plans.

[1] Sir Ernest Hall, introduction to the Yorkshire & Humberside Arts Annual Report 1995/96

[2]Creative Accounting: Beyond the bottom line, Lingayah, MacGillivray and Raynard, New Economic Foundation, Comedia Working Paper 2, The Social Impact of the Arts Programme, 1996

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Funding bodies could play an important role in assisting artist-led organisations by providing access to advice and training in such matters. This is the case when groups are in the early stages of setting up and would benefit from professional advice in order to weigh up the pros and cons of, say, moving from a voluntary-run organisation to a trust with paid staff. Groups at all stages of development, however, would also benefit from access to training and advice on management issues. This includes ensuring they understand how to work as a group or committee and can run meetings so that decisions are made and how to employ staff and manage projects and development. In effect, acquiring these skills form part of every artist’s personal development because they provide an understanding of how artists can work effectively with other people whether in their own organisation or otherwise.

It is notable that in many of the case studies, the artists who were instrumental in setting up an organisation continue to play a key leadership role in the group’s current work, either as paid staff or as key members of the trust board. Although a similar situation used to occur elsewhere in the subsidised arts sector, as instanced in the way the galleries and arts centres of the ‘60s and ‘70s were set up, this is now seldom the case within these organisations. This is in part due to the growth of professional arts administrators and the development of career structures for them, as well as to the contractual arrangements used nowadays which encourage staff to develop their careers by working in a number of different organisations. In artist-led organisations, however, it is feasible for artists to dedicate their life’s work to the organisation they founded. Notable examples include Welfare State International and Freeform Arts Trust which after almost thirty years, are still led by the founding artists.

However, although there are advantages to this kind of continuity, in that an organisation has strong leadership and remains in tune with its original vision, a disadvantage is that individuals may find it impossible to ‘let go’ of an organisation, or be willing for it to change radically in response to new circumstances. By being from one particular cultural background, they may unwittingly discourage artists and communities from different cultural backgrounds from becoming involved in an organisation and in doing so, affect the organisation’s ability to work in newly defined areas. For this reason, funding bodies may find the work of these long-standing artist-led organisations particularly difficult to locate within the rest of the visual arts infrastructure and may seek to change them in order that they fit in. However, it could be argued that within a world now focused on speed of change and ‘new’ ways of delivering the arts, organisations which are concerned with sustaining a vision through an investigation which occurs over decades rather than a few years, offer a valuable ‘control’ within what might be described as an on-going experiment into how best to enrich the quality of people’s lives through access to the arts.

As has been noted in the earlier section, whether newly-formed or long-standing, artist-led organisations would seem to have a vested interest in creating and maintaining their relationships with local and regional communities who not only form the audience (in the broadest sense) for their activities, but tend to be the people with whom they regularly come into contact. These people are to be found in the schools to which they send their children, the shops, pubs, restaurants, suppliers and businesses they use, in the community groups and professional bodies with whom they work, within their immediate neighbours, and so on. It could therefore be argued that a broader definition of what constitutes public accountability is now needed. Rather than concentrating on whether the organisational and decision-making structures conform to an institutional ‘norm’, it would seem to be more relevant within artist-led organisations to look at the nature and quality of the relationship with those people whom through engagement, the artists seek to influence and empower.

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An example from within the case studies shows how artist-led organisations can gain the specific expertise needed to handle a complex project and a large budget whilst the artists remained in overall control. For Other People’s Shoes, TEA had to handle a budget of some £90,000. However, rather than hand over that responsibility to others, the group opted to improve its financial systems and the artists’ own skills by taking advice from a financial adviser made available through a Business in the Arts North West placement.[1] Having revised their systems, the group employed a part-time book-keeper and at monthly meetings, handled all financial matters themselves. The quality of the system they had devised was noted in the group’s own evaluation of the project, which said that “at no time did [TEA] pay an external creditor outside the 28-day period or become overdrawn at the bank”.

TEA’s experience also points to the advantage of what I have described earlier as “a genuine interchange between professionals”. The report notes that “Consultants were found to be useful to help the team to look closely at an area… and at some methods and models for dealing with it. Often, suggestions put forward were not the best possible, but once the focus had been achieved, we were then able to respond and find a better solution which was more integrated into the project.” The outcome would appear to be artists with improved managerial skills, professionals from other disciplines having gained insights into creative planning, and a highly satisfactory project as regards fulfilling the funders’ requirements.

As the case studies demonstrate, artist-led organisations tend to take on paid staff once their activities have escalated beyond a scale which can be handled voluntarily and because this is felt then to be the most effective way to get various tasks done. Within artist-led organisations who adopt a formal legal status, paid staff are felt to be a way of ensuring good communication between the board and others and of being able to produce results within the time-scales and planning schedules of funders and supporters.

In some cases paid staff are, or used to be, the artists who originated a project. The voluntary process tends to identify which artists within a group are best at particular functions and even in a group’s early days, administrative or planning activities generally become the responsibility of particular artists. There are many examples of artists who have taken this role, going on subsequently to become an organisation’s paid director or administrator. Where originating artists move on to direct an organisation, they provide a continuity which tends to ensure that an organisation maintains a relationship with the artist-constituency whilst at the same time enabling it to forge the new links which are necessary with other bodies and sectors. In such cases, the vision of the originating artists which was crucial to the initial development of the organisation is more likely to be retained and be enhanced as it is shared and developed with others who have an interest in the organisation’s work.

The case studies demonstrate that organisations which are managed by artists do not always make good employers. Because there is a tendency for artist-led organisations to learn about managing staff on a trial and error basis, this in some cases has resulted in friction and a breakdown of the working relationship. This is perhaps because artists make the assumption that administrators are there to ‘do all the donkey work’ whilst anything creative or to do with decision making remains the domain of the artists. The method used in other types of arts organisations, where staff are asked to investigate a proposition and present an argued case to a board for discussion and approval, will only work within artist-led organisations if the artists are familiar with that way of working and acknowledge that paid staff have a right to make decisions within agreed terms of reference and need to be empowered by the group to do so.

[1] The final report on Other People’s Shoes noted that “The systems of financial control, projected income/expenditure and cash-flow forecasts were devised with the help of a financial adviser provided free through Business in the Arts North West. A book-keeper and accountant were appointed, and linked current and deposit accounts were operated. A statement of the current position was reported at monthly administration meetings when all financial decisions were made and invoicing took place”.