MEASURING THE EXPERIENCE #26
It is true to say that artists do not necessarily automatically hold the skills and expertise necessary to run an organisation. To fulfil all the things required of them, artist-led organisations must undergo a steep learning curve. This is because artists have few opportunities to gain first-hand experience of participating in decision-making processes and thus suffer from a lack of practical experience. Few artists sit on arts or other voluntary committees and thus many of them are unfamiliar with how committees ‘operate’. Loss of advisory panels in regional arts boards meant that a valuable method of gaining committee experience was lost to artists. This suggests that the funding bodies, as part of their overall support of artists’ practice, should consider ways of assisting artists to gain such experience, to benefit not only the organisations artists run, but enable practitioners to make a more productive input to arts decision-making processes. It should be noted however that the case studies show that both informally and formally constituted artist-led organisations demonstrate a high level of commitment to accounting for public funds and being a properly constituted body serves only to minimise rather than prevent risk.
It is worth considering how such requirements might be met adequately without recourse to adopting the type of legal status favoured byarts funders, and creating the sort of board described above and in which artists are in a minority. It is valuable to explore ways in which artist-led organisations could run organisations effectively and remain responsible for all of their work including financial control. This could be achieved by assisting them to gain the additional skills and expertise needed. A group may seek to draw in expertise from a number of sources
For example, a local business sponsor might be encouraged to offer secondment of staff or staff time to a specific project, peer group organisations might give a professional opinion on project development, a bank manager or accountant could provide financial expertise, and arts officers in boards or local authorities could support a group’s progress through a regular interchange of ideas, and by assisting with fundraising bids. There is no reason, of course, why discussions with these people should not take place at regular intervals in the form of collective and smaller meetings.
Such a model suggests a genuine collaboration between all the various professionals. Because leadership isn’t passed over to people who are not themselves practitioners but is formed through a partnership between artists and others with a commitment to the practice, there is the potential of maintaining the vision which started the group in the first place whilst at the same time enhancing and strengthening its operation and effectiveness through interaction with others. Strengthening the role of artists on trust boards would also ensure that artistic vision, rather than other considerations, continued to be the driving force in an organisation’s work. Louise Stephens has described this approach as one of shared leadership, in which “the skills of people outside the artists’ world are brought into the decision-making structure, not to have sole authority, but to share both authority and responsibility with artists”.[1]
Her research into artist-led organisations in the US suggests that when founding artists are encouraged and empowered in this way, organisations were able to survive the development curve and went on to be successful but when the artists became disengaged from active organisational leadership and the organisation became board or administratively-driven, it failed. Although her findings were based on organisations which had been created by one artist, they would seem to apply equally well to organisations which have been set up by groups of artists. The case studies have demonstrated various ways in which originating artists hope to maintain a strong input into artistic direction and the decision-making processes once an organisation has become a trust board, although it is notable that the artists are in the minority on these boards or hold an advisory function outside them
[1]See ‘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.
