MEASURING THE EXPERIENCE #35
Such a situation suggests therefore that the arts funding system must have other intentions for its support of artists and artist-led organisations over and above their value as ‘economic units’. An alternative way of recognising the contribution visual artists make might be derived from looking at how their work contributes to a ‘visual arts critical mass’. In order to operate effectively, the arts infrastructure relies on there being a steady stream of artistic activity from which it can select the most appropriate artists and the highest quality work for exhibitions, commissions, residencies, public and private collections and so on. In this way, it is not dissimilar to the world of professional football. This depends for its success on there being a pool of would-be star players, whose abilities are viewed over time by scouts and managers whose job it is to identify new talent and facilitate transfer of promising players up the rungs of the ladder from smaller to bigger clubs and eventually, for some, to the premier league. By supporting the critical mass of artists, the arts funding structure can be said to be ensuring that quality will emerge and investing in artistic posterity.
It has been recognised both historically and contemporaneously that, in their own right, communities of artists are a valuable commodity to a location. This as much because of the ‘life-style’ approach artists adopt and their non nine-to-five pattern of working as because of their willingness to colonise and create an identity for locations which because they are surplus to requirements and run-down (and therefore cheap to rent), are largely undesirable to other users. In such ways, artists are recognised as contributing to the cultural vibrancy of an area, in a climate when culture is used to demonstrate quality of life, social well-being and to indicate economic stability.
The requirement to have a vibrant visual arts critical mass is apparent when looking at the development of arts strategies which are concerned with long-term change. For example, a key aim for Visual Arts UK, the year-long visual arts festival in the North of England, was to engage in new ways with communities and audiences and by doing so, change the poor perceptions of the visual arts that existed there. To achieve this, the Year needed access to the pool of artists nationally and regionally from which the “over 3,000 individual exhibitions, events, commissions and residencies”[1] could be drawn. To be effective, Visual Arts UK as a whole needed a high-quality programme which included the input of well-established artists of national and international status as well as that of artists from the region who were at various stages of their careers. It could be argued that it was these two elements which created the winning combination of high-profile projects which attracted national media coverage and the programme of grassroots activities which, because they involved artists from the area, would appear to have encouraged considerable local and community involvement.[2]
[1] Alan Sykes writing in Northern Review, December/January 1996
[2] The total number of people who visited galleries and events during 1996 was 500,000, roughly double the number from the previous year, see Northern Review as above.
