Every now and then something happens that acts as a wake up call , makes you think that……actually I’ve been in cotton wool world and the padding has gone now and you feel the chill winds of………. ‘this is how it is now’.
I have come away from a briefing kind of meeting involving a team of artists delivering a complex project with several organisations and stake holders involved.
Ihave:
a 4 page instruction manual on how to process and share my outputs
a 4 page participant consent form to be filled in by participants I engage on the project
I have to submit a practitioner update report 4 times during the course of the project
a session monitering form to be filled in after every workshop
a practioner web material proforma which acts as a check list to make sure I have carried out the correct procedures for creating out puts
and I also have a chart which shows me the expected numbers and instances of participation and website visits. There is also a project evaluator just been appointed.
I feel like a Crimean War General fighting in a war against smart bombs, guided missile systems, satalite intelligence, stealth bombers and nuclear submarines. This is not the art world I knew. I took comfort as I looked around the table of people involved (I know many of them) and thought there is a lot of skill and experience here covering a very broad church of artistic and cultural knowledge. This is project delivery on a large scale where arts administators, curators and project managers have raised considerable funds and have already set the agendas to create high cultural impact.
A definate shift in the role of the artist, no longer creator in a universe of their making, rather a chess piece in a wider game. Which made my plywood cut outs of red Indians that I started making today feel rather self indulgent.
