What kind of a year has 2012 been for you and your organisation?
This year was a good one for us – with apologies for bucking the trend, if that’s the case! We managed to place in the region of £3million worth of modern and contemporary art in museums and public galleries across the UK and, most excitingly for us, we bought our first ever home in 100 years, where we will put on displays, talks and other educational events for our members and the wider public from January 2013.
What has changed for the better and what, if anything, has changed for the worse?
We are having to work a lot harder and think ’outside of the box’. Finding new and mutually inspiring approaches to public/private partnerships and fundraising to sustain our work is not always easy, but is the key for us.
What do you wish hadn’t happened this year?
Reflecting on this past year, I see many developments contributing towards the erosion of visual arts and culture in Britain. Reductions in public funding for the arts are combined with damaging proposed changes to the secondary educational curriculum [in England], the unaffordability of higher education for the current generation of young adults who would have considered the arts as a career, and the depletion of educational and curatorial specialisms in museums and galleries nationally due to local authority spending cuts and redundancies. This does not bode well for the state of the visual arts in the UK a decade from now.
What do you wish had happened this year, but didn’t?
A Cultural Olympiad that might have made the case for sustained investment for the arts in a way the Olympics has for sport.
What would you characterise as your/your organisation’s major achievement this year?
Being responsive and remodeling our organisation in order to increase our contribution to the sector, and building a platform to give greater visibility and advocacy for our work in a challenging environment.
Is there anything you’d like to have done but haven’t?
There’s always more to be done. Developing an Endowment perhaps…
What would make 2013 a better year than 2012?
A serious Secretary of State for Culture.
The new Contemporary Art Society space at 59 Central Street, London EC1V 3AF, opens to the public on 9 January 2013. More on this and the Society’s work at www.contemporaryartsociety.org
