I find Mr. Nairne’s comments interesting. He was responsible for turning around the M.O.M.A. Oxford after some fairly lacklustre years and I remember the cries of outrage when he suggested a revolutionary ‘coffee bar’ to attract punters. Anybody who can shake the Oxford ‘snooze’ even briefly is obviously serious in his ‘inclusive’ policies. However there a key flaw in the Creative Partnerships approach which is that it can also become a self-referential project more interested in creating jobs for those involved and ‘research’ than being the outward looking ‘ambassadors for the arts’ he suggests. I work here in Nottingham in a variety of ‘Community Arts’ roles which thankfully pay me enough to continue with my ‘practice’ a word\u00c2\u00a0I abhor ..’art work’ is much more down to earth.<\/p>\n
Indeed the development of an exclusive ‘art language’ and the fracturing of the art-world into cliques has done as much damage in public perception terms as any funding gripes. Press coverage and flamboyant media art stars have helped to give impression that all artists in some way ‘spoilt’ and indeed in these brief lottery-funded years of ‘plenty'(for a few) they have been. I think the coming clampdown on funding may be a good thing in that funders will be more careful where and for what purpose they fund and the beneficiaries may respond with more gratitude and less jargon and help close that artworld\/public divide that in most cases is a simple lack of communication.<\/p>\n
On the Arts Council remit question\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6yes international intervention a la British Council has been a well-oiled but cantankerous wagon that upsets as many as it helped. The real ambassadors for arts in the international sense are artists themselves and the links they increasingly building for themselves above and below the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcradar\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. As for \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcOwn Art\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 it obviously looked good on paper but it absolutely meaningless to population at large. Something like \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcPictures on Walls\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 that took over shop on Oxford Street far more successful.<\/p>\n
Finally \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcembed the arts more powerfully in the social and political life of\u00c2\u00a0 England\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.
\nHmm jury out there\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.a great deal of artwork has already been channelled into fulfilling just that kind of criteria. Artists as social workers? Indeed a social worker here complained artists paid better. This brings me back to core of this whole approach. Does one change society for the better through art or does society improve because artists free and unrestricted in their opinions and development and as a part of improved education enable \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcthe people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to enjoy and partake of their wonderful \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcdifference\u00e2\u20ac\u2122? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not quite dumbing down or up but who is it that needs to dumb down and who needs to look up? That is the question\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.<\/p>\n
let the debate continue\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I find Mr. Nairne’s comments interesting. He was responsible for turning around the M.O.M.A. Oxford after some fairly lacklustre years and I remember the cries of outrage when he suggested a revolutionary ‘coffee bar’ to attract punters. Anybody who can shake the Oxford ‘snooze’ even briefly is obviously serious in his ‘inclusive’ policies. However there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-criticism","category-art-education","category-politics","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/criticism\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/criticism\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/criticism\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/criticism\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/criticism\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/criticism\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/criticism\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/criticism\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/criticism\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}