Reply to Mark Ravenhill piece on Guardian forum here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/25/arts-funding-cuts-theatre-galleries
As someone with good and bad experience of work-shopping and the community arts ‘sector’ the point Rozainaziara makes i.e.
If this could be simplified, cialis sale if instead of chasing workshops on the one hand and commissions or project funding on the other they could be salaried to teach these workshops in exchange for some time and space to do their own work, then a great deal of time and money could be saved without a loss of quality.
Is about the most positive note I read here….the rest seems to fall into the trap of ‘quality’ assessment of, lets face it, a hugely variable sector. Because art is funded has never mean it good or bad simply that is exists. If cuts sever the funding arteries the arts will bleed to death slowly in those areas which state-funded. This is happening now because the ‘boy who cried wolf’ arts organisations never thought the wolf would actually call.
Most arts projects do not in themselves create worthwhile art because they are not intended to. They create opportunities for people who would otherwise not get them to have therapy, fun and maybe enlightenment. This work has for too long been a unregulated, snout-in-trough mess where predominantly well meaning white middle-class do-gooders have poured millions down the drain through sheer un-professionalism and lack of regulation. A fair proportion of it went to ‘artistic’ friends who short of cash too whatever their ability which lead the previous government to start pulling hard on the reins and changes to start happening at ACE.
An objective audit of the area with final outcomes assessed truly not the fabricated results ACE play with..(I know having watched the targets be falsified personally by desperate organisations) would show where we have been and then where we might possibly know where we are going.
We regulate schools, FE and HE to a high degree. Community Arts should be regulated too and then employed artists, values, performance and outputs would rise hopefully to match the best work and not reflect lowest common denominator.
If that meant training artists properly to deliver so be it. Attempts in this direction have been lacklustre and warped by social output targeting meaning that substantial grants always went to those individual artists higher up the target organisation’s ‘hit list’ not on their innate ability to deliver professional outcomes.
So yes to professionalizing the area but it has to be a level playing field as in colleges and schools. Then reward the best and weed out the weak. In a sector nose-diving into non-existence this is the only way to save it in my opinion.
The Titanic of Ace is sinking and the most able will build themselves lifeboats of whatever works private/public sponsored etc….
The cuckoos in the nest i.e. opera and ballet will continue to be funded as ‘State’ necessities and will push even more fledglings out of the nest. The outlook is not good.