Arts
Report
Arts and culture have shown great resilience during 2013/14, despite an ever-changing landscape.
Most local authorities have continued to cut cultural provision as part of their broader reductions of key services this year. Some arts organisations have become gradually leaner over the last few years and are now somewhat emaciated. Not many arts organisations have closed down yet, but we fear this is likely to change over the year ahead.
National public arts funding is also in flux. Creative Scotland launched its new ten-year plan for the arts, screen and creative industries – Unlocking Potential Embracing Ambition. Arts Council Wales continued its Inspire consultation to map out the themes that are important to creativity and the arts in Wales.
Arts Council England’s announcement of the total amount it will invest in arts and culture over 2015–18 coincided with a call for applications for national portfolio status. The number of regularly funded organisations will be smaller to reflect a reduced core funding allocation and the need to make space for newcomers in the portfolio. We saw a drop in applications during this period as many organisations justifiably focused on the core support on offer from ACE. It is likely that after the national portfolio decisions are announced, many organisations will have to depend on lottery project funding (such as grants for the arts), which is a less stable source of funding, and which is mostly project-based. We are concerned about the potential repercussions for the sector from these changes during 2014.
Cultural learning
A further threat to the arts and culture in England has been in the education sector. The government’s announcement of the English Baccalaureate school accountability measure in England excluded arts and culture as key performance indicators. The GCSE and A Level reform looked like it may have restricted young people wanting to choose arts subjects. The new National Curriculum for England, which will come into force in September 2014, also marginalised arts and culture. Despite attempts to reassure from the Education Secretary Michael Gove, and the then Culture Secretary Maria Miller, one immediate impact appears to have been a 14 per cent drop in arts GCSEs in the summer of 2013. 1
The Cultural Learning Alliance, which we have supported since its inception, spearheaded a campaign on many of these fronts to counter- act the effects that the current trends could have on children and young people. Eight education consultations in 12 months resulted in some victories, such as drama remaining within the English curriculum. Also, arts subjects have been included in the first round of reformed GCSEs to be taught in schools from September 2016, alongside the sciences, geography, history and languages. But there were also some disappointments, such as film and the concept of ‘contemporary’ not being included in arts subjects.
To ensure that we have a society where arts and culture are valued and where artists can thrive, we feel passionately that we must protect the entitlement of all children and young people to access culture.
While Maria Miller did acknowledge publicly at the beginning of 2014 the importance of promoting the arts alongside sciences, technology and engineering – reflecting the values of the ‘from STEM to STEAM’ 2 movement – it is unclear at the time of writing whether this idea is gaining traction within the Department for Education. We will work alongside others to promote this agenda as it feels particularly important to us at this stage. We welcomed Michael Gove’s April statement about his determination to ensure that every child enjoys access to the best in our culture and that all schools nurture creative talent, but we look forward to finding out how this commitment will be made tangible.
Advocacy
In addition to our support of the Cultural Learning Alliance, we are one of a small group of funders to underpin What Next?, a movement now comprising over 20 ‘chapters’ throughout the UK. This self-organised group of senior arts and culture professionals aims to engage everyone in Britain in a conversation about the value of arts and culture. The group’s ambition is to shape a future where arts and culture are at the heart of society, and it is trying to find new ways to talk about, influence, shape and change our country’s cultural landscape. Apart from the obvious fit with the Foundation’s ethos and values, we are interested in whether What Next? can be a catalyst for fresh thinking and new policy ideas.
The Defining Values seminar series was initiated in 2011 under the aegis of National Arts Strategies (US) in response to the desire among UK arts leaders for fresh thinking about fundraising and income generation. This was in the context of politicians’ pleas for organisations to ‘get more American’ in their approach to fundraising. The premise is that leading arts organisations of differing scale are already tapping into the most obvious routes to support, and it is through the creation of new value, rather than new fundraising techniques, that strategic breakthrough is possible. The initial seminar took place in London in October 2011 with a follow-up session six months later in March 2012. This year, we joined the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and NESTA’s Digital R&D Fund to support three sessions in Newcastle and one follow-up session in London.
It was interesting to put the values and methodologies of participatory arts practice in the spotlight as an asset in the context of fundraising. Learning and participation activities are rarely seen as a prism through which to examine how external relationships are managed, including those with funders and supporters. The feedback from the Newcastle sessions seems to indicate that this is a valuable model that could be developed further.
Our own arts participation initiative, ArtWorks, which looks at ways to improve the professional development of artists working participatively, is moving on to an advocacy footing. Following a year of consolidating the evidence and experience gained to date, we have started to implement our advocacy and dissemination strategy to broaden the reach of this important action-research initiative. Our focus has also shifted towards the best ways of embedding the work and making it viable after the end of the grants made under the scheme, in the autumn of 2014.
Following an interim review of our Breakthrough Fund initiative, £3m was allocated for two more rounds of applications. 3 The Fund reflects our commitment to a healthy arts ecology through our desire to support people who have what it takes to make things happen. It also explores an interesting territory between support for the individual, the vision and the organisation that delivers this. The funding relationship acknowledges the defining impetus and interplay of each of these elements, but focuses on the individual at the heart of the picture: the individual and the vision they propose provide the central rationale for the grant. This remains unusual among other private arts funders.
The year ahead
Putting into place and beginning work under the new Foundation strategy will form the core of our activity in the coming year. The arts remain of crucial importance to the Foundation as an end in themselves, and as a means to provide support to individuals and communities. We have given serious thought during our strategic review to the question of how to have the greatest impact we can in this area. Alongside the work of the new strategy, we will continue with our ongoing initiatives, and the three new schemes we announced last year as part of our programme of 25th Anniversary gifts. Circuit, the Paul Hamlyn Club Awards, and The Reading Agency’s ‘Reading Activists’ programme have all started work this year. Each is making good early progress towards achieving its goals.
Régis Cochefert
Head of Arts
Special Initiatives
Awards for Artists
Support for individual visual artists and composers
£452,858 in 2013/14
The Awards for Artists scheme supports individual artists to develop their creative ideas by providing funding with no strings attached over three years. The Awards are made on the basis of need, talent and achievement. In 2013, awards of £50,000, paid in three annual instalments, were made to eight recipients:
Composers:
Emily Hall, Bryn Harrison and Chris Watson
Visual Artists:
Margaret Harrison, Stewart Home, Torsten Lauschmann, Cally Spooner and Ian White
Ian White sadly passed away in October 2013. In accordance with his wishes, we are using part of his Award to support a group of seven artists selected by Ian, and another part to contribute to an ongoing legacy of his work.
The 2013 Awards for Artists reception was held at the Foundation offices in November. Our guest speaker was Jonathan Reekie, who stepped down in 2013 after six consecutive years as chair of the panel of judges for the Awards for Composers. Previously CEO of Aldeburgh Music, he is now Director of Somerset House.
2014 will mark the 20th anniversary of the Awards scheme.
Breakthrough Fund
Funding for visionary cultural entrepreneurs
£1,860,397 in 2013/14
The Breakthrough Fund aims to identify outstanding individuals in the role of cultural entrepreneur, working in a variety of art forms and contexts, who have compelling visions and are at a timely moment in their careers. Through committed, responsive and flexible support, the Fund aims to unlock significant developments and outcomes that would not otherwise be brought about. It also helps achieve transformational impacts for these individuals and their organisations.
In three rounds of funding between 2008 and 2010, 15 grants were made totalling £3,879,765. Nine of these grants have now completed; most of the six remaining grants will complete in 2014/15. Consultant Kate Tyndall is continuing to lead the ongoing evaluation of these 15 stories and will meet with all grantees two years after the end of our support. The original grants appear to fall in three categories: those that have had truly transformational outcomes; those that made progress, but without the quality of impact originally envisaged; and those that have had a strongly positive impact.
During 2013/14, in response to the findings of the interim evaluation of the Fund completed in 2012, a new selection cycle started – once more using a process of confidential nomination and then competitive selection. We received 49 nominations from 25 nominators, generating 46 applicants. We asked them to make a short film as part of their application – a new approach that provided a fresh way for them to articulate their visions. The selected grantees are:
- David Agnew/So It Is
- Jimmy Akingbola and Fraser Ayres/Triforce Productions
- Emma Jordan/Prime Cut Productions
- Lizzie O’Neill/Z-arts
- Zeon Richards/Renowned Group
- John Rostron/Swˆ n
- Magdalena Schamberger/Hearts & Minds
We had made clear to nominators that we were interested in hearing about exceptional individuals working right across the cultural economy, including the non-subsidised sector. Our seven grants reflect this variety of approach. We look forward to beginning our relationships with these new grantees and to supporting their Breakthrough endeavours.
ArtWorks: Developing Practice in Participatory Settings
A workforce development programme for artists
£267,656 in 2013/14
Launched in 2010, the ArtWorks initiative supports five groups of organisations in Wales, Scotland and England to develop new approaches to the training and development of artists who work in participatory settings, at all stages of their careers and across a range of art forms.
During 2013/14, these ‘pathfinder partnerships’ consolidated their research to date, which is now documented in seven new Working Papers that we published this year. We will publish a further paper in 2014, drawing together our learning from the point of view of the employers and commissioners of artists working in participatory settings.
A range of approaches have been piloted during the year, including an artists’ code of practice, accredited and non- accredited undergraduate and post-graduate courses, a fellowship scheme, artists’ labs, peer-to-peer networks, mentoring and placement schemes, shared quality factors, and a BA in arts leadership. The pilot schemes are developed with a view to making them transferable and scalable for the wider sector.
The Changing the Conversation conference at Lancaster University, organised with the Higher Education Academy and Creative & Cultural Skills, took place in April 2013. It brought together Higher and Further Education providers, teacher-practitioners and researchers with artists and arts organisations to discuss the needs of artists who work in participatory settings, at different stages of their education and careers.
Following the conference, we invited bids from delegates to explore new ways of working; test new models of collaboration; and generate case studies of how ‘the conversation’ (about participatory arts) might be changed in practice. Seven projects were funded and these case studies are available on the ArtWorks website.
An Artist Survey, launched to find out more about artists’ perceptions of the participatory sector and the opportunities available to them, generated over 1,000 responses. The results will strengthen our understanding of artists’ needs and help inform advocacy and dissemination work to improve participatory arts practices.
Our Museum: Communities and Museums as Active Partners
Facilitating organisational change within museums and galleries
£406,035 in 2013/14
Our Museum works with nine museums and galleries around the UK to help them embed community participation at the heart of their organisations.
It has been a difficult year for some of our partners, who struggled with significant financial pressures while going through a process of organisational change to embed and sustain community participation. Despite those difficulties, the year was in many ways a real breakthrough, with some innovative work towards broadening the range of community partners, giving them real authority in taking decisions within the organisations and tackling head-on the barriers to deeper participation. What was particularly notable was the way lessons learned in the first year of Our Museum were taken on and solutions (or a different tack) were found to overcome sticking points. The catalyst for much of this was the first annual peer review, which brought together all the organisations and their community partners in Cardiff in April 2013.
Some of the innovative learning has been captured on a series of videos, which is available online through the Our Museum website (www.ourmuseum.ning.com). These initial videos focus on genuinely pathfinding work by the organisations, such as: developing strategic partnerships with communities; case studies of effective shared decision- making; how to involve governing bodies and persuade them to champion participatory work; and how to achieve staff buy-in to a participatory way of working across a large and complex organisation. We are also developing a stand-alone legacy website to showcase and promote all the learning from the programme.
We practised what we preach at the annual conference of the Museums Association, in Liverpool in November 2013, where community partners from the Our Museum programme ran a session on how museums know their communities, resulting in an action list of what works and what does not. Another session at the conference, on co-production with communities, was also run by Our Museum participants and community partners.
Open Grants Scheme
Pallant House Gallery
£48,766 over 18 months awarded in 2007/08, £138,500 over three years awarded in 2009/10, and £50,000 over one year awarded in 2012/13
When Ann Claire was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, she used art as a way to alleviate her depression. “Art has become my way of obtaining head-space,” she said. “I use it as therapy. I was so pleased to be offered the opportunity through Pallant House Gallery to share my art with people who wouldn’t be judgemental.”
Outside In is a project established by Pallant House Gallery in 2006. It has supported around 5,000 artists who face barriers to the art world, either through health, disability or social circumstance. The project has held 26 exhibitions and three open competitions in the last six years. The last competition, in 2012, attracted 2,300 submissions from artists across the UK. Six artists were chosen to have solo shows at Pallant House Gallery. The 2012 National exhibition attracted over 13,540 visitors.
Pallant House Gallery’s Executive Director, Marc Steene, says: “Outside In is seeking to create a fairer and more inclusive art world, and to create a wider dialogue about culture and understanding of creative purpose. I think we should be wary of seeking to define what art is or who artists are.”
One artist to have benefited from a solo show at Pallant House Gallery is Kate Bradbury. “They have given me a lot of opportunities to exhibit and promote my work,” she says. “By looking at other artists on the website, I realised how many people are out there.”
PHF has now made three grants to Pallant House Gallery. The money has helped the Outside In project to collaborate with 60 arts venues across the UK, from the Royal Academy of Arts in London through to smaller galleries such as Salisbury Arts Centre. It encourages cultural organisations to discover unknown artists in their communities and put their work in mainstream exhibition spaces. It also works with local service providers to reach people who would benefit from the project.
“Colour became the doorway to my creativity after experiencing a breakdown in 2004,” says Kwei Eden, a 2009 Outside In award winner. “Outside In has helped me realise my potential as an artist. It is a bubble of loveliness; you’re in it, believed in and encouraged to feel more valued about your work.”
Outside In also runs a professional development scheme, which has trained 60 artists to become workshop leaders and to be involved in interpreting collections. The course is being formalised with accreditation and online learning. The aim is to get artists with disabilities to play a more active role in museums and galleries.
Independent evaluator, Susan Potter, says: “Outside In has had a positive impact on artists, increasing their confidence and self-esteem, developing new skills and experiences and improving mental health and wellbeing. For Pallant House Gallery and its partners, the project has increased audiences, led to skills sharing and stimulated further creative activity.”
Pallant House Gallery this year announced funding from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation to continue Outside In for three years.
York Theatre Royal
£100,000 over two years, awarded in 2011/12
York Theatre Royal received funding in 2011 for the TakeOver project, initiated in response to growing demand from young people to get involved and have an influence over the activity of the theatre. TakeOver allowed a group of young people to take over the programming and running of the theatre for a three-week festival period. The aim was to offer young people a genuine experience and real responsibility.
TakeOver engaged over 350 young people in the theatre over two years. They managed the festival and participated in creative workshops, performances and immersive theatre events. “There isn’t any other opportunity where in your early 20s you’re going to learn how to run a theatre,” said one young participant. “You just don’t get that experience anywhere else, you learn so much just by doing it.”
Another added: “I never would have dreamt of setting up a theatre company when I was 23 before TakeOver, but after TakeOver I went out and did it … and now I expect more of venues.”
One of the most successful elements of TakeOver was the residency project. This offered an opportunity to reverse the usual theatre-making process and involve the designer, writer and producer from start to end.
Vicky Biles, the general manager, says that the PHF funding had a significant impact on the theatre as a whole, as well as the lives and creative development of the individuals that took part in the project. Young people involved in TakeOver were able to develop their confidence and a range of professional and personal skills. “Older participants learned practical and industry-related skills to help them on their arts career paths,” she said. “Younger members reported a development of business, governance and communication skills that assisted them in current activities such as School Council, and that they felt would be of help for university and job applications in future years.”
Vicky adds: “TakeOver has been a learning curve for all involved – the young people and theatre staff. The project is an experiment in democracy and we have learned that we must open the door fully to the experience. It is essential to offer a real-life experience as this is what makes a genuine difference in the relationship with young people.
“We have also learned just how mutually beneficial it is to work closely with our community in producing a programme of work, and how much we have changed as an organisation to make this happen.”
The theatre now has a programming board that includes a number of young people. Plans for the future include creating a supportive network of alumni to share information about running festivals and to help them continue their professional development. The theatre also wants to share its learning with other arts organisations and develop a toolkit based on its experience.