I’ve just spent a couple of days in Madrid at a rather excellent arts marketing conference. The speakers were an interesting mix from Spain, the US and the UK, but the delegates were almost entirely Spanish. Those presenting were very good, but the audience was even better: interested, engaged, challenging and eager to learn.
With so much talent in the room, it was hard to see why the arts in Spain are in such a fragile state. But with recent big reductions to national and local funding and the likelihood of even harsher cuts ahead, there was a real sense of fear and foreboding.
It was a great event, but amazingly it was also the first of its kind. The arts sector in Spain historically has not worked together and shared ideas and good practice, let alone data. And the sector does not lobby or campaign with one voice, or have the infrastructure in place to allow it to do so.
In the UK we have love/hate relationships with four arts councils, who at their best sit in the no-man’s-land between the sector and government, providing robust evidence to inform policy and leadership for the sector whilst dodging the bullets from both sides. But, in England at least, the sector needs to start realising that the massive and unprecedented cuts to staffing that are planned will mean the Arts Council’s ability to perform this role will soon be greatly diminished.
It was very clear in Spain that the ‘big players’ were surviving and in some cases thriving without national leadership. But the vast majority of the sector has neither the income nor the profile to develop and make their case to funders or improve their business practices.
In the UK (and particularly England), imminent changes mean the arts sector needs to work more cohesively together, stop having a parent-child relationship with its funders and take more of a leadership role itself. And I think there is clear evidence this is beginning to happen.
Geographic groupings like Newcastle & Gateshead Cultural Venues show how the cultural sector can work together productively to shape the debate and improve their own practice. From Liverpool to Leicester, I know there are other established and emerging examples of leadership and joint working coming from the sector rather than being driven by regional or local funders.
I remain in awe of the eight theatre companies who clubbed together to commission the research that has established the first robust baseline of the levels of engagement in theatre by English Schools, and provide themselves with intelligence to help sell their shows and reach new young people.
And very soon we will see the start of ‘re.volution’, a new peer learning network across Scotland and England led by MMM and involving several of the industry bodies that will draw together a passionate network of thinkers and doers from the arts, the broader cultural and creative industries and beyond, who want to transform the way the arts use their resources to support the creation and experience of great art.
All of these initiatives suggest that the sector may well be growing up and confronting obstacles to sustainability with a positive approach. Another reason to be cheerful in these challenging times.
David Brownlee, Chief Executive, Audiences UK
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