As we wait with baited breath for some positive outcome to talks and some sense of funding surety to be given to whole raft of areas, the Arts, all one tenth of 1% of it (ie 0.1% of total exchequer funding), are sitting blinking at spreadsheets showing cuts which may equate to 15% at the very least . So the Arts Council of Northern Ireland estimates, based on the funding uncertainty coming from Stormont. But at least ACNI are asking organisations still to register their ambition and bid for what they need. In today's environment, that is brave and to be welcomed.
And in this funding and political inertia, many voices can be heard offering advice and encouragement, like the profound positivism of the Make it Work campaign, urging our political class to respond to a public that desperately wants them to sort this out, for all our sakes.
And the arts community is looking for opportunities to state its case and support positivism.
But then there are those who offer the "I told you so" analysis of arts funding. Like the sausage salesman last weekend shouting at me at the UUP Party conference, thanks to Stratagem's #coffeetalk fringe lobby, crowing that the arts had to develop new ways to sustain themselves and couldn't just
ask for funding. But it transpires that his employer had announced earlier this year news of receiving almost £250k of public funding (almost half of the money that the arts have to return this year!). That's a highly profitable and award-winning sausage company, receiving public subsidy, lecturing an arts advocate about funding. It may illustrate a double standard.
"You might think that, I couldn't possibly comment"
And then there are those who know better, insisting that funding should give way to experimental forms of "repayable finance". Keen to assert that the arts become "investment ready" these voices go on to blame the arts for not "honestly" reflecting on their plight and finding ways to do it differently and better.
Really? Honestly??
Now there may be many who might fail to see the virtue in kicking someone when they're down but it is clear that when seeking to assist someone in a vulnerable situation, one might start by making things better and perhaps offering encouragement.
"You might think that, I couldn't possibly comment"
To the positive voices, who recognise that in this political dog's dinner, we have the right to assert the primacy of democratic values and the rational, rights-based protection of quality of life and access to services that should flow from our social contract we say, "Hear Hear!" If there is grant-aid using public funds, why should it not go to charities that are involved in creating arts for public benefit ? Should the arts, receiving just a 1,000th of the block grant in exchequer funding not be allowed to hold onto that meagre 0.1% of funding?? In fact, should a sector that that creates 4% of GDP from 0.1% of public investment, not be supported further.
And in particular, community arts organisations that support communities marginalised by socio-economic situation, physical or intellectual challenges or a range of life challenges, by promoting interculturalism, inter-community relations and socially inclusive programmes, should they not be further supported again to promote this crucial area of work?
Arts funding is an investment in optimism. It is an investment in a society, in a project that is as various as it is creative, as colourful as it is melodic, as hopeful as it is realistic. It is an investment in the future, valuing creativity as the primary human instinct that sets us apart and supports every aspect of our lives. Think of how central creativity is to all of us and the connection it makes - think of the first time you heard your child sing, or her first painting, or the first time you read your favourite book, or that moment when you finally understood why we dance! Or the elegy that still reminds you of a moment or a someone, or the how you're transported to that inside of a moment when you hear THAT song, even the first bars of it!
Now understand what it feels like to have your first poem published. Or create your first piece of pottery, or print, or song or painting. Should we all not know how that feels?
And many would say the enterprise of art making is more expressive and more honest than much of our modern life. And for those who think creativity is a luxury, ask the top CEOs of large scale industries what they consider to be the top attribute of their workforces - creativity. Americans for the Arts shows that low-income students who are highly engaged in the arts are more than twice as likely to graduate from college as their peers with no arts education and the Conference Board's joint "Ready to Innovate" report shows that 72 percent of business leaders say that creativity is the number one skill they look for when hiring. These new approaches to problem solving, to innovation, to development across a whole range of areas are extensions of artistic exploration and imagining. The behaviours we learn from artists are some of the most beneficial and applicable life-skills we can have.
But here and now, as these cards are positioned to stand, side by side, then one on top of the other, we are reminded of the shared ecology of the local arts sector. Fragile and interdependent, most arts organisations are in contact with each other, searching for ways to protect hard-won gains and being collegiate and co-ordinated in their approach.
And for years, the logic ran that if this House of Cards were to lose one particular card, then the pyramid might fall. But, perhaps now one card is so impossibly weighed down as to threaten that fundamental logic. Perhaps...
"You might think that, I couldn't possibly comment"
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