27th
January, 2015
Dear Minister
Hamilton, Minister for Finance and Personnel
I wish to represent
to you as a matter of urgency, a reflection on the recent budget allocation to
the Dept of Culture Arts and Leisure (DCAL) in relation to arts funding. Despite a
huge effort on behalf of the arts by ordinary members of the public and arts practitioners,
organisations and community groups, to mobilise an historically unprecedented level
of response to a draft budgetary process, it seems our humble petition has
fallen on deaf ears. Such a mobilisation of support reflects the centrality of
the arts in Northern Irish society and the recognition that we cannot afford not
to invest in the current and future provision of creativity if we are to become
an innovation-led knowledge-based economy. In reality, education and health budgets
have been prioritised, and yet there is no other area of civic engagement better
equipped to support the complex needs of both health and education than the
arts. If, as a sector, we have failed to represent adequately the beneficial impacts
of the arts, perhaps an impartial, economy-focused organisation might assist. A
report from OECD just two years ago stresses:
We argue
that the main justification for arts education is clearly the acquisition of artistic
skills …By artistic skills, we mean not only the technical skills developed in
different arts forms (playing an instrument, composing a piece, dancing,
choreographing, painting and drawing, acting, etc.) but also the habits of mind
and behaviour that are developed in the arts. Arts education matters because
people trained in the arts play a significant role in the innovation process in
OECD countries: the arts should undoubtedly be one dimension of
a country’s innovation strategy.
ART FOR ART’S SAKE?
© OECD 2013 Art for Art’s Sake? The Impact of
Arts Education (Winner,
Goldstein and Vincent-Lancrin, 2013).
The same
report spells out in its introduction:
In
knowledge-based societies, innovation is a key engine of economic growth, and
arts education is increasingly considered as a means to foster the skills and
attitudes that innovation requires, beyond and above artistic skills and
cultural sensitivity.
ART FOR ART’S SAKE?
© OECD 2013 Art for Art’s Sake? The Impact of
Arts Education (Winner,
Goldstein and Vincent-Lancrin, 2013).
In N
Ireland currently, through the variety of expert formal and informal creative
arts and engagement programmes, we support physical and mental well-being and
develop the creative and intellectual skills of participants, beneficiaries and
students. We have a creative infrastructure that produces success, across
formal and informal education, communities and socio-economic circumstance. But this already financially hard-pressed
sector is now under threat of imminent decline and potential collapse.
As Minister
charged with the economic well-being of our society, the assertions of an
organisation like the OECD must surely carry some weight. If, as a member of
the OECD, we are looking to develop an innovation-based economy, capable of
attracting the leading creative organisations, not just in the arts per se, but
across all areas of human endeavour, we would do well to follow OECD advice: OECD (2010), The OECD Innovation Strategy.
Getting a Head Start on Tomorrow and OECD (2012), Better Skills, Better Jobs,
Better Lives: A Strategic Approach to Skills Policies, both of which point
to the arts having a role in developing a necessary creative faculty within innovation-based
societies.
As you are
no doubt aware, despite this single largest representation of responses from
any one sector to the recent Draft Budget, the arts budget is facing a cut in excess
of 10%. The reality that the budget to
arts practice and participation will be cut more significantly than the overall
DCAL departmental budget is not lost on either core clients of the Arts
Council, whose budgets have already been cut by 5% in year. Nor indeed, will
this government allocation be lost on the tens of thousands who represented
their position though response and petition, that there should be no further
cuts to the arts.
Whilst
there may be some that are bewildered that having received such a mandate, that some
accommodation couldn’t be afforded, others like myself are seeking guidance as
to how to support government decision-making
regarding the veracity of arts and the invaluable support that community
arts in particular and arts practice in general gives to our local population.
Once again, I call on the OECD documentation. Where they struggled to find a
profundity of evidence of a causal link, the For Art’s Sake authors offered
this point to policymakers:
Ultimately, however, the arts are an essential part
of human heritage and of what makes us human…ART FOR ART’S SAKE? OVERVIEW 15 © OECD 2013
Given the extraordinary
level of response from ordinary people, practitioners and organisations, I feel
mandated to ask that the budget for the arts be re-instated, as per the wishes
of 23,000 responses, (as acknowledged by DCAL Minister Ní Chuilín) and indeed
that the arts, and their educative and social benefits, be acknowledged as a
key element to the development of the N Irish economy and society and that the terms "Arts" be retained in any new departmental title.
Yours
sincerely
Conor Shields
Aren't you worried that the only argument for government funding of the arts you feel 'exercised' to use are arguments funded by government for government? Doesn't that seem odd to you? Aren't artists at liberty not to share the economic models or visions of current 'state' incumbents?
ReplyDeleteI used that argument because, probably like yourself, we responded to the draft budget with a detailed document on the range of impacts. The areas I chose to highlight here were more to chime with a minister's speech which would undoubtedly talk about all these things (of which he did indeed). I used the OECD arguments also because the Minister seems to be a fan, cheerleading on corp tax etc.
ReplyDeleteAs to your other comment/question, I'm not quite picking up on your meaning but there are some interesting points to make perhaps.
The duality, some might hold dialectical position of supporting a range of outcomes from any instrumentalised practice, is at base, fundamental to the inherent tensions in working dialogically. The restriction of freedom of artist's practice might be perceived as a corollary to this mode of working but if managed and indeed, conceptualised adequately before any action, there should not be an impact on artistic freedom. Indeed, any subsequent analysis should be couched in modes of reflective practice, that can mediate between these interpolated demands on process and outcome.
If however, if you merely infer that any artist can in fact exercise their liberty not to agree with economic policy - well of course.