Creating Directions

Twelve Views of Mt. Parnassus (IX) - John Swogger, 2010 (print)

Creative Choices is an arts career resource site with some interesting stuff on it. I’ve just downloaded a copy of “After the Crunch”, a series of essays about the directions in which art and the creative industries may be heading over the course of the next few years. There’s a lot of really thought-provoking writing in there – a lot of it slightly unrealistic, highly optimistic about the potential of the creative industries to haul Britain up out of recession – but still, a lot of food for thought. Clare Cooper of MMM, suggests that the creative industries “offer many examples of how to … develop a significantly higher tolerance for and management of complexity, uncertainty and not knowing … – what are being termed ’21st century competencies’.”; Patrick McKenna, of Ingenious Media, talks of “investors”, not sponsors or funders when it comes to culture and the arts; Phillip Dodd of Made In China warns us that too often, the creative industries are seen as a bastion of the well-heeled middle classes.

All food for thought as we push our various Inside Out Art Projects ideas forward. Next month sees the launch of Studio A1 in the Cambrian Buildings in Oswestry – our Artists at Work hub for the town. We’re exploring all sorts of funding possibilities and options, and hope that by combining a wide range of revenue and income sources we can make the project a long-term proposition. At the bottom of all the fancy talk, however, is the fact that not enough money trickles down to front-line projects such as Studio A1. If the arts are going to survive the funding cutbacks of the next decade, something has to be done to ensure that money is not being lost in a wilderness of quangos and strategic organisations, but is actually finding its way to arts organisations that can deliver meaningful arts projects.