Thinking Practice

Movingpictures 20: on happiness

2012-02-03T15:27:00.001Z

We've not had a video for a while, so here's one for those of a certain age and disposition, since my last post about happiness and resilience generated a fair few emails, and even a few comments.

One of the themes of responses was that happiness and artistic creation do not always go hand in glove. (Sorry, couldn't stop myself.) Even if the work is not sad, unhappy, depressed or depressing in itself, the artist or writer may be. This is one of the paradoxes of art - from the tragic comedian to the backstage transformation. It is what we want from art, and one of its limitations - sometimes, you can't write or sing or joke your way out of yourself.

Some years ago I did some research in the therapeutic benefits of writing, and whether quality, or trying to write well (as opposed to simply for therapy, regardless of literary quality). made any difference. I found some evidence that it did, both in writers' own testimonies, but also in psychological literature. There is something in making special, powerful images, which is good for you. (Virgina Woolf made the connection herself in her diary, when recovering from depression: 'returning health: this is shown by the power to make images...')

There is though, a paradox here too: writers, especially ones of a certain standing, are more likely to suffer depression and related illnesses. It may be that striving for excellence can become a burden to some when pushed too far - perhaps those with lower 'resilience', perhaps.

You can, if you're interested, read the paper, 'Writing well: health and the power to make images', that came out of this research in the archives of Medical Humanities, where it was published. It feels a long time ago now, but I was happy to be reminded of it, and particularly the other Woolf quote I use at the end, which I'll share here for those not minded to read the full thing:

“And now with some pleasure I find that it's seven; and must cook dinner. Haddock and sausage meat. I think it is true that one gains a certain hold on sausage and haddock by writing them down”

...and always wear the happy face

2012-02-01T09:47:00.001Z

My work around adaptive resilience in the last couple of years has showed me some people react negatively to the word. It is defiantly unsexy, un-’transformational’ for many cultural folk. Having a Northern miserablist somewhere within me, I don’t mind this, but some people do, finding it a bit negative or defensive – not creative somehow. (I am pondering swapping adaptive for creative in some contexts, as all my research is highlighting the role of creativity in that adaptive capacity which is central to my vision of resilience as a positive force, but that’s a longer and different bit of writing.)

I was reminded of this by Andy Burnham’s recent speech about mental health, and the ‘happiness’ agenda, and reactions to it. You can read a summary here . His argument is that the happiness agenda places too much emphasis on material wealth and is essentially ‘middle class’, and there ought to be greater emphasis on resilience – are people ‘coping’ or ‘getting by’, rather than being pressured to 'get happy'.

Whilst acknowledging the kernels of truth in Burhnam’s argument, it may well be a misunderstanding of happiness as a concept or agenda, and is definitely not what I mean by resilience. As The Happy Museum project note in their introduction to a project exploring how museums needs to adapt to support transition to a ‘high well-being sustainable society’, research shows that material goods play considerably less of a role in determining well-being than our spending patterns might suggest. Charles Seaford of the New Economic Foundation has argued there is a clear synergy between the research on happiness, well-being and the social justice agenda which Labour ought to occupy. (I was going to write ‘fairness’, but that word seems to have been put through the washer by so many people it looked feeble. Shame.)

Resilience is not simply a defensive, survivalist concept – though it can help with both defence and survival in a crisis. It is a way of thinking about the characteristics and resources that allow people (and organisations and sectors) feel and act more positively, whatever their context, however challenging it may get. This does seem to me to support happiness rather than run counter to it. Just as resilience will go up and down, and won’t protect you from every risk or change, so happiness won’t be constant, and having some of the characteristics, skills and resources of resilience to draw on may help. To suggest that the working class are more concerned with survival than happiness feels to me like a misunderstanding at a cultural level, mistaking the material signs for the deeper ones. Of course, we all need to ‘get by’, but that is very different for each person.

If anything I’d have thought the archetypal ‘middle class’ version of happiness preferred to talk about spiritual or cultural things rather than ‘vulgar’ goods – hence middle class outrage at poorer people ‘frittering’ their money on big tellies and nights out. I very much prefer my Labour politicians to be closer to ‘Nothing’s too good for the working class’, as Nye Bevan (or Wobbly leader Bill Harewood, or various others) said, than ‘Poor but Happy’ or ‘Poor but Resilient’, which Burnham comes perilously close to.

What’s this to do with art? Well, substitute ‘great art’ for ‘happiness’ and see how it fits. But also there is an implication in Burnham’s comments that culture, as a higher good, may not be so relevant. I’m sure that’s not what he meant, of course.

Out of time: a catch up

2012-01-25T17:21:00.001Z

Such a lot happening and so little time to blog about it. Things like...

Taking part in one of the Guardian Cultural Network’s Friday lunchtime webchats, on the subject of future-proofing your organisation. (I’m not sure any of us said it as such, but maybe you can’t, maybe you just get better at forecasting the weather and get a good brolly? Besides, do we really want to be entirely protected from the future, isn’t it unwritten in a good way as well as a scary one?) See the ‘top tips’ synopsis here – which they edit together from the speed typing webchat version. The following week Kate Edwards from Seven Stories took part in one on how to make your venue family friendly – which they know a lot about at Seven Stories. She’s an honest woman and ‘fessed up to having to leave for a meeting (I knew this as I was in it too), instead of doing what I would have and got someone to be my typo-double for the last 15 minutes.

The Arts Index, which I mentioned couple of posts a go as a valuable innovation is now even more so as it is available to all and sundry for free, which is a very good thing. (And saves us all the bother of passing around the pdf...) There is good news – general stability, increased levels of satisfaction from audiences – but also some worrying trends, particularly the decline in private giving. The inevitable ‘lag’ also makes it harder to use – some recent theatre figures suggest a decline may have kicked in, for instance.

I’m not going to mention that the region outside London with the highest ‘index ratings’ is the North East. I’m not. But I will tip my hat to the region’s local authorities and their support of the arts, and note that’s something set in train a long time ago, and still being worked on, as seen by this recent paper of the Association of North East Councils. Cultural development continues - imagine how much more keenly if our local authorities weren't bearing the brunt of the Tory Coalition's cuts.

Re.evolution continues to, well, evolve. More than 40 peers are now signed up, and the next few weeks see the first few gatherings of peers. You can now sign up as a member, if the ‘peer’ offer isn’t right for you right now. This gives access to curated resources on the site, and to on-line and offline – or as i prefer to say, real world – learning events. Membership is open to anyone, and is free. (Though some future events may not be.) Details here. More details about the first learning event soon, but it’ll be at Live Theatre in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on March 27^th.

Something interesting happening over at the DCMS website where academic Dr Claire Donovan is investigating ‘the very idea of measuring cultural value’, and creating some debate. In general I think debates about this can become overstated on all sides – eg, cultural sector as the measure of our society, well, yes and no – I’m also interested in how we treat the sick, vulnerable and dying, and besides, wouldn’t some totalitarian regimes come out well – great orchestras and national companies, and thriving avant gardes/undergrounds? I did like that Donovan reminded us of the end of Wilde dialogue which is often used only to attack those cynics who know ‘the price of everything and the value of nothing’. The rejoinder, however, is that ‘a sentimentalist, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn’t know the market price of a single thing.’ Wilde, being a great writer, he is of course more than capable of arguing with himself.

If you would like brief, generally commentless, links to bits and pieces of cultural interest, may I suggest you follow me on Twitter? That’s generally a quicker way of pointing at things of interest, like a child noticing a plane or a train. Or even like an adult noticing a plane or a train.

Photo by shirokazan under Creative Commons

Movingpictures 19: The Joy of Books

2012-01-11T08:07:00.002Z

I dedicate this lovely little film by (I think) Sean Ohlenkamp to anyone who got a Kindle for Xmas, to remind you what you're missing, and to anyone else who regularly spends a happy couple of hours sorting their bookshelves out on a quiet afternoon, but somehow fails to make a film of it.

12 for 12

2012-01-04T17:03:00.003Z

Clare Cooper from MMM challenged me to write a UK version of this really great post by Createquity’s Ian David Moss summarising 10 arts policy stories of the year in the US. I tried to ignore it, but have been lured in. Rather than go back over the last year with my thumb up or down, I thought I’d try and find some ideas (in the shape of words) that might continue to be relevant. I remembered that my former colleague Sally Luton would say words are best used in knowledge of their often-unused opposite, so I’ve connived it up to 12 by including those too.

1. 1. Agency and its opposite Consortium

Welsh and English Arts Councils both made very clear strategic steers towards the ‘front line’ of organisations that make and show art and away from agencies that develop, help, support or otherwise help those processes but don't make work, such as audience development agencies. (Scotland awaits a review.) In 2012 we’ll see a slew of ‘wrap parties’/closures and the movement of lots of work to consortia of people at the front line. Whether that means they’ll be more effective, energised by the permission of 'agency' in the sense of power, or just busier with lots of meetings remains to be seen.

2. 2 Data and its opposite Intuition

In 2011 data became ever so slightly sexier, through the efforts of things like Culture Hack Day, various attempts at benchmarking and the first Arts Index. (This is a good intervention by the National Campaign for the Arts and partners, although seriously undermined by the full document not being freely available.) Knowing what the hell is going on out there ('situation awareness') should be getting easier, and it should become easier and more commonplace to not just collect appropriate Key Performance Indicators but just them to inform strategic and tactical decisions. On the other hand, I foresee a more sophisticated use of Intuition in 2012, enhanced by data. That means informed risk.

3. 3 Cuts and its opposite Investment

Obviously cuts was a keyword of 2011, but the real cost of them will be felt in 2012 and beyond. This applies not just in the arts right across the UK, but also to the public sector, especially local government, which will have huge knock on effects economically and socially. We will however see local authorities who continue to invest in culture, at the expense of other areas, even if they have to make some reduction in budgets. They may get flack for this, and will need support for investing, but scrutiny of what is being invested, how and where. This applies not just to grants, but also staffing and its structures – in councils of all sorts. The quangic realignment which will continue throughout 2012 – and beyond when ACE make their 50% savings (good luck with that one guys!) – is likely to be more debated now funding near-futures are relatively stable than previously.

4. 4 Advocacy and its opposite Displacement

What is unlikely to help the cause of culture is wholesale carping and cries of doom. We need more effective advocacy in the sense of active support, and less displacement activity. Campaigns which portray ‘the arts’ as threatened to extinction by reductions in public funding hit the wrong chord with too many to work. We need advocates who can, however, show the real benefits of that investment. The Irish National Campaign for the Arts seemed to meet a generally more favourable outcome, based on a more positive campaign. As the cuts bite in the welfare, social care, health and education sectors, I also predict a general loss of patience with the idea the arts are unusually under attack. (At least wherever I am.)

5. 5 Philanthropic and its opposite Earned

Philanthropy was a word of 2011 because it seems to be this government’s only cultural policy idea, and certainly the main one they have foisted upon their national Non-Departmental Bodies. This will lead to a shift in fundraising efforts towards the rich and companies who do not want anything in return (eg profile, hospitality, CPD) because otherwise it turns into Sponsorship which is, whilst good, not really what’s wanted. (And not eligible in schemes like ACE’s Catalyst fund.) This may have positive effects, in that organisations can concentrate on their overall contribution to human welfare and happiness (as perceived by rich donors of course) rather than individual, narrowly instrumental schemes. It may also (or instead) lead to less of an emphasis on the arts earning their revenue like a sustainable business, however it comes – be it from a grant funder or a punter. (I know you have to work bloody hard to get it, but do you earn philanthropy?) Crowdfunding sits, for me, in an odd place. It is often put under philanthropy, which may be helpful tactically, but is also more transactional than that suggests. But it will grow in 2012.

6. 6 Collaboration and its opposite Solitude

It is now a truism that we are stronger together, and like most truisms, it is actually true-ish. Collaboration is one of the ways forward to a more resilient sector, and was one of the defining themes of the year. (Literally, in the case of many conferences.) Peer learning networks such as re.volution will help people collaborate on development as well as projects. On-line collaboration is also obviously going to continue to grow. But we should not forget that most artforms require some form of solitude at some stage, and at least some of those 10,000 hours of practice must be spent on your own, including your organisational own.

6 pairs probably equally important but lacking time to write about:

Resilient/Vulnerable; Risky/Funded; Artist/Creative; Innovative/Proven, Fast/Slow and Diverse/Dull

Occupy Yourselves (at Xmas)

2011-12-22T13:03:00.000Z

The Thinking Practice is now closed until 3 January 2012. Thanks to all the subscribers to this blog, to those who send me emails when they agree or disagree, and those rare few who comment. Visits have gone up by 43% in the last year, page views by 60%. Those are not KPIs by the way, just things I found in the time I just 'lost' in Google Analytics. (If you're the regular reader in Manila - hello!)

Have a good break, if you're getting one. I'll be back in 2012, year of the East London Sports Day and many other wonders that will put that in the shade, if we step up, again. As the year ends, one song has emerged as summing up the year - Helplessness Blues by Fleet Foxes. As the song says 'What good is it to sing helplessness blues, why should I wait for anyone else?'

On that note, it may be time for It's A Wonderful Life...

Artswork Resilience special now available online

2011-12-16T09:15:00.003Z

The special edition of Artswork, the journal of the Community Arts Network, South Australia, which I wrote about in October, is now available on-line. You can see from the contents page (above) why I was both flattered and nervous when I opened it.

I was especially glad to read Nick Hughes's essay on the application of the 8 characteristics I identified to his Restless Dance Company. He talk through each and concludes: 'So the theory of Adaptive Resilience is a very useful tool in analysing the functioning of an organisation like Restless Dance. It provides insights into the dynamics of the company’s operations and it helps to identify where more can be done to improve its health and robustness. One of the best aspects of the theory is that it changes the language and the mindset used to examine a performing arts company. It encourages you to see it as a moving and interacting entity; as an organism rather than a plan or a picture. It stresses the importance of qualities like persistence, flexibility and adaptability.' This is what I've found, and been told, when using it with organisations, or groups of leaders thinking about their area or sector.

One thing which was pointed out to me in response to my original post was that 'community arts' is not a term widely used in the UK at the moment - 'participatory' is probably used more to describe the kinds of work that described itself as 'community arts'. But that the work and movement and many organisations - such as Helix Arts, Community Arts North West or Soft Touch who I looked at when researching Making Adaptive Resilience Real - have proved extremely resilient, stretching back 25, 30 years or more, despite never really being what you would call flavour of the month with funders - or certainly not all at once.

The community arts field has also been a major compenent of the 'adaptive capacity' of what you might call the mainstream to change and integrate more inclusive practices. Both people and practices have found their way into previously resistant areas of the arts, although that's not to say the change has been what it could or should have been. This history is different in Australia, but I suspect many people working in the community/participatory/inclusive/local/callitewhatyouwill arts anywhere will find thoughts and feelings which resonate with them describe in this edition.

If you want to go for the resilience hat-trick, or see how my thinking progressed with time and some more help and ideas, you can also (re)visit the paper on the role of diversity in building resilience which I co-wrote with Tony Nwachukwu.

My 2011 in a picture and 5 lists

2011-12-15T14:58:00.003Z

1. Tweet of the year, pictured above, which appeared whilst I was giving my keynote at the Arts Marketing Association conference in Glasgow in July.

2. Places I've been for work-related reasons: Newcastle, North Shields, London, Edinburgh, Middlesbrough, Stockton-on-Tees, Lincoln, Gateshead, Wallsend, Manchester, Belfast, Ulverston, Plymouth, Sunderland, Cambridge, Sheffield, York, Durham, Darlington, Glasgow, Banff Alberta, Wakefield.

3. Most visited 2011 Thinking Practice blog-postings: Applicant time: what price service from the arts ecosystem?, KPIs: one size may not fit all, Philanthropy in the regions can be done, Not Minding The Gap, Culture Change: first change your mind, Re:arts: thoughts from Sartre

4. TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms): NPO,KPI, PNE, OMG, MMM

5. Nice Work If You Can Get It column in the business plan: well, all my marvellous clients obviously, but a few where I reminded myself this was not what my dad would call work: spending time at the Banff Centre to do a keynote and workshops at Banff Opera Colloqium, thanks to the eagle-eyed Christina Loewen of Opera Canada; evaluation sessions with young people at BALTIC and Mongrel UK for the Juice Festival; making senior management teams or groups of partners draw pictures; every time I enjoyed a play, gig, show or exhibition or museum I wouldn't otherwise have got to, and yes, pretty much everyone who was able to laugh and concentrate and imagine and make some hard choices whilst we worked together during this tricky year.

6. Cultural highlights: Will Eno's Oh, The Humanity and Other Good Intentions at Northern Stage, Wilco live in Manchester and great new album The Whole Love, BALTIC hosting Turner Prize, Gillian Welch new album, Sean O'Brien's November... and lots more.

7. Regrets: there's a few, but then again, too few to mention. (Well, not now anyway.)

Here's to 2012!

Making culture in a landscape of cultural policy

2011-12-12T17:07:00.000Z

I wrote about Robert Palmer's '5 challenges to the landscape of cultural policies in Europe' earlier, over on the re.volution blog. Go see.

You'll also be able to see peers signing up to be part of this experiment in 'non-state actors', to use one of Palmer's phrases, coming together to work together in response to changing landscapes. (I doubt very much he uses phrases like that except when in official mode.)

His five factors are, in very executive summary, nationalism, cuts, new values, mainstreaming and receding state governance. This feels very apposite, especially in a week when the UK has (unbelievably) stepped even further out of arrangements which actually shape the EU and UK. (Don't get me started...)

There are some who feel that cultural policy is a bit of a luxury these days, and we could just have funding criteria and fund the survivors, but I'm not one. I still think we should ask government and all investors - and all recipients of public money to grapple with ideas and facts long enough to be able to state their 'basic principles and associated guidelines, formulated and enforced by the governing body of an organization, to direct and limit its actions in pursuit of long-term goals', as one definition of policy has it.

Out of time: another bit of a round up

2011-12-08T09:09:00.000Z

This post is a quick catch up on a few things which deserve more attention but aren’t likely to get it from me anytime soon unless someone finds some spare time/energy.

The National Plan for Music Education has been published. There’s lots in it that’s sensible, and it’s good it’s there, albeit on seriously diminished resources, and continues the diminishing of local authorities as deliverers of services. People who know more about the subject than me have responded to it: Katherine Zesserson, Marc Jaffrey, Making Music and Incorporated Society of Musicians.

Volcano Theatre have published Emergence, a really interesting report from a conference on the arts and climate change – good format and provoking content.

Marina Abramovic has provoked a revealing little storm about artists payment, conditions and status by asking dancers and performers to be part of a corporate fundraiser for $150 – naked, vulnerable to potential donors. So much to say about this: artist unions, what happens when performance art moves from the artist’s body to others, philanthropic fundraising.

And finally... I saw this sign in a business school:

Draw your own conclusions about our future business leaders...

Turner and Cage

2011-12-06T10:39:00.001Z

Last night I was lucky enough to be at the Turner Prize awards do when Martin Boyce was announced as the winner. Although only yards away, few people in the room seemed to see the pink tutu’d stage invader, and I certainly didn’t. This sterling job by the security men was perhaps just the finishing touch to the grand job that BALTIC has done hosting the Turner Prize show, which has been a bit of a phenomenon, attracting 120,000 visitors so far. (Hope the Arts Council take that into account for BALTIC’s KPIs...)

There’s been so much gloom about the North East’s economy, it’s been great to see the success of this first trip for Turner to a non-TATE venue outside London. Culture still has a role to play in making the North East a great place to live. It may not be able to stop the Monday morning trains from Teesside being full of Monday-Thursday-migrant workers off down to London, but it has a role.

I wasn’t going to write about the Turner Prize, but I made the mistake of reading the comments on the Guardian’s coverage. If that Guardian site is like that I shudder to think what the Mail readers are saying. (Actually I shudder every time I think about the Daily Mail period.) Then I was listening to a radio programme about John Cage which ended with him saying the following, and thought it was worth sharing.

‘If we have the view that we used to have, that there was only one right way of observing the relationships of things then we have a situation that really doesn’t appeal to me. We have, in other words, one thing that’s right and all the rest are wrong. I would like to have a multiplicity of rights.’

Gove solution (well, solution to the soduku)

2011-12-01T00:56:00.003Z

Here's the solution to the Day of Action Word-Soduku. This will not be a regular feature. Please do send in your best lines though! Best response to the post was Annie Rigby joining Equity! (See comments on the original post.)

SUPER FREE THINKING PRACTICE DAY OF ACTION GIVEAWAY: STRIKE SODUKU

2011-11-29T12:29:00.003Z

Yesterday I did one of those tweeting-instead-of-crying tweets after seeing Michael Gove's Head Prefect face on the telly at the gym. (Good news: I couldn't hear him lie. Bad news: I couldn't get away.) Above is a FREE THINKING PRACTICE DAY OF ACTION GIVEAWAY, inspired by a twitter-thought by @cdialliance. It's a Strike Day Soduku for words. (It works too, in case you're wondering. Solution to follow on Thursday.)

If you want to be a belated follower of the French literary movement OULIPO you can then also use to make into short texts by inserting short joining words and cunning extensions - as few as possible. (Eg Howl! Banker Gove's face's wrong. Strike, unite, stop pension cuts.)

Tomorrow is a big day of protest in the UK, to protect public sector pensions. There are lots of myths about these, put about largely by politicians with much better pensions, and family wealth. Here are some facts:

Across the public sector the mean average pension is £7,800 per year. The media is £5,600 per year, but under £4,000 for women. The average pension for a civil servant is £5,023, for a teacher £10,275, for someone reiring from the NHS £4,087 and from Local Government £3,048. The changes to which way of calculating inflation is used means the value of pensions will be reduced by an average of 15%.

Now, pensions and and artists don't go together fantasically, so there may be some feeling that the bureacrats and comfy public-sector types have it coming. (You can see some stats and some sound advice in this a-n article.) I could not disagree more. I did put something into a now frankly ridiculous private pension early in my career, but it was only when I worked in first a university and then an NDPB with its own pension scheme (ie not backed by government) that I was able to put into a realistic, though by no means 'gold-plated', scheme. Those gold-plated myths are so wrong. Although some people do end up with very good pensions, what is often not mentioned is this basic fact: they pay for them, quite large chunks of salary, just as much as I did for the worthless tat that is my 'private pension'. They are not simply given.

One difference is these schemes are also backed by the employers, not out of the kindness of their hearts, but at levels agreed through collective negotiations with trade unions. I'm still a member of Unite, who were very helpful to me in the past. You never know when you'll need the kind of services and conditions a union provides.

In conclusion, before anyone still reading gets onto the soduku:

Any artists inclined to pour scorn on public sector workers should do what they did, many years ago: get organised and join the most appropriate union you can find.
Any venue or organisation managers wailing over the difficulties of union negotiations: get over it, they can be a pain, but they are necessary.

Shelagh take a bow

2011-11-26T16:48:00.000Z

There have been lots of obituaries of Shelagh Delaney this week, quite rightly so. Her career is evidence that one great work at the right time can make you historically significant whatever happens afterwards. One thing which struck me was how all seemed to mention that A Taste of Honey was written in a fit of defiance after seeing a Terence Rattigan play and thinking she could do better. What is the role of scorn in the urge to make art, I wonder?

You only have to watch an episode of Top of the Pops 1976, which BBC are re-running at the moment, to understand why young people in the 70s were ready for punk, and wanted to stick two fingers up to those on stage, or those on the 'rock' stage at the time. I remember starting a poetry magazine very much because the ones I started to get published in were, with some notable exceptions, pretty rubbish to my mind. (Looking back, that's probably why I was able to get in them....) There are numerous other examples.

I don't mean the relatively simple generational renewal issue, but one of difference of substance, motivation and values. Sometimes our rhetoric of 'support the arts' can gloss over this. To be honest there is some art I simply don't want saved, I want it to go away except as a spur to creating something I think does work. (If it's a poem, anyway. In other artforms I just want changes to the power structures so I don't have to see another Hockney or hear another Motion.) The voice on my other shoulder does of course remind me it doesn't do for us all to be the same...

How much of our current product is building up some creative resentment in a 21st Shelagh Delaney, I wonder?

(If you're quick you can hear a good radio obit about Shelagh Delaney as part of a very special Last Word which also includes the great poet Peter Reading and part of apartheid's downfall Basil D'Oliveira. This is the kind of thing that makes me stick with Radio 4 despite the ever-growing amount of their output which makes me want to set up a radio station from my spare room...)

Movingpictures 18: Tiny Desks in The Space?

2011-11-23T11:58:00.001Z

I doubt the idea of people playing music around a desk in an office is really what the BBC and Arts Council England are looking for to put in The Space. But npr's Tiny Desk Concerts are amongst my favourite things in the world right now - and have introduced me to some great new music. (I also recommend their All Songs Considered podcasts.) The simplicity and direct connection is absolutely digital - unfortunately we don't work at npr in Washington so would otherwise miss this - but it's also absolutely human. I hope The Space is filled with such joyous art, and also some things that make you go hmmm and press close, as these do occasionally.

(Please can we have as little 'celebrity curation and critique' as as possible though, that sounds horrible, especially if the list is as narrow as the BBC's lists usually are? Ian Hislop, Stephen Fry, Lenny Henry et al are all fine in their way, I suppose, but I'd like to hear some new voices please.)

The video above is a sampler of a fantastic collaboration, including Yo Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Chris Duncan and the superb mandolin player Chris Thile. For me, it deserves that underused, and sometimes scorned adjective, lovely. I imagine some might find it a bit folk-fusion but it seems a genuine coming together to me.

I can't mention the Tiny Desk Concerts without also sharing my favourite one below - Chris Thile again with Michael Davies playing the absolute hell out of some classic bluegrass tunes. If this doesn't make you smile, even if you think bluegrass is cheesy, which it isn't, check your pulse as you may be dead...

Young Million update: bad news, good news, questions

2011-11-16T11:37:00.001Z

The bad news: today's generally grim unemployment figures show the number of unemployed or under-employed young people breaking through the 1 million mark.

The good news: I wrote in April about Common Purpose's Young Million programme. This has now run several programmes across the country including some in the North East, and is having a positive effect. These got quite a lot of media coverage last month, including this article by Hugh Pym, the BBC's Chief Economics Correspondent. (His brother William used to be on Arts Council England's NE Regional Council, trivia fans.) You can see a short video which focuses on one of the young people here, and more on the Young Million website. It's good to see, even if it does, today, feel slightly like scratching at the surface. In Hartlepool, just up the road from here, 1 in 5 young people is unemployed. I'll say that out loud: 1 in 5.

The questions: What has this got to do with the arts? Well, if the central thing about the arts is we are a values-based sector, as John Tusa argues on the Guardian Culture Professionals site today (what a good innovation that site is, by the way) what is our response to this growing crisis? How do our values suggest we respond?

It may be two things. Firstly, my gut is feeling a need for a creative and cultural response, with artists finding fresh ways to explore the subject. Let us not ignore it, or put responses into the cliche box automatically. But also a sectoral one with imaginative ways of turning the crisis into an opportunity. Are there 21st century ways to reinvent the placements in which many people began their working careers in the arts in the 80s and 90s, perhaps thereby also undercutting the damaging culture of internships? And also create other jobs in our arts businesses too?Could investment into 'participation' help?

Answers on a postcard, please.

Movingpictures17: Just wind in sails

2011-11-16T09:11:00.000Z

It's been a while since I just shared a music video. Here's one which goes some way to explaining the title of the previous post, for anyone who didn't get it. It comes from the great lost days of art pop. If this was made now it'd be more likely to be shown in a gallery than on tv. Still find it unaccountably exciting somehow, though hadn't listened to it for years till just now.

We Are re.vo: ok, let's go.

2011-11-15T15:51:00.000Z

I’ve been lucky enough to work with Mission Models Money for some years now, in a number of ways –most recently as an associate. Their thinking has been instrumental in leading me to the considerations of cultural and broader ecologies that are reflected in my writing about adaptive resilience. Founder Clare Cooper is one of the most optimistic collapsitarians you are ever likely to meet, with energy to match her urgency.

So when I was asked to draw out the learning from the MMM pilot programme ‘re-evolver’, and then to work on designing a peer learning network which could, ultimately, reconfigure the ways the sector meets its organisation development needs, I was pleased to get involved. It was absolutely what I’m up for: intellectually and politically challenging, as well as a stretching and stimulating creative task working with a great team of people, - and with the potential for large-scale impact on the long-standing issues I felt I was grappling with as a funder. How best to support people to be sustainable and culturally thrilling? How best to intervene? What’s best left to the sector itself?

The pilot programme brought 8 leaders together and worked through many creases in the idea of a network of leaders which would work on individual, organisational and sectoral issues through a spirit of mutuality – peers giving and getting. On one hand, it’s very simple, on the other, complex and rich but also deceptively hard to deliver.

The more we worked on it, the more I became convinced that re.volution, as it became known, has the power of a simple idea to tie together a number of MMM’s previous strands, including The People Theme and Capital Matters. The network has been designed to help people solve the problems of trying to do too much, with too little, too often on their own. It might, by doing that, just have the system wide effect we need.

Here’s our ‘theory of change’ in summary:

‘A peer learning network of leaders in the arts and cultural sector can develop the confidence, competencies, qualities and attributes needed to renew mission, reconfigure business model and revise approaches to money. They can provide, with appropriate experts from beyond the network, the insight to tackle urgent and long-term challenges, through learning opportunities including mentoring, peer support, on-line learning and face to face events. This will gradually build into a critical mass of leaders who will affect their own and other organisations and the sector as a whole, leading to measurable impact on reducing overextension and undercapitalisation across the sector and a radical, sustainable, reconfiguration of how business support and organisational development can be offered.’

Like all theories of change, it’s debatable and time (a long time for many aspects!) will tell how close reality sticks to it. Two bold funders have backed this vision so far, in the shape of Creative Scotland and Arts Council England. Not only have they invested in re.volution, they have been involved along the way in its co-design, given the importance of funder-behaviour to many of the aspects of the current and future ecology, so many thanks to them.

Each Peer will commit to offering up to three days of their time in any twelve month period to help fellow Peers renew mission, reconfigure business model and revise approach to money. The idea is each effort is a mutual learning experience, but also that other peers will do the same for you. (Yes, this happens now, of course – but in a way which is often down to luck or pre-existing connections. Re.volution should make it easier to find and give the help you need, and then to learn from the process.)

There is also a new and extensive re.source library offering a range of tools and approaches relevant to the three M's. This is in the spirit of making widely available what is ‘out there’, and also what is ‘in here’, in terms of expertise and people. It builds on an ethos of open sourcing know-how in the sector, whilst also protecting the need to create income.

This is an experiment – as I say, time will tell to what extent it works, and we will of course adapt as we learn along the way. But we do need new ways of going at the wicked problems of over-extension and under-capitalisation in the cultural sector, so why not start with the people? It will be exciting finding out: as one peer in the pilot said ‘It’s quite refreshing to do something that’s quite hard.’

If you think you could get involved look at the site and give joining the re.volution some thought.

What segment are you?

2011-11-09T09:33:00.001Z

If you have a few minutes to spare and want to amuse yourself by finding what segment of Arts Council England's arts audiences segments you might fit into, have a look at 'What Segment Am I?', an on-line quiz. It feels like a rather unscientific way in to some good research - why does the participation question not ask about making music or writing, for instance, given how common both are? - but so long as you don't take it too seriously, you might find it fun.

Segments are always tricky, of course, especially when you read that people with your profile typically enjoy Come Dine With Me. But there's enough accuracy there to give most people something to think about. I come out as an Urban Arts Eclectic. These people are typically

'Highly qualified, affluent, and in the early stages of their career, Urban arts eclectic are dynamic, and believe in seizing life’s opportunities. You seek new experiences through travel and food, and have an interest in other cultures. You describe yourself as optimistic, creative and open-minded.'

Whilst not all those adjectives apply, it does fit, and it's reassuring to remember I am in the early stages of my career. (My twitter stream seemed to reveal quite a lot of highly engaged Traditional Culture Vultures who hadn't realized they were quite so old...) If nothing else I was reminded that my own arts habits are unusual - only 3% of the population engage in this way. I suspect many people who work in the arts are similar - if anything I am always thinking of the things I miss.This perhaps makes it harder for us to understand the majority who aren't so bothered, and can lead to a kind of blindness to other views. Maybe we need to find the Quiet Pint with the Match people within us, or within our staff? (Mine's not too far below the surface.)

You can see the full report here.

Movingpictures 16: Strong Trustees Week?

2011-11-03T15:58:00.001Z

The video above is part of the promotional activities of Trustees Week - a week promoting the idea of being a trustee of a charity. Now, just because Cameron and his cronies are intent on replacing many of our cherished public services with Big Society conscripts of one sort or another, doesn't mean that getting involved in charities isn't a great idea. You are not subconsciously helping the Tories. You can see lots of the reasons why set out on the Trustees Week site. (This video is particularly promoting the value of/to young trustees.)

Funnily enough, I spent a large part of yesterday doing some of my own trustee work, interviewing some potential new board members for AudioVisual Arts North East, the organisation behind the AV Festival, and talking to someone else about potential board members for their organisation. I am involved with a number of arts organisations - AV, Seven Stories and Swallows Foundation UK. That's one more than ideal, perhaps, but they are all great causes, and very different, and I get something different from them all, so am happy to do it. (Don't think I'm just a boy who cain't say no, by the way. I can and have done, and am definitely not taking on any more.)

What do I get, you ask? All my trusteeships give me as much as I give them. I am exposed to different types of challenges, debates and ways of thinking than my work. I am kept in touch with different sorts of art and cultural practice. Exercising leadership within a very diverse group of people at a non-executive level is a fascinating and stimulating process. My fellow trustees become part of my networks, but also teach by their example. I can see how some people I might never otherwise have met think and work through strategic issues. I am also kept in touch with the detailed issues of running complex organisations, from an oversight position rather than hands-on. In short, it's a form of 'continuous professional development' that's well worth the time I put in.

Without wanting to sound pious it's also a way of 'putting something back'. I was very aware when I worked for Arts Council how reliant we were on the unpaid volunteers who formed the boards of RFOs. I'm not sure we were always able to properly reflect this, or that we paid them sufficient due, and when I became 'free' to do it again, I was keen to do so. I'd urge anyone to give it some thought, and advise any business that they're likely to see a good return on time flexibly 'allowed' to staff to be on boards. If next year's training budget has been, ahem, 'trimmed', a few hours a month to allow someone to be a trustee could be good way of continuing to invest in developing staff.

I also think that good governance - at individual and sectoral level - is partly the responsibility of those of us whose lives are in culture, as well as those who want to support arts organisations. (I don't think we should let 'other people' take all the responsibility for that, anyway, let's put it like that.) The direction and purpose of our culture is, after all, far too precious to be be left to 'the great and the good' and the retired. I would also say that standards of governance need to be as constantly improving as any other area of the arts and culture.

I'll conclude, therefore, with two 'classic questions'. If not you, who? If not now, when?

KPI ACE response

2011-10-28T16:31:00.001+01:00

I imagine many readers will have already seen it, but there is an interesting and to some extent reassuring response from Roddy Gault of Arts Council England to the KPI debate over on Bad Culture. Amongst other things it makes it pretty clear these are as much reporting measures as performance measures, and not pass/fail measures. It's also good to see this kind of response.

Artswork in Australia reflects on adaptive resilience

2011-10-24T17:17:00.001+01:00

I recently agreed that Community Arts Network South Australia could use an extract from Making Adaptive Resilience Real in their journal artwork. Nice to be published in Adelaide I thought, and then thought little more. Imagine my surprise and nervousness, then, when they kindly sent me some hard copies and I found the whole edition was not just themed around resilience, but was mainly made up of responses to my paper. My reaction was fairly typical: part of me was flattered and grateful for the attention, part of me was fearful I’d get taken to pieces and have my inadequacies mocked. (What’s that, dear reader? Not typical? Just me? Oh.)

This edition of artwork is partly to mark the 30th birthday of CAN SA, because as editor Lisa Philip-Harbutt says 'to make it to 30 you have to be adaptive and resilient.' It includes essays which respond directly to Making Adaptive Resilience Real, others which take a storytelling approach to the idea of resilience, listening to community arts practitioners.

The most thought-provoking – for me anyway - challenges to my paper came in the papers by Jo Caust and Ianto Ware, relate to issues of values and power, and whether resilience is essentially a conservative or passive notion. Jo Caust suggests a greater emphasis than I intended on cutting 'dross' (not my word) and rightly points out a lack of reference to the power dynamics within choices, and the role of education and class in that. To a degree, that's fair comment. It would have taken a different paper to also investigate the power dynamics within choices. I don't accept that individual decisions are made by government appointees, in the interests of government - at least that’s not been my experience in this country. That the issue of values and power dynamics within ecological resilience bears more investigation and greater emphasis I do accept.

Bourdieu and Raymond Williams are cited as missing from my analysis. Reflecting on this, I feel I understand Williams from the inside out, as it were, with all the contradictions that come from ‘acquiring Culture’ as an almost stereotypical grammar school boy in a cheap blazer and living in one of the untutored provinces. I have been patronized and not taken as seriously as I thought was deserved, at times, and I’ve done the same to myself. I’ve felt out of place. I’ve also felt distanced from parts of my roots, comfortable as I am with them so much of the time. I’ve also felt ever so slightly exotic and special at times, as well as – most often, I should say - valued approximately correctly for what I am or was doing and well-supported. I’ve seen this happen to others as well, individuals and organisations and ideas. However, unlike, say Tony Harrison in his classic School of Eloquence, I’ve decided not to feel either guilty about it or burdened by it. I take responsibility for my own contradictions. (I wrote that down almost exactly as I realized I thought it. It sounds a bit grand now it’s in black and white, but it is also feels true, so it can stay. So it goes.)

I was certainly more interested in Making Adaptive Resilience Real to set out the adaptive cycle and characteristics organisations could build upon than exploring these issues of value and class, important as they are. I am pleased to see from the other essays that it has been useful. Nick Hughes from Restless dance describes using the 8 characteristics to look at his company, and ends by saying it’s a ‘valuable resource’. I was pleased at that, of course, but more so at why: ‘one of the best aspects of the theory is that it changes the language and the mindset used to examine a performing arts company. It encourages you to see it as a moving and interacting entity; as an organism rather than a plan or a picture.’

Taking responsibility for one's own resilience does not mean simply accepting either status quo or whatever change is thrown at you, or not protesting at, say, cuts or damaging shifts of direction. In general I take many of those problematics as read, I guess, perhaps too much so. There may be a trace of North England Stoicism in my resilience thinking, though I’d deny I have a Stiff Upper Lip. (That’s for posher people, I’m more the Bitten Bottom Lip classes.) The emphasis on maintaining core purpose and identity is the heart of my take on adaptive resilience, and allows for not ‘simply accepting change’. It is, if anything, about gathering together the power that you do have, and using it for your own purposes – as unions, protest movements and communities under fire have traditionally done, and this is very much about values and power dynamics. I have said before here that I think one aspect I underplayed in the paper was the impact organisations can have on their environment, the creative change they can bring, and I think this links to that.

The intention is for the issue to be made available on-line in due course, and I’ll share the link when available.

Movingpictures 15: poetry reading faces

2011-10-20T22:53:00.000+01:00

Some years ago I edited a book of essays about poetry readings - or the social and cultural practice thereof if there are any academics reading. In it the late, and in many ways great Ric Caddel wrote about the poses and expressions people make at poetry readings - what he sums up as 'those chilling I'm-listening-to-a-poetry-reading rictuses'. Ric used to organise readings at Newcastle's legendary Morden tower and Durham's Colpitts, so he knew what he was talking about. (He was also a very fine poet and editor, running Pig Press for many years. His day job included setting up the Basil Bunting Centre at Durham University.)

I was reminded of this when watching Howl, a film directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman about Allen Ginsberg and the obscenity trial of his publisher. It includes a performance of the poem which actually made me think I'd never seen a poetry reading in a film before. (I don't count Robin Williams.) It resists a temptation to make the reading seem bigger - it's the typical 20-30 people, in a room where 12 would seem ok. Some of them do have that face on, despite being crazy beatnik types. But the poet is in his own head as well as the room, which is actually part of the power. More depictions of poetry readings in films, please.(The film itself is only partially successful, but if you're interested in Ginsberg and the Beats thoroughly enjoyable.)

I saw Ginsberg read in Liverpool in 83 or 84. He played the harmonium and sang Blake songs, didn't do Howl, and was over-excited (to my mind at the time, and still) to be in the home of the Beatles.(He prophesied they'd be the most over-rated band in England until the Stone Roses came along, or at least I think he did.) But still - he was Allen Ginsberg, and a great performer, you can get a taste from James Franco above, or him the man himself here.

KPIs: one size may not fit all

2011-10-13T14:46:00.000+01:00

Photo by Ralph Aichinger used under creative commons

It has become clear that there is one thing which all 696 of Arts Council England's National Portfolio Organisations have in common. (Apart from their excellence and their funding.) Whether ACE is a major or a minority funder, and regardless of what organisations posited in their applications (unless by some miraculous coincidence they all predicted this anyway) the proportion of income they derive from non-ACE sources is going to increase over the next three years, perhaps in each and every year.

At least that's what their only 'Standard Mandatory' Key Performance Indicator (KPI) will say. This has been the subject of much off-mic muttering and increasing discussion - see, for instance, the contributions by Dawn Langley and Jon Treadway on Bad Culture, which raise most of the key questions about clarity and realism.

Having written about the importance of well-designed and appropriate metrics fro performance as part of 'situation awareness', and the need for close monitoring so you can 'manage vulnerabilities', I think all organisations should have a set of KPIs, and investors should help develop them - but only 'well-designed and appropriate' ones that fit them.

Leaving aside the design issue - Jon Treadway illustrates the ambiguities well - there are two aspects to this appropriateness. Firstly is the KPI appropriate to the organisation, its work, its environment, its strategy and its business plan? Put bluntly, the chances of any single KPI making strategic sense for 696 individual organisations of all sizes, shapes and histories are low. (I appreciate the scale of increase is individualized.) Adopting this one freely would suggest we accept that a) ACE funding will be less overall in 3 years b) cuts universal c) there's other funding available to support growth. This may well be the case, but if so, we may need a wider debate about the implications.

In general, I would agree that decreasing the proportion of ACE funding is a desirable goal for many but not all organisations in the next 3 years, but not necessarily achievable in that timeframe given the defiantly non-growth environment we find ourselves in. For some, an increased proportion of ACE investment in the next three years may be key to long-term resilience and success, and possibly even reduced reliance on ACE funds in the future. The 'Standard Mandatory' nature of this KPI suggests that strategy is out of bounds. One size cannot fit all, surely? Doesn't that cut across the kind of creative flexibility and individual approach which was widely welcomed in the NPO application process? (That many people - not necessarily all ACE people - can inappropriately attempt to put creative organisations into un-diverse boxes can be seen and felt strongly in Alan Lane's recent blog about preparing Slung Low to join the National Portfolio.)

This KPI goes far beyond what is said about diversifying income streams and organisational sustainability in Achieving great art for everyone. It creates very significant policy through adminstrative practice. To put it another way: ACE policy is effectively that NPOs must now monitor and shape performance so that the proportion of funding from ACE will go down, year on year. (Forever?) Boards must take note when agreeing budgets. NPOs must bring in other income or, presumably, bear some consequences in the future. If this is the case, let's say it clearly and explicitly and know it and allow people to plan long-term now. (As Jon Treadway points out this KPI doesn't tally exactly with DCMS's own KPI about sponsorship and donations - although it started out being about that earlier in the summer, it is now much broader.)

But to achieve this sector-wide KPI (presumably someone can work out the collective increase when all KPIs are agreed and let us know the target?) ACE are likely to also need to adopt a genuinely flexible approach with its NPOs to enable them to be more entrepreneurial and opportunity-seizing when funding or investment opportunity comes along, and not allow permission processes (to make changes to programme and funding agreements) to act as a drag on the kind of 'catch as catch can' spirit organisations will undoubtedly need to have any chance of growing in the next few years. ACE has a strong opportunity here to build on the openness of the NPO process, which even the strongest KPI-cursers praise, and apply it to the rest of the investment relationship.

Given all the economic indicators, and the devastation now being wrought in many local authorities (see the struggles in Derby here), it is hard to avoid the conclusion that ACE, like the government, is expecting an awful lot from private sector funders and philanthropists if 696 organisations are to all, without exception, increase the proportion of funds from non-ACE sources.

Movingpictures 14: Transtromer and the power of art

2011-10-13T12:12:00.000+01:00

Another audio moving picture. Can you spare 9.06 minutes to listen to Tomas Transtromer, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature recently? Of course you can.

It's bitter-sweet to hear this recording, as Tramstromer has been barely able to speak since a stroke more than 20 years ago. On the page this 'buzzard poet' can seem solemn, but the flashes of humour are clearer in his introduction, complimenting Schubert on his post-death career, the success of which was such he became a threat to Communist China.

Bloodaxe's edition of Transtromer's Selected Poems, translated by Robin Fulton, was one of the first of their books I bought, probably around 1988. A smaller selection had been published in the Penguin Modern Poets series, shared with Paavo Havikko. Bloodaxe have now a couple more 'New selected', and he's one of the rare poets where I keep buying them, and keep the old ones. His work has a mixture of stillness and vigour that I love, and he writes about music especially well, as in the poem you can hear above.

Hopefully the Prize is good news for Bloodaxe as well as Transtromer, reward for keeping him in print in English for many years.

Bottles to the party?

2011-10-11T18:32:00.001+01:00

Photo from Flickr under Creative Commons, by ilovebutter

a-n have just published a very interesting report by Dany Louise called ‘A fair share’ which looks at the funding going direct to individual (visual) artists. It’s a thorough and interesting piece of work which compares the situation in the various parts of the UK, application and success rates and other factors. I don’t really have time to do it justice, but wanted to bring it to your attention if you’ve not seen it yet. Dany’s Louise’s conclusion is that ‘shockingly few individual artists apply for funding in their own right, and even fewer are successful. What this means is that there is little direct funding being given to artists to pursue and develop their own projects, under their own control - under 20% of available funding for the visual arts in England, 14% for Northern Ireland and around 18% for Scotland and Wales in 2009-2010.’

One thing I do find problematic is the notion of ‘fair shares’ for different art forms or artists working in different artforms. Is there a ‘natural’ proportion we should refer to, and if so based on what? Size of audiences - and do you get more or less if your potential audience is bigger? Numbers of ‘professional’ artists? Cost of production in your artform? How big the market failure is in your artform? All might produce different results for any single artform.

The key point though, which I agree with strongly, is that applying for and controlling your own funds can be hugely empowering for individual artists. In ‘adaptive resilience’ terms, it gives and artists ‘assets’ to use. My sense is that in England the application process as a whole has become less supportive of individual artists over the years since Grants for the arts was first introduced nearly a decade ago, when it was a fairly seismic shift in some regions where individual artists had had less support. When it began significant emphasis was placed on supporting artists to have their own big ideas – or to ‘bring their own bottles to the party’ as one of the main architects of Grants for the arts Andrew Dixon used to say. (And indeed still says in this very interesting Variant interview.) Certainly in the North East we funded some brave and bold individual applications, in all artforms.

This did, however, become increasingly difficult as each revision of the scheme introduced new layers of absolute consistency and greater need to create what you might call 'project-shaped projects' rather than, say, artistic investigations. One which sometimes made me scratch my head – from my seat around decision-making tables but not having to assess applications – was the increased requirement to ‘evidence demand’. Whilst not unreasonable in some circumstances, this is harder for individual artists to do – and less appropriate to many, especially when applying to support new work. It makes it harder to back the talent. Hopefully the new focus on talent development will provide some corrective to this tendency.

Can structure in poetry give us any clues for organisations?

2011-09-19T09:24:00.000+01:00

Here's a poet writing about structure:

'Purpose is predominantly communicated through structure. It is through structure that a piece of writing releases its information to the reader. Most simply, structure is strategy imposed upon time.'

That comes from an essay called 'Writing the Reader's Life' in Stephen Dobyns' fine book of essays on poetry, Best Words, Best Order, but it struck me when I read it the other day that it could also be said of an organisation or a business.

Any organisation structure says something about the organisation, and about how it thinks the world works, as does how we structure the audience or participant experience. (You might, in this context, describe 'strategy' or as being 'how we think our world will/should work' or 'how we intend to work in this world to achieve our goals'.) One of the noticeable things in a number of the case studies Tony Nwachuwku and I researched for our recent paper was the deliberate openness and flatness of many of the structures. This helped avoid silos building up and encouraged networks, communication and customer-focus. This becomes harder to maintain as organisations become bigger, but definitely seems to have benefits for small to medium-sized organisation. The nature of the offer to the audience or partners is often also visible through structure - is it clear, is it easy or user-friendly, for instance - or is it clunky and layered, with frustrated or confused decision-making - the 'I'll have to talk to my manager/take it to Senior Management' syndromes?

Finally, I really like Dobyn's description of structure as strategy imposed upon time. In his essay this is mainly the time it takes to read a poem - reading as time-based experience, with structure playing with expectation and surprise. But it also makes me think of the way structures are best seen as temporal, maybe even temporary, rather than fixed. Among other things this reminds us that structure is there to serve the purpose and the work, not the other way round, as true in business as it is in poetry.

(Picture above from a fascinating article by Bill Benzon at http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2011/08/pursuing-lust-in-web-of-language.html, used under Creative Commons.)

Diversity and adaptive resilience

2011-09-18T11:47:00.001+01:00

By way of introduction and summary, here's the discussion part of the paper The Role of Diversity in Building Adaptive Resilience by myself and Tony Nwachukwu, recently published by Arts Council England. It's a little long for a blog perhaps, but so it goes.

The more diverse a network, the greater its ability to respond to change,’ says the Law of Requisite Variety.[1]

This work arose from a ‘hunch’ that there was some connection between the characteristics of resilient organisations and the embracing of creative diversity. The research suggests that hunch was right, although this is far from an exhaustive study.

We found the creative case to be very similar to the business case for diversity in the private sector. A range of talent provides multiple perspectives, which are ever more important as the world and our culture changes. Nurturing diverse perspectives means nurturing talent from many different sources and backgrounds – so audiences can benefit from the best talent available, rather than that from ‘the same old’ sources, creating a kind of monoculture.

The Arts Council has supported the sector in many different ways to respond to the need and responsibility to diversify. This has been done through leadership and positive action schemes, through policy initiatives, through the introduction of race and other equality schemes and through creative projects. What is striking about the people we spoke to in researching this paper is the importance of mindset. This is more important than policies and procedures – although this is not to say those are not necessary also.

We would suggest that there are a number of aspects to a mindset which positively embraces and can manage diversity to increase the willingness, skills and resources to adapt while staying true to purpose. The mindset needs to be:

· Reflective: Organisations that do not reflect upon themselves and their activity become more vulnerable to change over time. Leaders can encourage a reflective mindset in their teams, taking on board – and sharing – data and views from diverse perspectives. (Reflection within a monoculture can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.) Reflection alone is not enough: people must take necessary actions.

· Open: In order to encourage genuine diversity, organisations need to become more open in their approaches, dialogues and thinking. They need to avoid becoming fixed structurally or in their offer, and invite in other views and voices. A non-hierarchical mindset enhances the creative use of diversity. Open, honest dialogue characterises exemplar organisations.

· Adaptive: Embracing diversity can lead to change in cultures and an adaptive mindset can encourage and manage this. Such a mindset typically makes many small changes in response to ideas and context, rather than, say, big changes every few years. It adapts itself around clear core values and a shared purpose, but stays true to its core purpose and identity. Sometimes, however, organisational transformation may be what is needed to do that.

· Responsible: Adaptive resilience is not simply about individual organisations but the whole cultural ecology. A mindset that actively embraces a responsibility to this ecology and a responsibility to use public investment for broad public good as well as organisational benefit can use its capacity to nurture new and diverse groups, and serve diverse artists and audiences.

Clear leadership rooted in authenticity, identity and values is key to bringing these traits together. Diversity is nurtured by a flexible, open and transparent culture, encouraging discussion and debate. Where this is not in place, an apparently diverse workforce, or those elements of difference within a workforce, can become homogenous, and simply succumb to a dominant culture. (A pattern observed by some members of under-represented groups when stepping into organisations.)

The way diversity is lead within an organisation can move from being ‘simply’ natural and ‘just there’ within that organisation’s identity to being highly focused, intentional and strategic, and vice versa. Deeply embedded values and identity can be used to reinforce strategic intent, which seeks to make change, either within the organisation, in the sector or in the local community. Programming choices may target certain audiences but only in so far as they serve the core mission and identity. Resilient organisations have a strong culture of shared purpose and values, and the creation of that culture is arguably the key leadership task.

Diversity has the greatest impact when it is actively structured into the culture at all levels. This might mean reserving places on the board for young people (as Contact does) or considering audiences very carefully (as Theatre Royal Stratford East does), engaging deeply with new communities (as seen in Craftspace’s work) or rooting induction processes in local neighbourhoods (as Punch does). It needs also to recognise and manage the challenges a diverse approach can bring.

It is important to note that a creative approach to diversity is by no means a panacea or easy route to a more resilient future. If diversity is so helpful in building resilience, one might ask, why were such a high proportion of the Black and minority ethnic and disability-focused organisations that applied to become part of the National Portfolio rated as weak on finance and on management? Some organisations that focus on serving particular audiences, such as Black and minority ethnic, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender or disability communities, can find it difficult to build the broad audience base and organisational assets that help create a diversity of reliable income streams. Their contribution to the wider diversity of the sector can, ironically, make it harder for them to build their own resilience – by serving ‘the margins’ and representing the un(der)represented, they invigorate the mainstream but run the risk of remaining marginal themselves. Programme diversification remains a challenge.

Many Black and minority ethnic and disability-focused organisations face difficulties because of their small scale making it harder to build capacity and assets. Collaboration with other people can help address this, but should be rooted in first looking deeply at themselves and what they can do, making a positive asset of their different skills and knowledge.

Elements of the case studies suggest ways forward from the dilemma of small scale. Firstly, focusing on developing ownership of physical and intellectual assets, and then partnering with others that have access to other audiences, as say Theatre Royal Stratford East has done with its musical transferring to the West End, can be beneficial. Secondly, taking a flexible approach to project and company structures, as Watershed has done, can maximise financial, cultural and what might be called resilience returns. Thirdly, identifying and strategically building unique skills and networks, as Punch and Craftspace have done, can have multiple benefits: new income streams, greater profile, staff development, and, perhaps most importantly, breaking out of the ‘diversity’ pigeonhole while holding on to what makes the organisation valuable. Heart and Soul and DaDa demonstrate the benefits of focusing on production and promotion of the artistic aspirations of diverse communities.

As with all businesses, diversity-focused organisations may have a natural psychological tendency to revert to type under the pressures of the current economic and funding environment, or to make safety-first choices. Our analysis of how embracing diversity can help build adaptive resilience suggests that continued risk-taking and innovation is key to future viability.

[1] Patti Anklam Net Work: a practical guide to creating and sustaining networks at work and in the world

The Creative Case for Diversity

2011-09-15T11:42:00.000+01:00

It's been Decibel week in Manchester this week, Arts Council England's performing arts showcase for diverse work. At a symposium on the Creative Case, ACE's new approach to diversity and the arts, I presented with Tony Nwachukwu to introduce a paper called the Role of Diversity in Building Adaptive Resilience, which is now available on the ACE website. (You can see Tony using his years of experience as a bass player to not pull faces whilst I talk on the Creative Case site here.)

The symposium was a really interesting day, with a lot of enthusiasm and a sensible amount of skepticism about ACE's new agenda for diversity - summed up best as 'let's talk about art and diversity within it, not labels first and arts second'. That this is not so simple was apparent from some of the debates though, such as the tension apparent between proper acknowledgement of identity (or multiple identities) and desire to have your art considered simply as art and differences of opinions as to whether margins/mainstream are useful terms. (Margins no, mainstream probably.)

I welcome the Creative Case, and feel the biggest challenge remains not the consideration of artists from particular backgrounds but the introduction of far greater degrees of diversity and difference to what we currently call mainstream organisations and their staff and programmes. We need the kind of emphasis on diversifying the workforce and in particular the leadership that can be found in some other sectors - one of the case studies describes how this is happening in a major law firm. This is particular responsibility for board members when recruiting. Despite our sector's rhetoric about risk, many currently look for someone like the last person, with a safe set of skills.

As someone pointed out, class and education are arguably at the root of this. Do you really have to be a graduate to work in the arts, for instance? You'd think so, looking at job descriptions. In fact, you might suspect you need an MA these days. As someone said on Twitter, if we're worried about tuition fees making the arts a middle class ghetto, we could always change our recruitment patterns and stop making a degree obligatory. What are the benefits of diversifying and multiplying the perspectives we bring to our work - that is at the root of our paper, and for me the heart of the creative case.

Movingpictures 13: Brian Turner

2011-09-14T09:01:00.003+01:00

Brian Turner is an American poet who served in the US army for seven years, including a year in Iraq. His book, Here, Bullet was published in the UK by Bloodaxe Books. It is a rarity in being a book about war, written from first-hand experience, although his cv is not its main virtue: that comes from the writing. I've been back to it this week for no doubt obvious reasons.

Some thoughts from the Banff Opera Colloquium

2011-09-13T11:37:00.002+01:00

As I mentioned last week I spent some time last month in Bannf, in Canada, at the Bannf Opera Colloquium, co-presented by Opera.ca and the Banff Centre, and pulled together in great style by Christina Loewen of Opera.ca. The theme of the colloquium was 'leadership in a changed world' and the programme was in part built around ideas in my paper Making Adaptive Resilience Real. I did a keynote on adaptive resilience and then led a workshop, but was active throughout the colloquium and closed with a bit of rapportage. (Isn't colloquium a good word, by the way, to describe people getting together to talk about their situation and possible solutions - better than symposium or seminar or even conference, despite, or is it because of, its plummy Latinate quality.) As those who've met me in the last couple of weeks and been foolish enough to ask 'How was Canada?' I could blether on about this for a while, but there's are a few things I took away it may be worth sharing. (Leaving out the mountains, obviously.)

Firstly, and happily, the frameworks of the adaptive cycle and the 8 characteristics I set out, were useful tools for the 40 people attending to use to grapple with what's facing the opera sector in Canada, giving context but also allowing focus on key areas. Rereading the paper I realised how rooted in the English context it is, for all it was informed by thinking elsewhere, but the framework did seem to travel well. (Maybe, as Patrick Kavanagh wrote, 'parochialism is universal'.)

The participants were a mix of senior executives - mainly CEOs and artistic directors as you might expect - but also board members and chairs. This gave a richness to the conversation, with different perspectives, and is not something I've seen too often in the UK. A number of opera companies had also brought more people from their management teams, allowing them to work on the issues together, rather than 'hold' the challenge at the top. This openness increasingly feels like a positive way forward - both for organisations and for the titular leaders who can share the burdens of change.

As I expected, the role of board members and executives in raising funds was both taken as read and informed much of the discussion, in a way it rarely is in the UK. It may just have been my 'tourist' perception, but the conversations between execs and board members seemed closer and more comfortable than I have often observed at home, perhaps because created by that ongoing, joint-project of cultivating donors. (I have seen it between CEO and chair, but most often in the context (or wake) of a capital project, or when fundraising.)

Three themes related to the characteristics of adaptive resilience which emerged from the colloquium were the importance of developing a shared narrative based on core purpose for Canadian opera - to influence government, funders and the public alike, strengthening networks and collaborations and leadership. Marc Scorca of Opera America gave a great keynote about leadership which I'll return to (i.e when I find my notes...) Leadership which creates the richest possible culture of shared purpose increasingly feels like the vital driver of resilience, and the sectoral challenges of developing a genuinely diverse leaders at all levels increasingly urgent.

I also learnt you should never surprise a bear when it's eating: if you see one, make sure it knows you're coming. There's a moral in there somewhere...

Questions about galleries: what I did in the holidays (part 2)

2011-09-06T09:22:00.001+01:00

It's good to do things on your holidays that you might not ordinarily do. Even so, I generally fall into the 'culture vulture' type of holiday-maker - tromping round cities visiting galleries and museums, book and record shops, concerts, theatres if I can understand the language, that kind of thing. This year's holiday, a trains and old friends one, was exactly that, starting in one of the summer's hot spots - Hackney. Moving on to Brussels and Holland, however, we began doing things we don't usually do - eating Ethiopian (if you're ever in Brussels go to Kokob, it's fantastic), cycling - and paying to get into art galleries. This in particular made me ponder a few questions. (To which I'll also posit some simplistic answers.)

Was there a connection between the not insubstantial amounts we paid to get into really fine contemporary galleries like Wiels and Bozar and the lack of people in the galleries? (I've seen more people in UK galleries on a wet Wednesday morning.) The shows we saw were mainly excellent and ambitious - the Jeff Wall retrospective at Bozar in particular, juxtaposing his photos with pieces that inspired him. They were big and value for money. But there were few people there. My simplistic answer?: Yes, despite the truism being that research shows price is not the main barrier to attendance at the arts. (Google that phrase if you want some research about that - it's slightly more nuanced, but generally observed.) But whilst price may not be the barrier, the entry fee stands for a show of commitment - you need to be committed in some way - to the show, or the visit - rather than simply curious or sheltering from the rain. So once that commitment to attend is built, price - more or less, if I'd not been on holiday I might have thought twice - is not a barrier - but free entry can be an incentive for the un-committed.
Or was it the contemporary nature of the work which was off-putting, as the museum galleries we visited were all heaving. Even Andy Warhol at the temporary Stedilijk in Amsterdam had a stroll in factor whilst the nearby museums had long queues for van Gogh, Rembrandt et al. Does the 'subscription' model of getting on in the visual arts actually lessen the audience for new work, by creating a popular demand for 200 years of subscription before making something part of a tourist/visitor experience? Simplistic answers: yes to both. Many people just don't trust contemporary taste and prefer things to have been 'resolved' by art history. (Not saying I agree, or think it's healthy. It just seems the case.)
It was noticeable how, let's say, 'undeveloped' the secondary offer - catering especially, but also shops to a lesser degree - seemed to be in the galleries we visited - why was this? Simplistic answer: having paid to get in, people are less likely to want to pay for lunch in the venue, and maybe the venues have a mix of ticket and public income that reduces the need to really focus on a notoriously difficult area. as many UK galleries testify, if you don;t really think the offer through, you end up with mediocre shops and cafes. Also, if the place is not one you can 'drop into' or have informal meetings in, as the cafes and bars of many UK arts venues are, they are limited in potential, and - for me - don't feel as good.
Final question was, are European galleries - or perhaps more accurately, the European curator grapevine/network - behind an odd trend I've noticed for curators getting their name headlined on posters and brochures and in big letters on gallery walls. Almost all the contemporary galleries seemed to emphasise curators almost as much as artists - and at least one listed the CEO and his team alongside that. This may well be connected to the 'subscription' model for curators - ie, never mind the audience, did peer curators like the show? - but as a punter I find it distracting, as for me curators are not auteurs any more (or less) than the editors of, say, novels are. I imagine the case is, firstly, credit where it's due (they're the poor devils who have to dig out those Lyotard quotes for the brochures after all) but also the curating is a fundamental part of the gallery experience, and the visitor should be aware of it. Simplistic answer: perhaps, but I'd rather avoid following this particular trend, please, and stick to the credits and the acknowledgements - and the gradual awareness of a curator's work and influence that comes from helping artists make great shows.

Back to school special (What I did in the holidays pt 1)

2011-09-05T11:53:00.000+01:00

Well,before I took a summer break from blogging, I left you with thoughts of peace, love and understanding... how'd that work out for you, then?

Further global financial turmoil, riots and panic on the streets of London, sharp turns to the right by the 'moral' centre of the government, drip by drip exposure of the scandal that is Tory education policy, hurricanes, earthquakes, Preston North End getting beat and conceding 4 (four!) at home in the first game of the season in flipping League One... Sometimes, it was only being so cheerful as kept me going.

I wouldn't want you to think the radio silence here was because I was on a beach or in a depression, so to get back to business as usual, allow me a little warm up reflection.

After helping MMM present plans for a re.volution to partners and potential funders, I ran straight off to Europe with my wife where we paid through the nose to go into some pretty empty contemporary art galleries and some very full museums/galleries in Brussels and Amsterdam (see next blog for some questions raised by that). We then hotfooted it back to Stockton-on-Tees to see how the council were spending our money - fortunately wisely on the Stockton International Riverside Festival and Stockton Weekender. The Weekender was a paid for event for the first time, which seemed to work well, with good audiences, although one day was rather marred by torrential rain. (Maximo Park, fronted by local-Billingham-boy-made-good Paul Smith, brought the crowd round in the end though.) It also became clear there's too much comedy around for people to pay for it in a festival context, which made me wonder what there is to learn from the ubiquity and popularity of comedy nights, the extent to which they are creating income for arts venues, and whether people ought to be thinking now about what happens when that bubble bursts/balloon goes down? (I'd suggest it's in the late Consolidation phase...)

The highlight of the second half of the summer (apart from hearing my daughter had got the grades she needed to get into university this year, thus avoiding the higher fees, phew, what good forward planning that was 19 years ago) was involvement in the Banff Opera Colloquium organised by Opera.ca, the voice of Canadian opera. I'll write about this separately, but it was a great chance to work with the frameworks of adaptive resilience with a whole sector, in a non-UK context, and as luck would have it in a beautiful place at the Banff Centre.

Next, suddenly, September, which always means a new start. No matter how long it is since you left school, that new term feeling persists. (It persists even though, as of this September, I don't even have any kids going back to school.) Workwise, a couple of new projects are getting going, more of which anon, and this month's work-travels are happily in Northern England: Wallsend, NewcastleGateshead, Manchester, Middlesbrough and Wakefield. It may not be God's own country, but it's certainly mine.

There's a lot of important tectonic plates shifting at the moment - especially in England. The effects of March's ACE announcements continue to become clearer, with some organisations powering up to become NPOs, many conversations being brought to you by the letters K, P and I as they'd say on Sesame Street, and some people now announcing closure or wind-up. (Sydney Thornbury from Webplay is bravely and importantly writing about 'winding up fabulously' on the NCVO website.) New initiatives around digital and philanthropy, and museums funding will play out over the next few months. (In relation to museums, the report by Estelle Morris is very much worth reading. In fact, it's worth reading in relation to arts and culture generally.) Audiences and local authorities will also, in their different ways, let us know what the impact of the recession is on their culture-spending.

And hopefully, some artists will surprise us and respond to all that other stuff in brave and imaginative ways, with fresh vigour. If there's one thing I'm sure of it's that the arts need to engage with the messiness of global finance, riots, politics, individual and collective responsibilities and behaviour, morals, cultures, education and so on rather than turn away from it. I know from my own writing efforts that's easier said than done, and David Hare agreed just this weekend, but it feels as urgent a task as anything to do with changing funding patterns. (You can probably leave worrying about Preston North End to Phil Brown and poor souls like me though.)

Movingpictures 12: peace, love and understanding

2011-07-25T09:38:00.002+01:00

I'm away from my desk right now. I thought I'd leave you with this thought.

Brave New World: keynote + hand-scribbled notes

2011-07-22T12:02:00.003+01:00

Above is the set of slides for the keynote I gave to the Arts Marketing Association conference on Wednesday - click through to the Slideshare site and you can see the text too - everything bar the bit when I made people put their hands in the air and most of the ... well, I'd hesitate to call them jokes, lets go for smartarsed asides shall we? I got some great feedback on it, which is always a relief, and had some interesting conversations around it later. I also got absolutely rightly nabbed for avoiding things which rhyme (like survive/thrive) whilst promulgating an acronym - it's a fair cop, guv. Anyway, thought I'd experiment by sharing it here. Thanks to Julie Aldridge from the AMA for asking me to do it, and for creative conversations along the way - and to the people who came to the session in January I wrote about here that very much informed my thinking.

I had a great time at the conference, met some grand people, and heard some really great speakers. Notes from the trusty P-Pad include:

Toxicity of the word 'arts' in tv (Matthew Cain)
away from marketing as the last mile (Will McInnes)
The Contextualisation Gap between knowledge of art and diversity of art (Jerry Yoshimoto)
'Ukuleles not a good a idea and we shouldn't have done it' (I disagree, by the way, not sure about other former members of the ACENE Management Team Ukulele Orchestra.)
Only 2 cultural sites in top 1000 websites in UK (National Archives and National Trust)
Not about numbers, it's about patterns
Social media doesn't drive traffic to websites (I know this to be true from difference between twitter followers and views of this site)
Must set up Google Analytics better (Jane Finnis presentation)
Start to use bit.ly more/properly

There was much much more I didn't write down.

Movingpictures 11: Brave New World

2011-07-21T09:46:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I gave a keynote at the AMA's conference in Glasgow. No time now to cover what I said, but wanted to share a video I made reference to - showing the great integrated vision of Billingham, once upon a time. I talked about Billingham because it's allegedly one of the inspirations for Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World, also the 'title' of the conference. He called it 'a magnificent kind of poem', and that was before the heated pavements.Unfortunately he wasn't so keen on Middlesbrough, which he described as 'growing like a fungus, like staphylococcus in a test-tube of chicken-broth'.

TEDxYork notes, direct from my P-Pad

2011-07-08T09:57:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I gave myself a treat of a day and went to TEDxYork, organised by Marcus Romer and Pilot Theatre. This was a very different kind of day to the Stronger Together event last week, although there were some people in common, and it was similarly well-delivered. (Can I suggest there's a sideline for theatre people in running/designing conferences, they seem to handle the 'theatrics' of them better than conference organisers.) It was a kind of festival of storytelling and idea sharing and listening, with short bouts of discussion that looked, to the old-fashioned eye, like lunch and coffee breaks. The main sessions didn't even have questions - you just moved on to the next bright person. Some of the talks were better than others, but only a couple didn't give me at least one thing to think about or write down.

There were lots of I-Pads out. It was that kind of a crowd. Here's a few of the things I wrote down in my high tech Pukka Pad.

First Sinclair games machine had 1K memory. An I-phone has 32 million times more than that.
Cost of making cutting edge computer game has increased 10,000 fold last 15 years, and in 15 years before that.
Ubiquitous broadband and mobile internet allows the kind of connection with mass audiences that niche/cult/indie producers and promoters traditionally have
XTK Projects: 'peer-sourced funding for ideas that don't exist yet' (Just looked at this and they coin a brilliant term: 'primordial capital'. Kristin Alford was a good speaker, but she could drop that in.)
Work where chaos meets order, or in chaos, rather than rushing to turn order into control
'Talk about success or talk about failing spectacularly' - fine, but what about miserable failure - the kind that drags and is just horrible and energy sapping - failure isn't always going down in flame.
The loyalty of phone boxes.
Is vernacular social science (eg Information is beautiful) challenging academic social science with its account-based approach, even if complemented now by data.
No more lies to sociologists
It's a brave man who shows us pictures of his teddy bears
Resilience as Agency, Relatedness and Competence
Flyposting is illegal, Google map pins are not
Technology as a material, not a tool
Can arts venues learn from how high end restaurants treat customers?
Are we turning the music industry into Pizza Express?
We need a view on the world not a position in the market
We are in the business of dis-enthralling
Must read Proust and The Squid by Maryanne Wolf
That humans learned to read is a miracle - are we now learning to do something else?

There was of course, much more, but they could each become a blog in their own right.

The day was themed around inserting the A of Arts in the STEM subjects of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics to make a new STEAM age. A number of speaker made passing reference to this, but it was mainly left implicit. There was a good range of examples in the programmes though, from theatrical and game-based storytelling to cello playing to amazing 'Digital Duets' between artists in Manchester and New York. My one conclusion about this was that we need to widen our definition of Art to actually do this, to make Art a driver of change and energy in society in the way steam was.

Movingpictures10: Keep Britain (including Bridlington) Bona

2011-07-07T09:06:00.000+01:00

Special non-moving moving picture this week. (But then, as the cliche has it, the pictures are better on radio...) This says all I care to say right now about the Bridlington school opera fiasco Opera North and Lee Hall (isn't he bold?) have been embroiled in this week.

Much as I love Julian and Sandy - and I do, come round the office on a lunchtime and you'll often find me glued to Round The Horne over my egg and cress - I really don't want to go back to the times when people could only be gay if they didn't mention it and worked through double entendres. As they put it here: 'The future could be naff or it could be bona.'

It ain’t what you do, it’s what it does to you: collaborative learning

2011-07-01T12:18:00.001+01:00

Here’s the outline of what I talked about in the case study at the Stronger Together conference – or event as Erica Whyman pointedly reminded us it really was – at Northern Stage on Wednesday. The theme of the conference for any readers who weren’t there – and at times it seemed anyone likely to read this was there – was collaboration. You can look at the Twitter comments by searching for #artstogether. It was a great event, and there was a real buzz of energy coming off people at the end of the day. It combined a number of approaches, building from provocations and an Open Space to also include some case studies (for those who wanted to sit and listen), some conversations and some speed dating. This diversity and openness of approach really worked for most people, I think. They also used technology brilliantly to include satellite events in Bristol, Manchester and even that remote village, London.

I had suggested talking about the work I have been helping Clare Cooper, Holly Tebbut and Margaret Bolton with on designing a peer support or learning network for MMM – (re)evolution as it is called. (With investment from Creative Scotland and Arts Council England.) As it turned out we are still working through some of the design issues so I was not able to talk in the depth I’d envisaged about the offer (re)evolution will make to leaders (at all levels) in the sector. But it was a useful chance to talk about the thinking and learning that informs us, and set out our thinking so far.

I started by talking about two formative collaborative learning experiences which taught me a lot, including that learning is often the most sustainable thing which comes from collaboration, and that perhaps we should emphasise this more. (I didn’t say this but it strikes me now Simon Armitage puts it brilliantly in his poem/title, ‘It ain’t what you do, it’s what it does to you’. Hear that noise? That’s me kicking myself, really hard, for missing this connection/title before.)

The first was an artistic collaboration, A BALKAN EXCHANGE, which you can read about here: http://uk-bgtranslations.blogspot.com/. This has been a long collaboration between a group of English poets and a group of Bulgarian poets. My point was not the ‘outputs’ – two books of translations – but the learning I gained from it, about my own writing practice was transformative. The key learning about collaboration included:

The importance of listening deeply
The paradoxical combination of absolute commitment to both task and your collaborators and ‘non-attachment’ to your own ideas as the only or best ideas
Observing self as well as your collaborators and the task

The second was with my ‘executive’ head on, when I took part in the National School of Government’s Top Management Programme some year ago. This was all about collaborative learning, with a very diverse group of senior people from across sectors, which included some heavy duty collaborative tasks assisting national agencies with major challenges. My learning group included senior civil servants, a chief constable, private sectors leaders, even a knight – it was, crucially for me, not a cultural group – although the people themselves were, in the main highly cultured. (Although I do recall one person suggesting the Arts Council should change its name to the Entertainment Council, if indeed it were needed.)

The learning from this experience included:

The importance of honest, detailed and specific constructive feedback
Framing the experience as both practical and a learning experience and building reflection on experience in from Moment 1
The need for diversity: collaboration with people you know you agree with is more a matter of numbers, and less of learning

I then went on to talk about Mission Models Money’s (re)evolver pilot, which brought a diverse group of peers together to help co-design a peer support network. I was the evaluator on this CLP-funded scheme and have been working with MMM on the design of what we are now framing as a peer learning network. This will enable peers to develop their own skills and understanding by helping others address challenges related to mission, model or money, or the leadership, culture and values which we see as cross-cutting issues in that kind of change.

Those involved in (re)evolver reported a number of benefits to learning through shared experience with peers:

growth in and greater awareness of their competencies, qualities and attributes
interaction with diverse group of peers
exploring own thought processes, values and behaviours in a group context
improved communication and active listening skills
opportunities to explore challenges facing the cultural sector

They also stressed the importance of mutuality, trust, investing time in bonding to build trust, understanding scale and varying sense of who a ‘peer’ might be.

Interestingly the area of MMM’s ‘competencies, qualities and attributes’ framework in which peers reported most growth was ‘Reality Check’. As I said on Wednesday, if there is anything which will help us collaborate our way to a more resilient future it is a great sense of realism about our strengths and situations.

I spoke a little of the design of the peer learning network (re)evolution which MMM, working with industry bodies, want to start rolling later in the year. This would work on the key principle of mutuality, of ‘giving and getting’, with peers committing a certain number of days to the network – we’re currently thinking 3 – and being able to draw on other peers for assistance with their own challenges around mission, model, money or leadership. This could be done through a variety of flexible ‘programmes’ – from peer review style team approaches, to individual exchanges, mentoring or action learning.

I also shared some of the challenges the team and our investors, with whom we are working in a spirit of co-design, are grappling with, which we’d really welcome feedback on here too. (I’ll add in a couple that came up in conversation with people afterwards too.)

How realistic is it to expect this type of investment into CPD and collaborative learning, given pressures on time and budgets?
How open can people be to sharing their challenges with others?
How do we avoid this becoming another ‘old boys network’ that excludes emerging or divergent leaders?
How do we structure the network operate so that it does not inadvertently exclude those who are unfunded or operating in a partly or even wholly commercialised way by asking them to work for nothing, whilst making it open to them as they could bring valuable insights, and could also benefit from the collaborative learning?

Movingpictures9: collaboration and cooperation

2011-06-28T19:43:00.000+01:00

There seem to be a run of events about collaboration, working together, or other ways of putting this. I'm talking at one tomorrow at Northern Stage which you can also see at various places and, I think, on-line. (Certainly there'll be a twitter stream to follow.) You can read about it here.

I don't have time right now to explore the theme in detail, I'll maybe do a wrap up of thoughts from this and last week's LARC event at the RSA. But there is a strand that says collaboration is not always the right thing, and that some things described as collaboration are more like cooperation. The above video may shed some light.

For those whose minds work differently, the video below may also help.

Movingpictures 8: the importance of urgency

2011-06-21T09:45:00.013+01:00

John Kotter is one of the leading writers on change, and leading change. His ideas have proved really useful in my coaching work, and in managing myself. This is an interesting video which focuses in on one aspect: urgency, the need to keep driving the really key things forward: making things happen everyday. This is obvously the opposite of complacency but also different from the kind of frantic activity or discussion which doesn't make those vital things happen.

(I'd never seen Kotter before. There's something about him that reminds me of the older Mark E. Smith of The Fall, after a very thorough detox. I'm probably imagining it - but why would I imagine that? Answers on a postcard.)

Out of time: a bit of a round up

2011-06-15T08:45:00.000+01:00

There are a number of things I would have written about if I hadn't been busy working on all sorts of exciting things, including a few days learning poems by heart, to music and film for a performance at Arc in Stockton last week. Here's a few quick notes on some of them.

Rollercoasters in Australia: Arts Queensland recently asked me to help kickstart their new blog by talking about adaptive resilience and the adaptive cycle. (Apparently their team is already using the frameworks in Making Adaptive Resilience Real with arts organisations, which I find unaccountably exciting.) You can read the blog here. I talk about the rollercoaster metaphor lots of CEOs used to describe their experience in organisations, and how rollercoasters (if well-designed and maintained) should feel dangerous and exciting, but actually be safe. There are other really interesting posts on the blog too.

Levy on tickets: this is a really interesting idea from Barry's Blog to create an endowment from adding a bit onto ticket sales. Although some people report declining sales, and I know some individual organisations do this for capital appeals, for instance, there seems something in this. Maybe a county or city-wide consortium could experiment with it?

The George Bailey Story: the news that Google has anointed the road that is home to BALTIC and The Sage Gateshead the UK's 'hippest street' was amusing on a number of levels. (Much as I like those venues, I'd not describe the street itself as 'hip' - try Lime Street in the Ouseburn if you're in toon and looking for hip. But still, great recognition for Gateshead, and the press surprise was enjoyable. It reminded me of a storytelling workshop I've led, to help people tell better stories of their achievements. To some classic paradigms - the struggle, the search, the vision etc - I added the 'George Bailey': what would your patch look like if you'd never existed? It's a powerful way of capturing the difference you make. South Shore Road would certainly look different without Gateshead Council and Arts Council's partnership - and lottery funding.

From expertise to asset: Catching up with Live Theatre about the progress of Beaplayright.com, which I helped with last year was heartening - it's working, and people all over the world are signing up for the on-line course. I was reminded again what an example it is of people turning what they do - run courses, provide expert advice, in this case - into something they 'own' and can make available in different ways. (The entrepreneurial Live Theatre also now have a great looking pub as a joint venture, backed by some adventurous funders, but it was a morning meeting so I didn't try it.)

Benchmarking: I gave some input into an interesting discussion over at MyCake's blog about how patterns of income change depending on how big an arts organisation is, and what the implications or reasons behind this might be.

Museums: the Museums Association attempting to swim up river with this intervention suggesting 'ACE investment should prioritise impact and public benefit, not infrastructure. ACE should offer investment to bring public benefit and impact, not subsidy for institutions.'

Helix Arts new blog: Toby Lowe, the new Chief Executive of Helix Arts, has started a new blog, and hit the ground running by attempting to define participatory arts. (Nice easy start!) Toby is a reformed policy wonk who was part of the management team at ACE with me for a while, till he got a taste for the wild side. He's a smart cookie, and Helix is a strong, reflective organisation, so this will be worth watching.

Variance: the stimulating but at times confounding experience of reading the latest issue of Variant on a long train journey. Many languages co-exist, in a slightly tetchy manner, from Andrew Dixon's frank, strategic and pragmatic answers to questions about Creative Scotland to a number of essays by academics, via an in-depth investigation of the finances of a recently outsourced cultural service. The academics in particular had me slightly twitchy. At times it seemed if there was one group more exploited or forced into self-exploitation than artists, it was academics. Hmm...I couldn't help thinking they might want to try working in a warehouse or a building site as health and safety gets eaten away somewhere and see how it feels, but that's probably unfair. Still, some provoking observations, and great titles - 'The presence of precarity', for instance.

Remembering poetry: As mentioned above, I recently did a 'gig' (as poets pathetically refer to them). This was part of a scratch night at Arc in Stockton, something I'd committed to in order to make myself get back on the poetry editing and performing horse. I decided to add terror into the mix by learning four long, blank verse poems by heart and doing them to music in front of a film based on old photos. Although I wouldn't describe it as fun exactly, it definitely got my artistic muscles back in action. What did I notice? The exposure, the obsessive nature of performing, the relief. The desire to do more. The way one idea leads to more.

A poem remembered: just when I was feeling most unsure about this performance, I came across Anthony Wilson's list of Lifesaving Poems. Anthony is a poet and educator, and an educator of educators, and he knows what he's talking about. It's a great list, and I was amazed to see a poem I wrote a long, long time ago in it - right next to Keats doncha know. He then wrote this lovely blog about it. Making any kind of art, but perhaps especially poetry, can be like sending out messages in bottles, for us obscure types anyway. So a poem being taken in by someone in this way was brilliant and affirming. I am slightly blowing my own trumpet by sharing this here, but hey, sue me.

Movingpictures7: world summits and Andy Palacio

2011-06-14T09:17:00.001+01:00

Just as in October my mind always wanders back to the years I used to run a literature festival, June now always makes me remember the World Summit on Arts & Culture which Arts Council England co-hosted with IFACCA in 2006. In fact today it's five years ago exactly since the opening day - one of the most stressful but enjoyable days work I've ever done. (I was officially leading and 'carrying the can' for the whole thing, in my role at ACE.) You can see the conference report here to find out what we did.

Sarah Gardner and the team at IFACCA are currently preparing for the 5th World Summit, which takes place in Melbourne in October - read all about it here. I can heartily recommend attending a World Summit for funders and policy makers and those interested in that field with the time and budget to do so. Although my experience of the one in NewcastleGateshead was a bit skewed by hosting it, I did attend the next one in Johannesburg - you can see what I wrote about it on the old Arts Counselling website here to get a flavour.

This kind of international, intercultural dialogue seems all the more important these days, not less. It's no coincidence, for instance, to see 'international partnership' as one of Creative Scotland's three cross-cutting themes, given Andrew Dixon's experience of bringing the World Summit to England and directing the programme for the event. Although you can do a lot virtually these days, it is the human connections made that I remember most powerfully, and that I think would make a trip to Melbourne worthwhile for many.

One of the people I met at our Summit was the musician and cultural ambassador from Belize Andy Palacio,who sadly passed away young a few years later, just as his music career was taking off. He was a lovely guy, and we connected over trying to keep both practices in harmony. So this weeks' 'moving picture' is not one of the nice IFACCA videos you can see here but Andy.

(Writing this has also made me realise I should probably stop using the photo taken five years ago, as it is now quite a long time ago. Although as everyone tells me I look 10 years younger since I left ACE, this means I actually look older in the photo than I do now...)

Movingpictures 6: Make your own damn art world

2011-06-08T00:12:00.001+01:00

This is a gentle little film from the Guardian website about Bob and Roberta Smith. A few years ago he helped create an event at mima in Middlesbrough called 'Make Your Own Damn Art World', which has since become one of my mottos. At the actual event I agreed to act as the Banker and my son and I gave out monopoly-style money to people, which they could give to the best artists in the art fair that day - or just to their friends or relatives if they wanted to, not that the art world is like that really, obviously. His work makes me laugh and think, which is not something I can say often enough about contemporary visual arts. I do also find it rather beautiful, in a ramshackle way.

Movingpictures 5: poetry for the busy senior executive?

2011-06-02T15:04:00.000+01:00

According to my MBTI profile, I am, amongst other things, 'pressure-prompted'. To help keep the poet in me alive I put myself under the pressure of doing a performance at Arc's Scratch night - next week. This has been a great spur to writing and rewriting and working up a performance based on parts of a sequence called The Dunno Elegies. I'm looking forward to it very much, albeit with a hint of terror as I'm trying to do some things I've not done before, and the other people sound like proper performers and I'm just an easily-bored poet. (I actually did a couple of scratch nights at Arc's ancestor Dovecot Arts Centre way back - as Scratch was the name of a poetry magazine I founded in 1989 and ran for nearly a decade and we did some launches there. Strange echo.)

Anyway, I've been thinking about poetry and audiences, and this video made me laugh. It's Fry & Laurie as young-and-pythonesque, rather than National Treasure and US Star Singing The Blues but all the better for that. It also contains a great idea - if Inpress don't come out with a Travelling Poetry Bag soon I'll be sorely disappointed.

On networks and filling gaps

2011-05-31T10:13:00.001+01:00

Photo by Buddhasits under Creative Commons

I gave a talk on leadership to a group of teachers last week, members of a Creative Teachers Network supported by the University of Sunderland’s Centre for Creativity and Learning. I need to find time to write properly about some conclusions I’m starting to draw about my own framework for leadership, so won’t expand on that right now. But there was one really interesting thought I gained from listening to the discussion of the other ‘leadership case study’, which was given by Susan M. Coles.

Susan talked through her role in the development of the North East Art Teachers Educator Network (NEATEN, which is, well, neat.) One of the slightly older members of the group commented that in many ways such networks were filling the gap – in terms of support, advice and development activity – created by the gradual extinction of specialist advisors within education authorities.

It struck me that this was a great example of how the voluntary activity of a sector was replacing fixed infrastructures, and of the risks and opportunities inherent in that shift. NEATEN is clearly a vibrant, member-led, non-hierarchical, asset-based way of drawing on the resources of its members and the broader system. (They meet regularly at BALTIC, for instance, supported by the learning team there. They share their specialism and resources in schools.) It seems to work really well for art teachers – and therefore, one would hope, for students.

It also draws hugely on unpaid expertise and goodwill. Susan, who appeared to be chief ‘network weaver’, is a former Advanced Skills Teacher amongst other things. Like me, she is now a consultant. So what we see is arguably a mix of privatisation and shifting into the voluntary sector of a kind of support and expertise formerly provided by the infrastructure. (Another way of putting it would be that the members of the network are now ‘crowdsourcing’ support and expertise, rather than having that provided from one central source, although that does rather over-simplify the old advisory system.)

My point is not really to debate the rights and wrongs of this. It’s too long and broad a shift to blame on any one political party. The old ‘provision and supervision’ model certainly had weaknesses. The insight struck me particularly because I have been working, with others, on some work for Mission Models Money on how best to bring together peers to work on organisational and sectoral challenges, building on a pilot scheme supported by Cultural Leadership Programme – one of the bits of cultural sector capacity given up recently. I have been investigating best practice in network building, and had made a connection to the reduction in capacity within the system, but not seen it as a broader pattern. (The Creative Teachers Network itself is another example, as it follows in the wake of much great Creative Partnerships work.)

A move to more collaborative models is being very much ‘encouraged’ in the arts and cultural sector, rightly so on the whole. We do, however, need to consider in exactly what ways a search for savings and ‘efficiency’ in one area, and ‘empowerment’ and ‘responsibility’ in another, can be made genuinely more productive.

Movingpictures 4: Happy Birthday Dylan, well over 30

2011-05-24T00:35:00.004+01:00

Bob Dylan is 70 today. If I had to be left with just one person's music, it would be his. This is him in playful mood, illustrating a few things about artists. I love the question 'do you prefer songs with a subtle or obvious message?' I couldn't choose a song to share here - just too difficult. (I decided to spare you listing 20 different titles to show how inventive I am in my devotion - see here for an example of that genre.)

By the way: more filmed mass press conferences please. Imagine if Tracy Emin had done something like this to promote her Hayward show?

'Not all kinds of resilience are equally useful'

2011-05-22T09:38:00.003+01:00

Sinking & Swimming: Understanding Britain’s Unmet Needs is a report by the Young Foundation, which looks at the 'new needs' of those who are drowning not waving in our country. It argues the welfare state and others need to place a much greater emphasis on the psychological needs of people, alongside the material needs, to enable people to cope with shocks and setbacks. (Put simply, you might say you need both financial and psychological 'resources' to bounce back from or cope with sudden illness or unemployment, for instance.)

This paragraph struck me, as having some application to the cultural sector, echoing points I've made a lot this last year:

'Not all kinds of resilience are equally useful. Some communities are proving very resilient to economic shocks – particularly the old working class communities that have now experienced several decades of high unemployment. They are good at providing mutual support, and good at absorbing setbacks. But this kind of passive or survival resilience does not necessarily help people to adapt and prosper – people survive the fall but fail to get up and maximise their potential. Passive resilience can stifle innovation and cut people off from opportunities. In these communities, what is most needed is a more active or adaptive resilience, that is less comfortable with getting by and more willing to seek out help and build stronger networks outside the community as well as within it.'

Passive is perhaps not the best word here: it actually takes a lot of effort to provide that mutual support, to survive. But this is something that artists and many arts organisations have become very good at, in the ways some communities have. The challenge is though to resist simply getting by and keeping building - it may take a different sort of energy, it certainly needs a different kind of support and encouragement.

Movingpictures 3: David Lynch on fish (and ideas)

2011-05-18T00:07:00.006+01:00

I recently did a foolish and terrifying thing, and looked at the Twitter comments made whilst I was speaking at a conference. There was nothing too horrible, or too horribly true, but one person did say I was 'a bit metaphor-tastic'. Which is probably fair comment, really.

I generally hold by the power of metaphor for reinforcing and potentially revealing things, not just in poetry but in work and leadership generally. Some people like to think of themselves as entirely rational, but I'm afraid I don't quite see life like that - and one of the most powerful 'un-rational' tools we've developed is language and metaphor. (That word, tool - that's a metaphor.) Obviously this can be abused, of course, and one can also mistake a good metaphor for something that's true or workable. (There's an interesting introduction to this by Jacky Lumby and Fenwick W. English in a chapter from a fantastically-titled book Leadership as Lunacy here.)

The above video shows David Lynch getting very metaphor-tastic about ideas. He talks about ideas as fish, some deep down, big and abstract, some nearer the surface, 'putrified.. funny', and then says 'I'm looking for a certain kind of fish that are catchable for cinema'. Just listening to David Lynch for a couple of minutes brightens my day so hopefully it'll do the same for you. If like me you're a Lynch fan you may get distracted by what appears to be a mini-school of Lynch parodies: If David Lynch directed Dirty Dancing, for instance, a Sesame Street tribute to Twin Beaks, or my favourite, a Lego-version called Twin Bricks. And a funny series from a man who is Not David Lynch. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Applicant time: what price service from the arts ecosystem?

2011-05-15T14:45:00.001+01:00

Photo from US National Archives on Flickr

I've pondered what, if anything, to say here about Arts Council England's national portfolio decisions, now that some time has passed for reflection. I don't really want to do a full dissection of what the more I look at it feels like a paradoxically conservative portfolio. (By that I mean that for all the former RFOs who lost their funding, and for all the new and exciting organisations brought in, the essential aim of the overall strategy seems to be conserving the key infrastructure/'front line'/status quo - depending on how you look at it - for achieving great art for everyone. It is by no means a wrong-headed strategy given the financial and political context, but it is not quite what may have been in mind originally.)

Many things strike me as very positive, even brave. Some things strike me as unfortunate and worrying for the future but understandable given the numbers (bumping the the audience development agencies en masse seems like a 'bugger, the budget still doesn't balance' moment kind of decision - I can only sympathise with people having to make out it's strategic and logical to not have those agencies in a portfolio that contains Faber & Faber). Some individual decisions are disappointing, a small number just odd. (I include in that one or two of the decisions to put organisations in, by the way.) I think individual artists' interests - in literature, digital and visual arts particularly - have been hit disproportionately. But that's the nature of making a portfolio - you can't please all the people. In not taking on the theatre lobby that stuck it to ACE so effectively last time, and in the general communications, it has been much better handled in PR and relationship terms than last time.

I do, however, want to pose a question I've not heard put in this way yet, and which I think ACE need to consider. In the After Action Review that will inevitably be carried out at Great Peter Street, the assessment process which placed such a burden on relationship managers will no doubt be considered. But the burden - and benefit - of the application process for applicants also needs to be looked at. This is the first time those who wanted to be regularly funded had the chance to put their case properly, having thought through themselves what they wanted to do. I favour some kind of application process, and I also know the reflection most organisations went through is likely to have been a useful process whether they were funded or not.

However, there is a cost to this. At a time of restricted funding, and intense need to work hard on businesses, what was the cost of the NPO process to the arts sector as represented by the 1333 applicants? And what was the benefit - did it produce demonstrably better results for either ACE or the sector than previous processes, for instance? (It certainly didn't produce any great shift of resources from one region to another.) The back of the envelope on my desk says that if 1333 applicants spent 20 days staff time on this, at an average salary of £25,000 a year, the process cost applicants (or the sector) more than £2.5M. I suspect this is a highly conservative estimate, especially given the money spent on research, publications and consultants.

This investment by applicants - almost half of whom were unsuccessful - could be described as what the social -ecologists call an 'unpriced ecosystem service’. At least it's unpriced for ACE. I suggest they look carefully at this cost, what value it brings, and what impact it has on the resilience of the sector.

Movingpictures 2: Steven Johnson on ideas

2011-05-11T00:38:00.002+01:00

This week's video is a very brief introduction to Steven Johnson's thinking on where good ideas come from. Chance favours the connected mind apparently. He also talks about how an idea might be seen as the offspring of two hunches, which has set me thinking about how often - or seldom - we bring people with hunches together, and how I might do that. Watch this space. (But first watch this video.)

Movingpictures 1: Richard Ford

2011-05-04T00:14:00.024+01:00

This is the first in a new regular feature on the Thinking Practice blog, short videos shared from YouTube, or elsewhere, which have some ideas about art or the arts that I find stimulating or, sometimes, just entertaining, and which may set you off on your own discoveries. If you subscribe they should pop in your inbox on a Wednesday morning as a little mid-week pick-me-up. I promise that they won't all be old songs, in fact few of them will be, but can't guarantee none of them will be!

The first is one of my favourite novelists, Richard Ford on language. Amongst other things he quotes Denis Donoghue: 'language is where we find value most compellingly in action'. That's a powerful thing to remember. he also describes how for the creative writer, that might often means finding the right word with the right number of syllables and aspirants.

Does my budget look big in this?

2011-05-03T15:53:00.001+01:00

image from flickr dcjohn, under creative commons

Sarah Thelwall's MyCake now offers a really useful looking Cultural Benchmarking service which is doing, for subscribing organisations, something Arts Council England arguably ought to be doing for the sector with all the data they receive from RFOs and now NPOs. The service allows an organisation to provide its financial information to help create a picture of the sector - which is interesting. But what's really useful as well as interesting (who can afford just 'interesting' these days?) is that the organisation can then benchmark its figures against the averages. Is that increased figure for ticket income really all that great, or just a bit less bad than last year? Are you spending a bigger proportion of your income on rent than other similar organisations? What returns might an organisation of your type and scale expect from intangible assets?

Significantly, the Cultural Benchmarking is increasingly able to distinguish between the very different models of arts organisations, so you can do more meaningful comparisons. (The overall averages mask big differences, of course - the costs of a small touring theatre company will look very different from a a large gallery-based visual arts organisation, say.) The most recent Cultural Benchmark bulletin looks at what's happening in various areas of expenditure. It suggests that those budget lines which are likely to help an organisation when growth comes are, and indeed to increase their chances of getting to that point, are diminishing, whilst those which bring least 'resilience return' as I might put it, are going up.

The latter group include rent, professional fees and utilities, and the message is clear: squeeze them as hard as you can. The data from the benchmarking organisations shows that spend on rent as a percentage of turnover has increased from 10.4% in 2009 to 26.1% in 2010. Go cheap, go empty, go share might be a useful mantra. And don't sign anything that ties you up for too long.

The areas which are actually being squeezed, which MyCake suggest are essential for growth, are marketing, training, and travel. I would agree that saving money here can be damaging to resilience in the medium term, although that doesn't lessen the difficulty of avoiding that. It could be argued that Arts Council England has itself fallen into the trap of reducing the marketing and training budgets by privileging the 'front line' of production at the expense of Creative Partnerships, Cultural Leadership Programme, the Arts Nation national engagement programme, and the audience development agencies' regular funding, to mention just a few. (The case for this is that a maintained 'supply' will be able to cope with recovery, the case against is that the system or ecology can increase supply more quickly than it can to build capacity, skills and assets which have been allowed to die or fall into disrepair.) It will be interesting to see whether those organisations which maintain their training and marketing budgets - or even increase them - see a financial and organisation 'win' as a result, over those that cut in order to stay as near the current status quo in terms of activity. My every instinct tells me they will.

But - and this is why I commend MyCake and its analyses - instinct needs to be informed and challenged and improved by data, comparison and reflection. (What I refer to in Making Adaptive Resilience Real as 'situation awareness'.) We may not all read the data in the same way, but we should be prepared to look at the evidence, not wriggle out on a flimsy 'we're unique' case, and make difficult decisions.

Royal Wedding Special

2011-04-29T01:45:00.002+01:00

One the great things about art is its ability to combat mortality. (Now that's what I call an opening sentence - shall I just stop there, I wonder?) Some art works live on, of course, in fact they develop after you'd think they were dead, and certainly long after the people who made them have passed on. But art also gives us mere humans ways of experiencing death, and coping with it - and maybe even escaping it, albeit only metaphorically, sadly.

Another great thing about art is you don't need to make a lot of it to become a legend. This is, I'd suggest, as true in painting as it is in literature, and certainly true of that great art form the pop song. I was really struck this week by the reaction to the death of Poly Styrene. X-Ray Spex have not been regulars on my turntables since I was about 14 - when I had The Day Turned Dayglo on orange vinyl as my favourite single - but they capture a moment brilliantly. And having spent the last day or so listening to them again, a few songs remain timeless in their power. Poly Styrene may have only made a few classic singles before slipping off into the fringes, but that was all history asked. I find that rather comforting.

Tributes such as those by Jon Savage here and Jon Robb here draw out various thoughts about the impact of punk and the impact of this particular woman. The above video feels somewhat appropriate for today: 'Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard, but I say ....' (Oh dear, that 14 year old is still in here somewhere.)

What the BLANKety blank?

2011-04-15T10:17:00.000+01:00

About this time last year, the Swallows Partnership was just completing a fantastic residency by 28 South African artists in North East England, which nearly didn't happen due to difficulties obtaining visas. (I wrote about it, and the issues around movement of artists here.) This issue has not gone away.

This week I was sent a blistering piece by South African playwright Mike van Graan, which you can see here. He dubs those excluded from the UK the BLANKS: Black Artists with No Kids and who happen to be Single. If you are such a person, you are assumed to want to leave your home and stay in the UK.

It's fiery writing, and a useful exercise in perspective: this is what UK behavior looks like. Swallows received great support from National Campaign for the Arts last year. It is time, however, for the national agencies in the UK and DCMS to start to be much more vocal about this issue.

Helping the Young Million

2011-04-14T14:30:00.001+01:00

Although this week's UK unemployment figures were slightly less depressing than recently, we are on course for have one million unemployed young people very soon. This is bad news in all sorts of ways. Those young people will not be earning, won't be able start that lifetime's process of working out what they want to be (I'm still working on that myself), will get frustrated and potentially resentful.Neither will they be developing the skills and talents they would if they were in work - no matter how much volunteering they do.

Leadership development organisation Common Purpose, of which I'm a graduate and supporter, has decided to address this through Young Million, a series of leadership development courses for people aged 18-25. But they need our help to do so. Each course needs people with venues to host days, people with skills to share and take part in the course, and a bit of money too if you can spare that. The first courses will take place in London and Newcastle after time and space was donated there. I pitched in to help with the Newcastle one, but also hope we can get something going in Teesside.

Arts and cultural organisations can help in lots of ways: have you got a space you could help with? Can you spare a couple of hours? You don't have to be a Common Purpose graduate to help, but I know there are lots of them in the arts and cultural sector - it'd be great if we could make a strong contribution to this, given the importance of our sector to these young people's futures, and them to us. We often draw on the 'corporate social responsibility' of 'Business' to support the arts. Of course lots of arts work contributes to society, and many people are involved in mentoring and other schemes. But we can also add a lot to anyone, not just those 'into' the arts - and we have a responsibility to do so, or at least IMHO. Find your nearest centre here.

(The photograph above is of a March for Jobs in 1905, by the way. It serves as a reminder that unemployment is not a new tool in the owner's toolbox. )

Birthdays

2011-04-05T21:15:00.001+01:00

It’s a year exactly today since I wrote my first Thinking Practice blog, in the first week of the company. It’s been a busy, interesting and challenging year for me, and I’m pleased to see that I’ve managed to blog 52 times in the last year – a neat once a week average. Thinking Practice has gone even better than I might have thought this time last year, with lots of interesting work and opportunities coming my way. I’ll spare you the pitch disguised as review of the year – you can see the client list here if you’re really interested. Suffice to say I’ve enjoyed working with some great organisations, enjoyed helping people work through issues, problems and opportunities, and generally having no official position in the world whilst talking to lots of interesting people and using my brain.

Here’s a Top 10 things I’ve learnt in the last year (mainly about myself):

I can get a lot more work done in a day when I’m not dealing with internal organisational issues (including people issues) much as I (kind of) enjoyed that – I suspect that’s not just me
It can get lonely without anyone moaning in the kitchen for me to cheer up
I don’t miss doing performance reviews and associated paperwork
Networks are key to all sorts of things and I’m not so self-sufficient as I used to be
Leading beyond – or without – authority is exciting but takes a different kind of energy and persistence to the leadership that comes with a ‘big cheese’ sounding job title
I have an ego, but it feeds off attention not respect and doesn’t need a job title
It is possible to have as much if not more influence from outside the tent as inside it
Lots of the wear and tear on people in organisations (or at least on me) comes from the things which are least productive and if we could strip those out we might get a whole lot more done whilst saving time and money
I miss some of the invites to events I used to get (many thanks to those who still invite me now I’m not important!) but not the dinners and the bowtie evenings
Ars longa, vita brevis

As regular readers will know, I’ve done lots of talking this year about resilience – in Huddersfield, Leeds, Newcastle, Manchester, Belfast, London, Lincoln, Wellingborough, Glasgow, Plymouth as well as more informally. It only struck me part way through the year that maybe my interest in adaptive resilience was psychologically as well as strategically driven. I wouldn’t want to get too deep into that, here anyway, but I have definitely drawn on my core values, my willingness to take risks and adapt in the light of disturbance, and had to keep aware of the situation around me and try to achieve some predictability to my financial resources, just like any resilient arts organisation. I’ve looked deeply at my assets, and been prepared to reassess that reading as I’ve gone on. I’ve invested in my own skills and ability to self-sustain. I’ve been ready to change, above all. Combining that risk-taking and integrity has been as core, as it will be for anyone facing a similar or parallel situation in the next year or so, as further cuts bite, but I can say, if it suits you, it can be real fun.

So, happy birthday to Thinking Practice – which thus shares its birthday with the great great Sir Tom Finney, 89 today. (Sir Tom had his own way of drawing on key skills and assets, being famous for keeping his plumbing business going even as he was England’s main man. It’s a shame the same can’t be said about our beloved Preston North End, who've not been in the 'top flight' since he retired.) Mentioning football on Twitter seems to always cost me one or two followers, so I hope that doesn’t happen here, but sod it, it’s all culture to me – happy birthday Sir Tom! If you got to go because of that, go now.

Good luck - everyone

2011-03-29T15:58:00.001+01:00

Tomorrow we hear the results of Arts Council England's National Portfolio process, an important moment in the evolution of the sector. I've a number of interests - some organisations I'm involved with one way or another, some organisations I'm not but whose work I enjoy and value, a desire for a strong sector, lots of friends with applications and attendant aspirations, and lots of friends in the Arts Council who have been thinking and working and no doubt debating their bureaucratic arses off since January.

I was involved in several portfolio reviews in 10 years at the Arts Council and this moment before announcements is always a mixed one, and I suspect it will be even more so this time given the scrutiny and attention the open process has - quite rightly - brought. Whether it's been a tight spending review or a generous one you cannot afford to do all that you want to do, and all that colleagues, often closer to emerging organisations, are urging you to do. (and we should remind ourselves that Arts Council were given a horrible settlement to work with.) But you are at this point more or less comfortable and even proud of the portfolio you've put together, in the circumstances, and the vision for the future it represents. But you know there will be some people who disagree vehemently, some individuals who'll be on the phone, some probably in tears, and they'll get more of both your and public attention than those positive steps you think you're making, at least for a while. So people within Arts Council are probably feeling a parallel if not equivalent mix of the apprehension and excitement that those 1300 applicants are. (At least, that's what I always felt, even in standstill years.)

So I thought I'd try and find a song that was appropriate for three groups of readers: people given the horrible and unenviable task (by the coalition rather than their own choice, don't forget) of managing illogical cuts to arts funding to an arbitrary timetable imposed by ministers with an active interest only in certain parts of the picture; those whose news lead to relief, planning and excitement, and those for whom the news is disappointing. After flirting with the fantastic 'Ain't no stopping us now' by Mcfadden and Whitehead, which I think should be everyone's motto tomorrow, especially the disappointed, I went for this lovely song, as I'm writing this in Belfast, Duke Special's home, and it was recorded in one of the safer bets out of those 1300 - and the message and tone feels about right for everyone, as it's hopeful but not too as celebratory. (Apart from the Select Committee actually, they can go whistle for this week.)

So whatever the decisions, good luck - and remember - la lutta continua.

Not minding the gap

2011-03-03T12:09:00.000Z

Yesterday I was on a panel at a Westminster Media Forum seminar in Whitehall, on ‘Arts and culture – filling the funding gap’.

The panel was on was specifically looking at options to increase funding. My three key points were all related to how the relationship to funders and audience is primary, not the technicalities. (Although obviously the technicalities can help, be that specific changes to tax relief or use of Facebook/Twitter to ‘turbocharge’ customer service as suggested by other speakers.) Firstly, I suggested changing the mindset, and not thinking about ‘a gap’ but the whole. Gap suggests to me an assumption of ‘core funding’ from someone, topped up by the audience or philanthropists. Better, I’d say to consider all of your income as earned (my second point) by creating value for someone, rather than provided so you can do what you want to. (Grant income being as ‘earned’ in that sense as ticket income or profit from catering – and sometimes not earned as quickly or efficiently either.)

My third point was echoed by a number of others, which is to increase income you need to deepen your relationships and offer more, more creatively. What might happen if an organisation applied Kevin Kelly’s ‘1000 True Fans’ thinking to their work, for instance?

There were lots of interesting ideas that came up during the morning. A few of them were:

The importance of investing in commercial activity that may not bring an immediate return
The importance of stories in bringing investors on board
The importance of investing in marketing activity (which has remained level according to ACE statistics)
The need to see investment as something which can be returned and increased, not just used up (ie spent!)
The opportunity of crowd funding.

My old colleague Moira Sinclair did a sterling job in a tricky position, asked to talk about ACE funding, mid-NPO-process. (What I described to her beforehand as the Seamus Heaney ‘whatever you say say nothing’ challenge.) She agreed with Sandy Nairne’s point about the need to invest in training and development – though I saw later that the Cultural Leadership Programme will close at the end of March, and leadership and organisational development be rolled together within ACE. Whilst understandable from a finance and narrow efficiency point of view, this is a shame, and does further concentrate things in one (shrinking) place, and not following up some programmes and maintaining this training line in the national budget would be a real loss.

If it wouldn’t have been downright annoying of me, I’d have asked Moira two questions:

How will ACE help/require organisations to invest properly in training and development, central to resilience, when negotiating NPO funding agreements (and the budgets behind them) with the organisations they fund?
What attitude will ACE take to the development of strategic reserves for investment in organisational and commercial development – will it urge/require sensible investment where budgets don’t show it, even if that means 'less art' in the short term?

Both questions, of course, relate to the tension boards and funders share in maximising cultural reach and impact whilst building adaptive resilience, torn between wanting to ‘put the money into the art’, attract audiences and demonstrate value, and ‘investing for future sustainability’.

I think I may also have challenged Jeremy Hunt to show us his will if he wants the UK to be a place where it's normal to leave 10% of your legacy to charity...

Last word on Sartre

2011-02-22T09:15:00.000Z

Just to finish off on Sartre: this is the last paragraph of his autobiographical book Words it sums up all sorts of things for me, the last sentence especially, despite the unfortunate gender issue:

'I have never seen myself as the happy owner of a 'talent': my one concern was to save myself - nothing in my hands, nothing in my pockets - through work and faith. Now at last my unadulterated choice did not set me up above anyone: with neither tools nor equipment, I gave my entire self to the task of saving my entire self. If I put away Salvation among the stage properties as impossible, what is left? A whole man, made of all men, worth all of them, and any one of them worth him.'

And here are a couple of carefully contrasting videos for those who you who prefer the moving image...

Re. arts: thoughts from Sartre - choice, collectivity, collaboration and contingency

2011-02-21T13:08:00.006Z

I recently came across Talking with Sartre, a fascinating book of ‘conversations and debates’ between Jean-Paul Sartre and John Gerassi, recorded between 1970 and 1974. When I was sixteen I had a picture of Sartre stuck to my guitar, cut from his obituary, and a Penguin Modern Classic of The Age of Reason in my long-overcoat pocket. (Think I can be a bit much now, you should have met me then...) Sartre fell out of fashion – after the collapse of the Berlin Wall I guess, but probably also because he wasn’t as cool looking as Camus – but for me he still sat there in the background, till Hazel Rowley’s book on his relationship with Simone de Beauvoir Tête à Tête revived my interest in and respect for a peculiar and flawed man who struggled to find an authentic way to be in the world, coming to define a kind of engagement with ideas and politics – and writing.

I don’t have time or space for a ‘reassessment’ of Sartre, nor the philosophical knowledge. But I found this book of essays so stimulating I wanted to share a few tangential thoughts relating to arts and culture inspired by it, as well as letting those interested know about its existence.

Making choices is central to authentic life, and always difficult. But avoiding them is childish romanticism. As Gerassi describes in an afterword, this is the essential difference between the two big existentialists Sartre and Camus. Camus refused choice – said No – which leads to the archetype of the rebel. (I prefer Marx’s formulation myself: ‘Whatever it is I’m against it.’ The Marx in question being Groucho, obviously.) Sartre said, in Gerassi’s words, ‘what we must do instead is commit ourselves over and over again. No act is pure. All acts are choices, which alienate some. No one can live without dirty hands. To be simply opposed is also to be responsible for not being in favour, for not advocating change.’ The relevance to today’s environment of cuts and choices is obvious. Especially for leaders, using commitment to avoid cynicism is especially key. What are we saying yes to? Also integral to Sartre’s reflections here is that you will get some of the choices wrong – but this is part of the process , just keeping making decisions in good faith. Acknowledging and respecting this is important.
‘There is no I without the we.’ This sums up my main argument with Richard Eyres’ recent article about cuts to the arts. Eyre says ‘Art is about the "I" in life not the "we", about private life rather than public. A public life that doesn't acknowledge the private is a life not worth having.’ I would say the reverse is more urgently true given this government’s policies – and much of the way we act as a society, to be fair to them for one second. Private life needs to acknowledge the public life more. And yes, people who spend your kids to private schools, I do mean you, sorry. So that sense of the social and collective I find very powerful.
Sartre and De Beauvoir are famous for having an open relationship – they committed to each other as young people, saw each other every day, are buried next to each other, but had other lovers. They termed their own relationship as ‘necessary’ and the others as ‘contingent’, a term rich in meaning for Sartre. This was not always easy for them or their lovers – the great American novelist Nelson Algren famously couldn’t deal with being ‘contingent’ - but gave clarity if nothing else. In a recent discussion about partnerships and collaborations in the cultural sector it struck me that the idea of ‘necessary’ and ‘contingent’ partnerships might be helpful in at least managing conflicted feelings people seem to have about working with others. Which of your partnerships are for the long-term, even when they evolve, and which are contingent? A side thought is these interviews reveal Sartre to have been much less doctrinaire in who he would work with than one might suspect from his image – so long as they were working on the same cause. His emphasis on choice made him less rather than more ‘politically correct’ in his collaborations.
A line that both Gerassi and Sartre refer to several times in their conversations is a quote from The Age of Reason ‘You don’t fight fascism because you’re going to win. You fight fascism because it is fascist.’ This links somehow to Havel’s distinction between hope and optimism: “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” I find that a reassuring and enabling thought just now: pragmatic but the opposite of cynical.

Ok, enough. I will now go directly to Pseud's Corner, without passing go or collecting 200 francs...

Marketing and resilience: predictability, curiosity and transformation

2011-02-03T19:39:00.001Z

(image by Stuart Caia from http://www.flickr.com/photos/kyz/3340435464/ under Creative Commons.)

I recently took part in an AMA discussion day where 10 people (who had to apply for the privilege!) discussed the relevance or otherwise to marketing teams of the 8 characteristics of resilient arts organisations identified in Making Adaptive Resilience Real , and how marketing teams could help build them.

For me it was a fantastic opportunity to hear how people react to that framework, and how they might use it. (Writing anything is, in my experience, a bit like putting a message in a bottle, so to be part of a really engaged conversation where people apply their experiences to something you’ve written was really great, so huge thanks to all who took part.)

One things I came away with particular ‘need to think about’ was the notion of ‘predictability’ and the sense or otherwise of either aiming for it – or indeed believing it can be achieved. Is a greater degree of predictability - in some of your income lines, say – inherently conservative? My initial reaction is sometimes, but not necessarily. Having some predictable income can help you to take risks and to invest in things which make take some time to see a reliable return either financially, artistically or organisationally. This is why I place particular emphasis on building up strategic reserves – this allows you to move away from an activity-budget based approach to one of investment. And of course predictions are always only that – guesses, in other words - and need to be constantly assessed against reality.

The need for balance between change and continuity runs through my thinking on adaptive resilience – and indeed my thinking on other ‘ecology’ matters. The challenge though is whether adaptive resilience is ambitious or radical enough. Do we need transformative resilience? My view now, as when writing the paper, is that ‘transformative resilience’ is a sexier term, undoubtedly, but also suggests the kind of permanent revolution I think spins the adaptive cycle too quickly and threatens the baby/bathwater balance. There are times for transformation, of course, and this is probably one – but that is often best done from a base of resilience as well as danger or excitement.

A third notion came up I want to ponder on, which is the role of curiosity in the arts and marketing the arts. Should one add curiosity into ‘situation awareness’ – looking for what we don’t know we need to know, as well as what we do? (Rumsfeld Alert! Rumsfeld Alert!) This sits well with another word I like which Susan Royce threw into the resilience mix, ‘agile’. How do we use our collective intelligence, curiosity, data and persuasive powers – all things marketers bring to organisations – to strengthen organisations and the sector as a whole?

Answers on a postcard, please...

Culture Change: first, change your mind

2011-01-31T13:52:00.001Z

What’s needed to thrive despite the turbulent times was the theme of the ‘Culture Change’ conference at the National Theatre last week, organised by Mission Models Money with support from the Cultural Leadership Programme. There are lots of things I could write out of the day. Subjects I don’t have time to cover properly include:

Ed Vaizey and how to read a speech as if you’ve never read it before that very moment and could be reading a shopping list.
The emphasis Vaizey put on technology as a driver of innovation, including the announcement of some new funds and appointments (not his, but Arts Council’s, I think he was saving Alan Davey the trouble of including in his speech) and Shelagh Wright’s counter-challenge that it’s changing relationships that are key, not changing technology. (‘The white heat of culture’ as she put it.)
Alan Davey’s observation that he has never known Whitehall so fragmented as it is now
The opportunity of taking another look at how the arts sit in and drive the creative industries, lost somewhat since McMaster drove out Chris Smith era arts policy
The way some of the younger speakers, such as Ed Wilding of WeDidThis and Cat Harrison had of cutting to the chase and whether others are simply too used to just defining our terms a bit more
Cat Harrison’s great talk about the power of ‘the emerging’ and the ‘slashies’ – those who are artists/producers, artists/something. I think of myself as a slashie – check the logo – so would just add that emerging is a state of being not a stage of life

I facilitated a session on reconfiguring business models. Although it was a really good discussion, we maybe did not get down to the nitty gritty of how you practically move from one state to another – or perhaps we did. After exploring collaboration and how it links to design and redesign (perhaps because it encourages reflective practice?) discussion moved on to funding and the role of subsidy and the encouragement to develop more earned income or diverse income streams. The ‘subsidy+’ business model is clearly deeply ingrained – so much so that some thought you could add any business model to subsidy, as if subsidy was not part of a business model.

I think this suggests a fundamental - but nonetheless practical - first step to reconfiguring business models which is reconfiguring or resetting mindsets and vocabulary. Only when you change your mindset from activity at almost any price, certainly over long-term resilience, can you have a serious conversation about strategic reserves, for instance. The need for reserves was stressed by several speakers. No one asked Alan Davey how ACE would address this in NPO assessment and negotiations afterwards, how much activity they’d be prepared to forgo for resilience, or how hard they’d insist on sensible reserves strategies.

Joe Ludlow, from NESTA, talked of the need for an ‘investment mindset’, which would help both funders and funded be clearer, which is very much what I’ve long argued, and d rive reconfiguration. The language issue is always tricky here: just as many people hear ‘business model’ and think of big business and the for profit modus operandi, ‘investment model’ also suggests short term returns. Ludlow stressed the need to move from focusing on ‘what we are going to do and where we get the money from to do it’ to concentrating on ‘what resources or activities we need to develop in order to deliver our mission and how we invest in those’. The latter feels more realistic and reliable to me, but does need more practical know-how to be shared.

There are plenty of people engaged in adapting or transforming their models, sharing the toolbox they are developing – which is what MMM would like to encourage through its (re)evolution This may be one way of getting down to the real nitty gritty.

Philip Pullman nails it: market fundamentalism

2011-01-30T18:59:00.001Z

I'm a little late on this, as it's been going viral for a few days, and that became the story in the Guardian the other day, but better late than never I always say...

Philip Pullman's speech against library closures , which you can see in full on the False Economy site here, destroys not just the case for closing libraries, but the nonsense of the idea that volunteers will take over key services, and the implicit and pernicious competition between groups and communities this will involve. I've tried one a few occasions to describe how this coalition is bringing everything down to markets and the fetishing the choice to pay. But Pullman captures this better than I ever have (hardly surprising, really) with the phrase 'market fundamentalism'. That feels about right for what's going on: the simplistic sweeping away by ideas which refuse to accept doubt.

I need to think through how one avoids flipping away from this fundamentalism into another which simply demands public money to provide good things for good people. I'm thinking of business modelling which looks at value propositions and talks of customers, even though that word has always been an awkward fit. You should do things for or with someone, I intuit, not simply because you want to. Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in Lewis Hyde's thinking in The Gift, and the notion of potlatch or gift economies. As he puts it: 'it is not when a part of the self is inhibited and restrained, but when a part of the self is given away, that community appears.' Perhaps if we move from the idea of tax as a purchase (next person to say I own a bank gets it!) to one of a gift to the community in which one gets something back in a reciprocal rather than consumer relationship, that may help.

Anyway, while I ponder that, I suggest you read Pullman's speech, and pass it on.

(Picture above is a mindmap of The Gift by Austin Kleon at http://www.flickr.com/photos/deathtogutenberg/2240691604/.)

What it can't get I can't use

2011-01-21T10:58:00.001Z

A little something for the weekend...

Well, if you're an English arts organisation wanting to become parts of Arts Council England's National Portfolio, you've not got long to finish honing those 3000 word descriptions of what you do and how you'll help ACE achieve their goals by doing it. I thought a little fantastic music might be a spur or just some light relief if you've just pressed submit, or mistakenly think this song is not deadly serious.

Try as I might I couldn’t find a song that said ‘Strategic partnership – that’s what I want’. (Suppose I could have gone with ‘Come together’, but I have allergy to the Beatles - and no, they didn't write this song, Berry 'Motown' Gordy and Janie Bradford did. I once won a fiver over that. Barratt Strong did the original, though there's a great version by Uncle Smokey and the Miracles too.)

As well as giving you 2.33 seconds of delight or irritation, this video might also be a reminder of a few things:

• For all talk of shared mission, money is what it is, and can mean different things to different people, but you should never forget it's there
• Clarity of what you both want is key to the funded/funder relationship

• Don’t mistake behaviour for intent

• There was a time when avant-garde musicians could combine humour and seriousness AND get in the charts and Top of the Pops. (and this in the days when you had to sell serious numbers to get in the top ten.)

But mainly it's for fun. Do you know, each of those bullet points is a word in the word count...

Promising news from Darlington

2011-01-13T08:48:00.000Z

The post I wrote in November about the plans to close or dispose of the Civic Theatre and Arts Centre in Darlington was one of the most read last year. It also received some interesting comments (and emails) raising issues around the extent to which the institutions had been fully engaged in community and amateur activity, the status of professional and voluntary arts activity, and how best to lobby to save and develop the arts in Darlington.

There was good news from Darlington, reported in the Northern Echo here. Or at least potentially good news: both venues have been given what's described as a 'stay of execution' so that more work can be done on keeping them open or finding new operators. This is good news, although I am sure there are caveats not in the headlines (what's the impact on programming, for instance?) and lots of knotty work going on behind the scenes. Good luck - and well done so far - to everyone involved.

It is a promising sign that foolhardy intentions such as the Council's can sometimes be changed by concerted effort by a spread of people - from Arts Council to arts organisations to local people such as Darlington For Culture who've come together in classic style. Immediate crisis averted, however, there is still a need for pressure to create a long-term future for some key local assets.

Other sources

2011-01-07T09:22:00.004Z

A couple of people I've worked closely with over the last few years have just started blogs - must have been a New Year thing - so I thought I'd give them a mention and also point out the new blogroll feature on the site. (Right hand side, down a bit... Email subscribers, that only works if you click through to the site, obviously) It's not comprehensive and doesn't aim to be, but will hopefully be useful to you. If you think I'm missing out on the most amazing blog or ideas site, then let me know.

The people I mentioned are Tom Shakespeare, who used to be my chair at Arts Council England, North East, and Alison Clark-Jenkins, who was one of the Directors there and is now the regional Director. Tom's site is a set of short biographies of important people with disabilities from world history, and can be found here. The site takes its name Our statures touch the skies from an Emily Dickinson poem. I can see the book already.

Alison's site is called Arts and Everyone, for obvious reasons. The credo seems to be 'let's talk about it', which is a good one. I really hope she starts a trend for blogging Arts Council staff - something I singularly failed to do when I tried.

The first rule of fundraising....

2011-01-06T11:53:00.000Z

Still on the subject of fundraising, today's Big Think newsletter is all about Edward Norton's Guide to 21st Century Fundraising. Norton is talking not because fundraising is like punching yourself in the face (we've all seen Fight Club I hope?) but because he has just launched a crowdsourcing fundraising site Crowdrise. This is US only right now, but his advice on fundraising is good and relvant to the UK I think. Key tips in the Norton interview and listed on the Crowdrise site include:

it's a relationship not a cause (I'd add or a transaction based on your cause). Think about the relationship not just what you want to make happen (eg get the donor to support you the writer, not just your fabulous collection of poetry)
give yourself (or maybe make obvious what you're not earning in order to make your project happen?)
keep it simple and compelling
'say thank you and make it so nice they cry'. Your mum was right - never underestimate the power of please and thank you. (I made the same point myself some time ago here.)

Interestingly, Norton links this social media-informed fundraising to the potential for democratising political processes. This is similar to the argument a soon-to-be-launched UK arts crowdsourcing site We Did This make about democratising arts funding through crowdsourcing. I'm not sure I entirely buy that, but then I am a recovering bureaucrat. It will be interesting to see how it works when up and running.

New Year News: philanthropy in the regions can be done

2011-01-06T10:58:00.002Z

The one clear cultural policy idea the new government has pushed is philanthropy - stepping in as the state withdraws proportions of its funding, at both national and local levels. (The Tory-led coalition has effectively abolished regions as planning and funding units, so we don’t need to mention that formerly key level.) They have been remarkably quiet on audiences, but philanthropy is another version of the marketisation which underlies their policies in most areas: if people want or need something they will pay for it (now or later via loans) or find a voluntary way of doing it. Charitable donation via ATM would have seemed satirical once upon a time, now we have to wonder who’ll get put forward.

The idea that philanthropy should or even could plug gaps left in public funding has been met with both resistance and scepticism by the arts sector, although it could be said it builds very firmly on established traditions of barter, in kind and financial support, as well as now deeply embedded practice in sponsorship. There have been two main lines of attack, both of which seem backed up by the statistics: a) the meaningful sums go to the big organisations not the medium sized and small organisations and b) the money goes to organisations in London rather than the rest of the country (also known to some as ‘the provinces’ or ‘the regions’). B may, of course be related to A.

To these critiques I would add the unpredictability of philanthropy, the huge effort and variable return of creating endowments (seemingly the government’s simplistic preferred option), and the distraction factor which can see philanthropy preventing proper long-term investment in the creation of assets and renewable activity.

But that said, some of the arguments against the government’s case have been weak. The argument that there are no rich people in certain parts of the country to turn into arts philanthropists, for instance, strikes me as simplistic. One good thing about philanthropists is a few of them go a long way. The challenge in a place like, say, Teesside where I live, with next to no stockbrokers or bankers or national/multi-national head offices is that the few potential givers are approached by lots of people, and can soon become fully committed no matter how much money they’ve got. (Forming personal foundations is one way they can manage that, as is gifting to regional community foundations.) There are however, some people with money and a commitment to the arts, and some now departed ‘local boys and girls made good’ with a fondness for their home towns, so even in seemingly unpromising places it can be done- but only with the ‘right’ activity that makes connection to an individual. It’s therefore not a universal panacea and shouldn’t be expected of all organisations.

That it can be done in the North East, to some extent, was shown again yesterday by this story in The Journal about Seven Stories, the national home for children’s books in Britain which is in a regeneration area in Newcastle. Set the challenge by a very generous (and not local) donor to match his potential donation of £25,000 in order to receive it, as the start of a campaign to mark 5 years of operation in their building, they have more than done so, drawing on local businesses and individuals.

Seven Stories has a very ‘backable’ offer, given the connection many people feel to children’s books and illustration and using the arts to encourage a love of reading and books – and it is a brave and risk-taking undertaking supported by reservoirs of goodwill. It has drawn on board members’ networks and expertise, and approached the task very strategically, very positively, very professionally and with the right kind of urgency. (I should say – ‘disclose’ - I’ve just joined the board of Seven Stories, but so recently I can in all honesty say I’ve had literally nothing to do with the success of this campaign.)

My point is not to say how great the team at Seven Stories are or their work is, though they are. (Don't take my word for it though - listen to the children and the 4 Children's Laureates in the video above.) It is to start the new year with some good news, and an example of how some seemingly almost-impossible challenges set can be met. I know there are other examples, which have used similar tactics, based on similarly strong arts work. I also acknowledge the scale issues - not just of the sums for individual organisations, but when you multiply it up across the sector. But while not accepting philanthropy as the heart of investment in culture, it is important to give it its due place, and to know it can be done when you place the art at the heart of the ask and ask well.

Season's greetings

2010-12-23T11:05:00.004Z

I'm out of here until the New Year. Last year I managed 94 blog posts on Arts Counselling. This year's combined total is 57, though with slightly more visitors - almost 6000. The subscriber list has also quickly overtaken that of Arts Counselling.

Why has Thinking Practice been less prolific than Arts Counselling, I hear you ask? Well, it may be as simple as that I have done many fewer trips to London on the train, which is when many of my Arts Counselling blogs were knocked off - I mean carefully crafted. (You do not want to know how often regional ACE execs have to go to London.) Also I've been even busier than I expected working on with some great clients.

Anyway, I hope to keep a rhythm of about one post a week in the New Year, and will be sprucing up the blog and website soon. Whether you're one of the people who've been here more than 200 times, or one of those who just swing by occasionally - thank you. (Thanks especially to the subscribers - it's a spur to writing to know it'll be in your inbox the next day.) But now go and do something else - it's Christmas!

2010 and all that

2010-12-20T18:20:00.003Z

I’ve seen at least two lists-cum-looks-back at the year which have begun ‘I don’t like lists and rounds ups of the year...’. Well, I do like lists and things which make me look back and look to see if I’ve missed something, and anyway, it’s my blog and I’ll list if I want to...

Queue I Wished I’d Joined: The queue to sit opposite Marina Abramovich at moma in New York. The same, rather selfish man was there the whole time we were in the museum, with a very patient queue waiting. Some amazing photos of that work here (Marina Abramovich Made Me Cry) - and a parody here . (Marina Abramovich Made Me High.)

Brassed Up Award for Best Use of a Tuba: Cornelia Parker’s Perpetual Canon at BALTIC. (See a picture here.)

(My Belated) Poetry Discovery of the Year: Albert Goldbarth – fantastic US poet I stocked up on when there, but discovered thanks to the Poetry Trust. See some of his shorter work here. he specialises in very long, but entertaining and resonant poems.

Basho Award for Poetic Tweeting: (@ArtsThink) Andrew Nairne. The un-Goldbarth, with a penchant for skies.

Sgt Pepper Let-me-introduce-you Award for Networking: Marcus Romer for Artsfunding et al

Best Excuse for Using the Word Proustian: Orhan Pamuk’s novel ‘The Museum of Innocence’, next to which everything else I read this year seemed timid, despite the odd (Proustian) languor.

Milking it with Panache Award for Longest Birthday Celebrations: 40 year old Northern Stage

Album of the year: 'Measure' by Field Music, which also featured the aphorism of of the year: ‘Them That Do Nothing Make No Mistakes’. (Hence the video above, featured on Arts Counselling in February, but worth repeating.)

Mark E. Smith Award for Repetition, Repetition and Repetition: the Tory-led Coalition for ‘we’re all in this together’ and ‘the deficit is nothing to do with banks, it’s that greedy public sector’

Immaculate Barndoor Award for Missing the Target: David Shrigley’s Save the Arts video

Bonus track/surprise award of the night:

Franz Kafka Memorial Award for Metamorphosis: Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems.

Some thoughts after taking adaptive resilience on the road

2010-12-14T22:15:00.009Z

If one word has echoed through 2010 for me it has been resilience. There have been days recently when I’ve heard references to resilience of railways to snow, the resilience of some leaky defence, and the resilience of bimbo-fascist Berlusconi within the same hour – or so it felt. It’s been there in conversations about cuts, about change and about growth. It's also been there in my own development of Thinking Practice as a new business, and of myself in a new environment. That's been all about adaptive behaviour, and all about resilience as one basis for creativity.

Since Arts Council England published Making Adaptive Resilience Real in July I have also been busy talking and honing my own thinking about adaptive resilience in the arts (that extra word is important, even though it adds another 3 syllables to an already clunk term). From Glasgow, where I was part of a forum to mark Market Gallery’s 10th birthday which took place above a bed/wardrobe shop in the Barras Market, to Cambridge for AMA’s Retreat, where my conference centre room had a rocking chair and the sweetie bowls had Werther’s Originals, I’ve been explaining how an understanding of the adaptive cycle can make change more manageable, and how organisations and sectors can take some control of their situation by consciously developing their leadership, culture, networks and assets alongside income from more diverse range of sources. I’ve done sessions for Audiences North East, AndCo and the Strategic Arts Network Northamptonshire via Cultivate, which shows how the ‘audience development agencies’ are developing organisations and networks as well as audiences, and how they contribute to sectoral resilience and change by their work on the frontline of arts development. I’ve also spoken in Huddersfield at the launch of the Creative Kirklees Strategy and developed workshops for use with boards, staff and networks to explore how adaptive and resilient they are. Just today I’ve had enquiries about publications or events in places as almost-identical as Adelaide and Lincoln. (Dates still available for 2011... end of plug. Forgive me, I have students to keep.)

It has been interesting – and challenging – taking something from an argument and the presentation of a number of frameworks to something more practical. Partly this is a refining of language and presentation. I would see the adaptive cycle and the 8 characteristics as frameworks, rather than prescriptive or theoretical – they have been useful to people as a way of understanding their experience, before shaping their own future, rather than because they are ‘right’. Certainly there are other ways of describing the characteristics of adaptive resilience. Susan Royce, for instance, has taken my thinking on a step or several in her excellent work on business models in the visual arts for the Turning Point Network. She suggests an organisation must be:

- attractive to a range of co-funders
- agile: able to innovate and respond to change
- able to achieve its goals.

Susan’s 3 As are certainly easier to remember than my 8 characteristics, although she does add some supplementaries: being well-led, well-managed and having an appropriate organisation culture.

The main challenges identified during all the conversations I’ve been having have been

- persuading funders and boards (and maybe even to a lesser degree staff) to invest in the creation of assets in a time of ‘austerity’ – this takes a great deal of boldness and nerve, as any long-term investment is also a wager on the future
- developing designated reserves or working capital that can be strategically invested at the right time – into building or refurbishments or moves, renewals, staffing, change projects or asset-creation – as well as simply ‘reserves for closing costs’. (This subject is also looked at in MMM’s excellent Capital Matters report.)
- making the time to strengthen networks without getting over-committed and losing focus
- coping with the lack of predictability of public sector and charitable funds. There were different opinions about whether audiences are predictable income or not – my own view is that they ought to be, with a range of error, which is useful for planning.
- shifting from a mindset of maximum activity to one of activity which also creates assets is a real leadership task in terms of both internal and external stakeholders
- just because you're resilient and prepared to change doesn't mean you can't get blown out of the water by 'events'

In many ways, the conclusion is what MMM and others have been saying for some years: the sector is hugely resourceful, but over-extended and under-capitalised. There are some people whose view can be summed up as ‘I’m still here, so I must be resilient’, and there are many who are absolutely up for taking responsibility for a self-determined approach to their long-term health. Though funders say they want to more resilient, less dependent approaches, the proof of the pudding will be in their reading of budgets. If the ‘extra’ expenditure needed to develop reusable product, or new income streams through on-line sales or versioning, or to create a strategic reserve is stripped out, the end result will be more activity but less resilience. It will time-shift the problem, not address it.

Feedback on the Big Society application

2010-12-07T11:35:00.004Z

When I worked for Arts Council England we spent many a happy hour debating how best to word feedback or rejection letters to unsuccessful applicants. (I mean we did it often, not that we did it in the pub over cheap drinks, just for the avoidance of doubt, although that might have been more efficient.) It was easier when letters were bespoke, but the introduction of grants for the arts and ever greater levels of necessary consistency, meant that things became more and more templatised. Having had more than a few rejection letters in my time, I knew there was nothing more likely to rub salt into the wounds than a badly-worded standard letter. Over time, the letters did get better - at least I thought so, I know some others would disagree. My not-so-inner pedant was ever alert to using words in ways no one else used them, for instance.

Anyway, that's just by way of introduction to this link, which is the best feedback letter I've ever seen on the Directory of Social Change's website - personal but objective, constructive and to the point. It's also very funny, being from Civil Society to the Government over its Big Society application:

'Failure to acknowledge and reference potential competitors and include a realistic risk analysis lost you significant marks....Although an outline plan of work was included as an appendix, our assessors felt that the lack of clear objectives, and the total absence of any measurable impact or outcomes, made most of the proposals quite unsupportable. You increasingly demand such information from those organisations you wish to partner with; our assessors felt that it would therefore be quite wrong for them to accept anything less from your own proposals.'

I would have ruled the application ineligible as lacking additionality, by the way...

Darlington arts cuts: time for 'charge' of the heavy brigade?

2010-11-21T11:24:00.007Z

One of the first local councils out of the blocks with their plans for cuts was Darlington, which is not far from where I live in neighbouring Stockton-on-Tees. It’s not a big place – it’s essentially a large market town swollen by its historical importance to the railway industry, and still benefits from being on the mainline from London to the North East and Scotland. It has sustained a receiving house theatre, the Civic, and Darlington Arts Centre, which as well as bringing touring shows and visual arts exhibitions to local people is also home to two important organisations in the National Association of Youth Theatres and Theatre Hullabaloo, who organise the Takeoff festival as part of their work creating theatre for young people. It also plays host to lots of local arts promoters from R&B Club to the Piano Society via the Media Group and others. (Don’t mention Big Society. Just don’t.)

Amongst the (massive) cuts was the withdrawal of all local authority support from the Civic and the Arts Centre. The arts service seems to be envisaged as a one or two person operation working in and from the main leisure centre in the town. (I associate this mainly with the big slides in the swimming pool which I enjoyed muchly when my kids were little, but think might be restricted in their use for site-specific theatre.) This seems madness on a number of levels, whatever the budget challenges Darlington Borough Council faces as a result of Coalition decisions. (It’s a Labour-run authority, and they’ve been quick – one could say eager – to point the finger at the government.)

I have been working with Theatre Hullabaloo recently and have been able to apply my ‘cafe’ test – does this venue feel well-used on a wet Wednesday afternoon? The answer is yes. The programme is varied, but of quality, and has been developed well in recent years. The refurbishment – funded by Arts Council England capital lottery as well as the local authority – has created a welcoming and usable venue, including a specialist studio, heavily used for young people’s theatre.

There is, as you’d imagine, lots of work afoot to try and persuade the authority to amend its plans and to seek a future of some sort for the Arts Centre. You can read about those here and here, and sign a petition here, if so inclined. Lynn Gardner has written about it well for the Guardian - although if that seems a run-down part of town, she really should visit the other side of town, as Arts Centre is surrounded by some lovely streets. (For once, it’s worth reading the comments on Lynn’s article as there are some good points made, and one of the councillors puts the case from Darlington Borough Council’s point of view as well as it can be put.) Lynn Gardner makes a very important point at the end, which I want to support.

When providing capital investment, Arts Council England has gone to lots of trouble to take what’s called a ‘charge’ on the resulting property or facility. This basically means the building can’t be sold or converted into a non-arts purpose without the permission of Arts Council, without the grant or a proportion being given back or, perhaps, alternative facilities being created. These charge agreements took up lots of time and effort for all involved, and are generally a ‘just in case’ provision. Well, now, in Darlington it looks like we might have a case -and who’s to say it’s the last.

Darlington Arts Centre was refurbished fairly recently with over £500,000 of Arts Council capital funding, from the last round – a highly competitive round, in which some other good projects didn’t get funded, or not to the level they might have. I well remember the arguments for it. That money was well used (you can see the studio in use in the video above - done to advertise the breakdancing sessions) but the Centre now faces potential closure as a result of the local authority’s decision. If it was to close the council would face a question of what to do with the building. The ‘charge’ is a real asset in helping them think about that. It is time, therefore, for Arts Council to get the charges out (and the lawyers, yes) and see what sway they might have.

Arts Council England should be absolutely clear that if the building is not used for arts purposes, or equivalent alternative provision made elsewhere in the town, they would require that grant back, and will use all available means to do so. Given the obvious reluctance of the council in making these cuts (yes, I’m a generous soul, I know) that might just make a difference – it is about numbers of £s after all. Almost as importantly it might also influence other local authorities considering taking decisions with similar implications. It makes clear – in hard financial terms - at least some of what is being thrown away with this kind of cut, and may help avoid some closures of facilities built with lottery funds. If you have to give back a large sum to make a short-term saving, it may not stack up. (Campaigners against potential closures elsewhere might also want to see if the letters E, R, D and F cause officials to grimace, as many buildings drew on European funds which may have similar restrictions - meaning alternatives should at least be investigated.)

This approach is not going to be a cure all, but for Arts Council to be a powerful advocate for the arts, it has to play nitty-gritty hard-ball as well as exhorting the virtues of the arts. What can the arts do, as the question seems to go? People need to know they can hire lawyers as well as artists, when they need to.

On Universities (and art finding you)

2010-11-09T22:41:00.005Z

Of all this coalition's society=what you pay for 'innovations', the one that's angered and depressed me the most has not been their attitude to arts funding. It's been their attitude to further and higher education. As someone in HE said to me last week, we are about to see the end of the public university. As the first person in my family to go to university, back in the Thatcher years which with hindsight look like a golden age for working class students, this would sadden and anger me, even if I wasn't now the parent of one university student, and one applying for next year. I should also say I don't just blame this government for the privatisation of higher education - it intensified under the last government.

This morning I saw a list of institutions that will lose ALL their funding for teaching - which has a preponderance of arts institutions, including the one my son has just started at. (There is some debate about the accuracy of the list, it should be said.) Then this evening I had my latest example of art-with-timing-humans-lack, when I read this passage from J.M Coetzee's (rather odd) novel Diary of a Bad Year:

It was always a bit of a lie that universities were self-governing institutions. Nevertheless, what universities suffered during the 1980s and 1990s was pretty shameful, as under threat of having their funding cut they allowed themselves to be turned into business enterprises, in which professors who had previously carried on their enquiries in soveriegn freedom were transformed into harried employees required to fulfil quotas under the scrutiny of professional managers.

In the days when Poland was under Communist rule, there were dissidents who conducted night classes in their homes, running seminars on writers and philosophers excluded from the official canon (for example, Plato). No money changed hands, though there may have been other forms of payments. If the spirit of the university is to survive, something along those lines may have to come into being in countries where tertiary education has been wholly subordinated to business principles. In other words, the real university may have to move into people's homes and grant degrees for which the sole backing will be the names of the scholars who sign the certificates.

Then, I came across this: The Free University of Liverpool, which is doing exactly that, as a protest, and maybe even also as art. It does make me have an optimistic thought though. Might the move to a consumer-market for higher education (just like some people have for education up to 18 - that's why they think it's natural and probably 'fair' we should all pay for everything or do without) might have some silver lining opportunities for the arts. Maybe practitioners could set themselves free of some of the downsides of the academy by taking back control of training? Maybe we could get away from feeling people need a degree to be a productive and creative human beings?

That sounds helplessly glass-half-full, though, I know, even to me. I don't know, maybe I'm just tired of negativity. If we can't change them, let's go around them.

No Redemption

2010-10-20T16:05:00.002+01:00

I'm chairing an event at the Durham Book Festival on Saturday (23 October) with novelist David Peace and photographer Keith Pattison, marking the 25th anniversary of the end of the Miner's Strike of 84-85. It seemed somehow appropriate to mention it today.

Spare us the cutter

2010-10-20T15:06:00.008+01:00

I should probably have been talking about the CSR for a while, but to be honest, I've been a combination of too busy and not motivated to do so. I have been thinking about it, but have not found, at the right time, anything I thought was useful to say. (At times, I'll admit, I had that old saying 'if you can't something nice say nothing' in my head.) You can read about the results for the arts here and see if you recognise your reality in the government's version here.

It seems as if the campaigning has had some, limited and potentially side-effect-inducing, effect. Jeremy Hunt wants ACE to restrict the hit to 'front-line' to 15%. Unfortunately this means ACE taking another hit on the costs of skilled people, premises, and operating well across England, even bigger than the one given by the last government. I know how hard it was to design a structure with a reasonable chance of delivering the service artists, the public and partners need, such as working with local authorities who might be thinking of withdrawing funds. In the last restructure - mainly savings-driven - we saved around 15% - the new team now have to save 50%, whist redrawing that frontline, reshaping the portfolio of organisations and working with local authorities to maximise whatever they have left to invest. It is a devil of a challenge, and will take a very clear, very focused view of what can best be added to the arts ecology by a funding and development agency. (Or, as someone just tweeted, magic calculators.) I would suggest another close look at the principle of 'building' and buying', I outlined in my paper Making Adaptive Resilience Real and here, and thinking about where most influence can be had. (CSR suggests that may not be Westminister, sorry.) I would also recommend the thinking in MMM's latest publication Capital Matters. It will inevitably look different from what we now have, in terms of how it works and how it is delivered. The accompanying challenge is for the sector to adapt how it relates to ACE and other funders. There will be an understandable temptation to 'simply' fund as much art production as possible, but that should not be at the expense of long-term developmental activity.

I have not returned to my South African trip yet, but will. I am reminded today though, that when I first visited the Eastern Cape in 2006, I said to Peter Stark of the Swallows Partnership that I had actually enjoyed spending in a time in a country that was still political - where there was genuine ideological debate and difference. At the time it felt like Britain had moved on from that. This just goes to show I am not only daft but also stupid, sometimes. (Although the feebleness of Labour's failure to talk about the Coalition's ideologically driven approach to dismantling the ways the state supports those the market would let rot perhaps suggests I might have had a point: we prefer to talk about house-keeping, not politics.)

What the Chairmen are telling us

2010-10-01T08:19:00.004+01:00

If you're ever foolish enough to dip into the comments on any article or blog about the arts on a newspaper's website (if that phrase doesn't make me sound very old!), you'll know there are people out there who don't just not value the arts, they resent public money going to the arts, and probably hate artists. You can't tell how many there are, but they're there. (Actually, the Arts Council's Public Value work picked up on the resentment factor a little, though mainly that talked about feelings of exclusion.)

This brought to mind Basil Bunting's poem 'What The Chairman told Tom', which begins:

'Poetry? It's a hobby.
I run model trains.
Mr. Shaw there breeds pigeons.

It's not work. You dont sweat.
Nobody pays for it.'

and ends

'Go and find work.'

(You can read the whole poem here.)

The poem is based on an experience of Tom Pickard, but as he's said, is also about Bunting's own experiences. There have been times the poem felt a little historical, but it appears that may be changing. There is a challenge, however, in this: in articulating the work of being a writer or artist, we need to find ways of not making it seem like a hobby, like a break from reality, describing it as a profession for some who want to make it so, with all that involves perhaps, without making out it is exactly the same as any other job. It's a tough one.

Home thoughts from the Eastern Cape

2010-09-29T21:06:00.008+01:00

I'm in South Africa at the moment, in the Eastern Cape. I am visiting Isiseko Senkonjane, the Swallows Foundation South Africa, in two roles: as chair of the Swallows Foundation UK, the UK charity which administers one end of the Swallows Partnership, between the Eastern Cape and North East England (a partnership at a political level as well as between artists and cultural organisations, rather than 'simply' cultural) and as poet/literary type looking at the development of what they call 'word arts' around the Grahamstown Festival.

This afternoon I was introduced to a group of creative writing students as a dramaturg from Live Theatre, which I'm very much not. (I have been helping the team at Live get ready to launch, next month, a ground-breaking on-line playwriting course, developed by the new writing team from a highly successful 'real world' original, Beaplaywright.com, which is where the impression came from I suspect. And I'm of course more than happy to be associated with Live Theatre - though all the real Live people are this week opening Lee Hall's The Pitmen Painters in New York City.) After a moment's panic I was able to smoothly move on to talking about writer development in the North East, perceptions of British writing (Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill the newest writers the group were aware of) and the commonalities of making your way as a writer in places far from the centres of cultural and other capital, without resorting to inflicting my own poems on the poor young things. (That comes later in the week.)

I will try and capture in a few blogs towards the end of my stay here some of the experience, but have already been struck by two conversations about the similarities and dis-similarities with attitudes to artsfunding and survival as an artist.

Last night I had dinner with two young managers at Port Elizabeth Opera House, the city's main theatre. (I'd met their boss earlier in the day at the Swallows SA board meeting.) Somehow, with a grant of around £50,000 a year, the team there run a theatre with a staff of 16, doing outreach and development work as well, although not as much as they would like. How is this done, I asked? Well, it's not through philanthropy alone, but by really 'sweating the assets' - in their case primarily the building. This also opens up the Opera House to a much wider range of communities. (Last time I visited the Opera House, in 2007, it was rammed for a hiphop gig by local township youth.) That's not to say it's easy, or smooth, and there are no doubt compromises and difficult choices, but by looking at what they have and who both wants and needs it, the team there seem to be adapting something rare, despite losing funding massively some years ago, as a result not of government but general cultural politics. (As I understood it anyway.)

Then this evening I was talking to the artistic director of Ubom, an Eastern Cape Drama Company, who described a very typical picture of survival through hard work and quality, recognisable to small companies the world over, no doubt. This included developing product for particular markets, such as schools, on particular subjects, such as climate change. But all in ways which enabled imaginative work and, crucially, paid full-time employment for the team - in itself a significant statement in a part of the country where full-time artist is not seen as an option for employment. (Every single student in the group I'd spoken to earlier saw themselves leaving Grahamstown as soon as they'd graduated, and heading for the bigger cities like Johannesburg, Cape Town or Durban.) This company did have some National Arts Council funding, of around £25,000.

Conclusions for the UK artsfunding response, then? Make a little go even further than you think. Don't think of buildings as liabilities but as real tools for making, showing, creating and earning. (I know there are strains of thought that arts buildings are 'very 20th century', but I think that is itself a luxurious and oddly purist attitude to take, even when I'm not in South Africa.) Use what you've got, because you've probably got more than you think. Don't wait for others to help you. Don't be too pure. More probably, over time.

And more from Eastern Cape as I go along, and get access to broadband. Maybe even some photos and videos, we'll see.