So… the axe falls on the arts pretty heavily then. Guess we all saw that coming. Scrapping the film council was probably the most unexpected development and there seems to be mixed feelings about it ranging from a Skywalker-like “Noooooooooo!” to “Good riddance”.
Personally I don’t really know how I feel. I voted knowing that I was probably voting away a substantial slice of arts funding for the country as a whole, and I have many artist-friends who scratch their heads in befuddlement at how a fellow artist could do that, but there does come a time when there just simply isn’t any more money, a fact that the previous government must have been well aware of given that a certain ex-minister pointed it out in a rather shocking note to his successor.
It all brings up a rather interesting point – should the arts get *any* government funding?
My perspective is perhaps somewhat clouded by the fact that I’ve never personally recieved any arts funding from central government, but I wouldn’t say it’s held me back in my career. Art should be commercial shouldn’t it? Otherwise what’s the point? People should be willing to pay to see any shows or films I produce, otherwise what is there to drive me towards producing quality?
Of course, having said that I can’t help but notice that nearly all of the groundbreaking theatre work of the 20th century came out of the communist sphere of influence – Brecht in East Germany, Grotowski and his theatre laboratory in Poland… the freedom to experiment is what ultimately produces the greatest art, and how else could that freedom be ensured other than by public spending?
Nevertheless I would be very uncomfortable living as a fully publically-funded artist in a country where the entire working class lived in poverty. Surely there must be a better way? How did the contemporaries of Shakespeare survive other than by popularity?
Oh yeah, patronage. Any big businesses or independantly wealthy individuals out there fancy paying me an annual stipend?
Thought not.
But you’re speaking of, if you will, ‘collective’ art. Playwrights, filmakers etc. need people to appear in the things that they do, which is fine and dandy, but they can, and frequently do, take the aforementioned stipend as part of it. The ‘funding for the arts’ rarely applies to individuals doing things individually – writers of books, composers of requiems etc. Nor does it cover amateur groups who are often the first call for these things – those people fight for every penny and get very little if anything from local government (and only if they’re ticking checklists of minorities) and absolutely nothing from national.
So, no, I shall not cry at the loss of government funding for the arts. I can’t see how much good it’s done so far.
(And the communist musicians, by the by, were under very strict instuctions about the music that they produced: Shostakovitch is a very interesting case study in that respect – was what was happening really ‘freedom’ as you suggest or an attempt at mapping a political ideology onto an artistic form?)
A
By: Anthony on August 9, 2010
at 11:47 pm
I think I pretty much agree with all of that – Brecht was only tolerated for his communist credentials after all.
And I too am not really mourning the loss of substantial slices of arts funding bizarrely – like I said, I’ve never seen any of it – and there is something deep inside me which questions whether something should be propped up by other organisations if it can’t survive on its own merit. I’d rather see government cut artists some breaks in other ways – tax incentives, working-artist support schemes etc, than give huge sums of money to monolithic institutions like the arts council and film council so that those running them can dole it out to their mates.
And if the RNO goes under… will anyone care?
By: owenkingston on August 10, 2010
at 1:06 am