As we head into the final days of July 2020 it seems like a good moment to pause and reflect. Susan and I have now been blogging every week since lockdown and we will shortly be following our own advice and taking a bit of breather to look after our own well-being. Few of us have come through the last few months completely unscathed and we all have to find our own way to manage that. I’m looking forward to picking up the camera again and focusing on my creative work for a few weeks.
Before I do that, I wanted to share some reflections prompted by the excellent report recently published by the Carnegie UK Trust, ‘Building Back for the Better.’ If you haven’t already seen it, it is well worth a read. It is very concise and clear, and I found much of it resonated with the issues we have been blogging about in recent months.
This is a personal response to how our sector as a whole might think about the propositions raised in the report, Susan will do something similar later in the week. I may do a more in depth response at a later date but for now it’s an initial reaction. I couldn’t agree more with the report when it says:
… we have written our propositions in positive language. There is much that challenges us but having a hopeful approach and presenting an optimistic vision of the future feels, to us, to be particularly important at this time.
This is certainly borne out in my own experience and research, because the loss of hope is ultimately destructive.
I have thought through each of the six propositions in relation to the arts and cultural sector to see what they may mean as we move to the next phase and the ‘new’ new normal. Under each I have posed myself series of questions:
- National wellbeing can be the goal
- What place can creativity and culture play?
- How does the sector address its own inequalities?
- How does the sector address the wellbeing issues in its own communities?
- How can the sector join the public conversations about wellbeing?
- Can creativity and culture be integrated into the process of understanding what is important to people now?
- What lessons have we learnt from public engagement and how can they be better shared across the sector?
- How do we build responsive prototyping policy-making into arts and culture?
- Do we have the necessary cross-sectoral partnerships to play a key role in national wellbeing?
- The relationship between citizens and the state can be reset
- How can the sector enable and benefit from participatory democracy?
- How do we build on the localised mutual support activity that has developed in recent months?
- How effective have the arts and culture been in supporting social cohesion?
- How can the sector support cross disciplinary hyper local projects?
- How might the sector develop more participatory, equitable and accessible governance practices?
- Can the sector develop prototyping policy practices?
- The future can be local (as well as global)
- How can the sector support the rejuvenation of local democracy?
- What have we learnt from place-based programmes in the sector and how do we integrate that learning into future interventions?
- What partnership approaches can we build on and what new partnerships are needed across the sector?
- What investment decisions are needed to support place-based approaches?
- Our relationship with work can be remodelled
- How do we build fair work practices and policies across the sector?
- How do we secure a more balanced sector that does not place all the risk on the most financially vulnerable like freelancers?
- How do we organise differently to build trust and develop empowered teams?
- What new forms of organising might we develop?
- How do we acknowledge and act on the voices of creative practitioners/artists?
- How do we bring artists and creative practitioners into the heart of our organisations and engage them in governance and decision making?
- How do we tackle anxiety, stress, overstretch and burnout to support those working in the sector with a more balanced working life?
- We can build a new level of financial resilience
- What scope is there for alternative financial models based on shared resources like funding circles or mutual aid groups?
- Should arts and cultural organisations be required to hold a specific level of reserves?
- How do we support our sector workforce with better personal financial planning?
- Should funding follow individuals with a track record for effective delivery and sound financial management?
- Technology can be for all
- How can the sector play a role in addressing the social justice aspect of access to and use of digital technology?
- What role can the sector play in building skills, confidence and motivation to use technology (for its own workforce and its audiences/participants etc)?
- How can the sector endorse and disseminate safe technology practices?
- What have we learnt about digital delivery during lockdown that should be integrated going forward?
- How can the sector invest in digital inclusion?
- How does the sector support the design, delivery and engagement with relational as well as transactional digital services?
The propositions have been based on what the Carnegie UK Trust refers to as the SEED model. Although it could be argued that ‘social’ includes creativity/arts/culture I wonder if it is significant that it is not included in its own right. Including creative practices within the social element raises historical debates about the instrumental vs the intrinsic value of art and culture. I think there is a case for the addition of a ‘culture’ element and a seventh proposition that addresses creating and making in its own right. Maybe it’s something along the following lines:
We can create new perspectives on the value of the arts and culture
I’ve framed it this way because I think this is an opportunity to reset relationships with the arts and culture in a way we haven’t achieved over the years by arguing facts and economics. Having seen the explosion of creativity in recent months I think we have a chance to tell better stories and think differently about how we do what we do.
I’d be interested to know what questions the propositions raise for you. What would your culture proposition be?
Dawn