This week’s newsletter is a round-up of reading and watching that responds to some recent themes.
Many thanks to the recent influx of new subscribers – do have a poke around the archive to see what I’ve been banging on about. The archive goes back to 2010 and my old Blogspot blogs: to misquote Elvis Costello, there are a few lines I might regret, but nothing I need to forget.
Thanks also to those that voted in the recent poll about voiceovers. Although this was 82% in favour of there being no need, I will do them for the essay-like posts that lend themselves to being read aloud, for the 18% that liked or maybe need them. My main motivation was always accessibility, which demands no majority.
Creative Children, Stronger Families
I wrote recently about Theatre Hullabaloo’s Creative Children, Stronger Families national forum. You can now watch the video that was shown on the day, above, about the Let’s Play social prescription programme. The day apparently inspired the Director of Transformation at one NHS Hospital Trust to say “This should be the next vaccination programme. Every child gets their jabs, because we accept it is good for the health of the family. Creative Play should be seen the same way”.
Theatre Hullabaloo have also shared a short film about the event. If you spot me: I was a lot happier than I look.
More on change in the sector
Last week I was feeling somewhat anxious after news of several closures in quick succession. Pauline Tambling, ex-CEO of CC Skills, and a colleague of mine on Arts Council’s Executive Board for a spell too, had a differently-challenging perspective on the closure of CC Skills in a piece for Arts Professional. Pauline sees it less as a failure of funders and more one of employers not taking responsibility for skills and workforce development. This hits home with the ring of truth: the sector’s exceptionalism, even as it claims, rightfully, its importance as an employer, is a chronic condition.
Meanwhile, another approach to change within the adaptive cycle can be seen in the merger of The Audience Agency and Culture 24: two data-rich and future-facing organisations coming together to create hopefully sustainable models and offers. My money would be on more mergers to come.
Hybrid working, connection and collaboration across difference of opinions
I mentioned Arts Council England’s Inclusion Review a few weeks ago in relation to the arm’s length principle. But there are a lot of interesting things in it for anyone working in or with large organisations. That ACE have published this report, which has real criticisms and painful stories as well as positive findings, is to be welcomed and shows the seriousness of their intent in this area.
The report is especially interesting because it benchmarks ACE against other bodies – DCMS-funded bodies, an international arts council and a large private sector organisation. In some, such as inclusive recruitment they are ahead – albeit with room for improvement. (Having worked on a project with EW Group that did some work on this a few years ago, I was pleased to see this.) In others – advancement, support and consistency throughout the culture of the organisation, for instance – they are not close to where they want and need to be.
I was especially interested in the implications of/for new, hybrid working in the kind of organisations where “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, such as universities, national organisations, big multi-team cultural organisations. This is highlighted in the context of the difficulties ACE have faced around differing staff views on trans rights and gender critical beliefs. As I read it, post-pandemic ways of working have meant that people who disagree with each other (or worse – there are some distressing examples given in the report of aggressions, some not very micro) can essentially avoid being together, leading to or exacerbated by inconsistencies of leadership across areas.
I’m sure this is not unique to ACE. It’s also not just about hybrid working – the organisation has always contained people who disagreed vehemently with each other, and some avoidance tactics. (When I first visited Northern Arts it was based in a converted terraced building, with two entirely separate staircases, which meant some people could not see each other for weeks if they tried.)
Certainly in my time leading within organisations, I always wanted the key debates to be in the room. I needed to see/sense the reaction to potentially contentious decisions or strategies. Did X have that look on their face? How disengaged was Y pretending to be? Who got it and who was muttering? What could I/we learn from the debates? This was all important data.
But that was in the old world in several ways. If you are navigating cultural tensions in any large organisation where hybrid working is now the norm (which has many pluses of courses, which is why this is so complex), this may be a helpful read.
Artists’ roles and conditions
Finally, two recent reports on artists, their roles and their conditions, are well worth your attention.
The Role Of The Artist In Society, by Dr John Wright of the Centre for Cultural Value is a research digest of work on artists working in society or in socially engaged ways. A point which stood out for me was the need for “more support and care to both the artists and the people they are working with.” I’d say everyone involved, myself, but it’s a fair point, which came up in different ways in the conversation with artists I chaired at Borderlands CPP’s “journey so far” event last week. I was reminded by Ray Murefu of the idea of “ubuntu’ - “I am because we are” - which I find the heart of working against the ongoing opposites in the arts and society: “I am (an artist) because you are not” and its pernicious twin, “You are (an artist) because I am not.”
Another report now available features input from Dr John Wright – the summary of talks at a Summit in Aberdeen developed by Dr Susan Jones with Dr Jon Blackwood, Gray’s School of Art. The event built on artists’ activism on pay and conditions including the creation of FRANK in 2022 and weindustria’s report Structurally F*cked.