further to cultural funding
A couple of days ago I posted some initial thoughts on the way that cultural activities are funded prompted by the realisation that Salt Publishing, Vertigo film magazine and The Philoctetes Center for the Creative Imagination are all facing financial difficulties. My thoughts were very preliminary because I genuinely don't know how funding is best arranged for cultural endeavours, especially those of a minority interest. On the one hand it's clear that without generous patronage certain works may never be produced, or may take a very long time to reach the public. On the other hand there are obvious questions around what gets funded, by whom, what is demanded in return, and what is then excluded. While not immune from these problems, in the internet age poets are very shielded in comparison to film-makers or actors for instance. Poets can easily hold down a job or two and publish online. If you want to make even a moderately budgeted film it requires a significant investment of people, time, and money.
Apart from the questions that I raised, which I'll recap shortly, I had a bit of a debate with Richard Barrett who disagreed with me on some points, and who raised some interesting questions of his own. The debate mainly centred around what value we place on artists and art, how we assign that value, and whether subsidy has any place in all this. I hope he'll correct me if I have this wrong, but you can check the comments for yourself here, Richard's questions were:
1. Isn't it the consumer of cultural work who gives it value?
2. Or does art have an intrinsic value/purpose?
3. Does art/do artists occupy a separate realm from other people?
4. If other cultural endeavours are not subsidised why should art be any different?
5. He also suggested that it might be better for artists to focus on forming their own non-market networks.
After I responded by saying that I thought many of the channels through which poetry is mediated to people are not necessarily in the interests of poetry as a vital creative form, that it wasn't historically markets that were the primary decider of what gets published, and that I also didn't see any value in protecting poetry as a speical case Richard made some further points:
6. He argued that the kind of anthologies I'd attacked could have a valuable role in introducing new readers to poetry and encouraging exploration beyond the boundaries of the poetics represented by the anthologies.
7. He was also clear that he thinks there is a place for poetry that I might not want to read. And of course there is, and should be.
I still have a number of questions on this subject, and I am still interested in contributions to the discussion. Like anyone on any subject I have a number of directly contradictory opinions on a range of subjects, and I'd like to know what other people think. Some of this debate is quite close to some of the areas I intend to cover in a long essay coming soon about my relationship to poetry. In it I intend to talk about how I started to read poetry, how I came to write poetry, my frustrations with what gets published, my search for alternatives, and my ongoing attempts to understand what I read, and to place myself in some sort of context. So this discussion will also help clarify my thinking for that as well as rehearse some arguments you'll see crop up there.
I mentioned earlier that I'd recap the questions I raised in the initial post. So far as I can clarify my own thinking these were:
i. Is there any value in funding cultural organisations that can't fund themselves through markets?
ii. If such funding is available, what should that funding be, and how should it be managed? To be more specific, should it be short, medium or long term? Should it be aimed at specific products/outcomes, or should it be seen as a way of funding individuals/groups/communities in specific areas for a set amount and period of time with no prescribed goal? There are many more questions that could be asked - and I'm under no illusion that these are very long running arguments.
iii. What is the consequence of a lot of art being freely or very cheaply available?
iv. Specifically what then are the impacts on artists, and their ability to produce new work? It's easier to spend years writing a novel and to make it available online than it is to produce a play for instance.
It's arguable the debate got a little side-tracked next in my distaste for art used as therapy. In that case it's about to get sidetracked again. The arguments are what value art in this context has. This is a little tricky because I don't believe that art has an intrinsic value - it only comes from the consumer of a piece of art. Therefore you could say that if someone thinks it helps, or it makes them feel better that this represents real value. To borrow a phrase, I think you'll find it's more complicated than that. To help clarify why I think that, here is the next set of questions that came out.
v. Perhaps the question to begin with is what is art for?
vi. Followed by what is the purpose of therapy?
The reason I asked these questions is not that I don't believe non-specialists have a place in art, I think they have to have an important role in art, but more that I think there's a potential for sloppy thought and confusion that could potentially harm art, and more importantly, people. Obviously I need to explain this more clearly. I think we can all agree that most art is mainly enjoyed by non-specialists - either people who don't make art, or who work in a different area of the arts. I don't think it's especially contentious to say that it's desirable and normal for people to make their own art with no intention of taking it to the market/showing it to other people/attempting to make great masterpieces etc. It's probably equally uncontroversial to say that some people can find the act of making, and/or consuming art therapuetic. But crucially the ways we use art vary from person to person, and the reasons I write poetry may be different from the reasons I read poetry. Those again may be different from the reasons I take photographs, and from the reasons why I go to galleries.
Now to an extent by publishing books, by having gigs, by displaying art in galleries etc you're placing some limitations on the way that art is used. But these limitations are nothing like the specific limitations inherent in using art as a therapy. At the most basic you have an intended goal for the interaction - to enhance or perhaps even improve a person's mental (and possibly physical) wellbeing. This goal may have no relation to the various reasons why a particular individual has previously engaged with art. But for the moment let's assume that people engaged in art therapy are there because they choose to be, and have reasonable expectations of what it involves.
I have already made an assumption about the purpose of therapy in suggesting that the goal may be 'to enhance or perhaps even improve a person's mental (and possibly physical) wellbeing'. Now although this is a crude, layperson's simplification of therapy, let's assume that it has some validity. It seems likely that the art created in art therapy is probably a different art from the art that a person may produce for their own pleasure, which is different again from the art that is commercially available. It is not unreasonable to see the potential for a conflict of interests between the person leading the creative sessions and any therapuetic goal. Or between the person leading the creative sessions and the people attending them. Or between the people attending the creative sessions and any therapeutic goal. And so on. I don't think this is necessarily harmful, or that it's damaging to art broadly in any way, but at the very least it can make measuring the outcomes and the success of projects difficult.
More of a danger is the risk I mentioned of opening the door to all sorts of charlatans.
I'll return and complete this post shortly. I will expand on my 'charlatans' claim. There are also questions not mentioned so far that I may add to:
a. Who pays for art?
b. Might the answer to this question affect the content and form of what is produced?
c. Is it useful for anyone to lump all 'cultural products' together? For instance, should sport and dance have to compete for the same money?
In the meantime, please let me have your thoughts. Especially let me know if you think the debate is irrelevant, missing important questions, or factually wrong.
Apart from the questions that I raised, which I'll recap shortly, I had a bit of a debate with Richard Barrett who disagreed with me on some points, and who raised some interesting questions of his own. The debate mainly centred around what value we place on artists and art, how we assign that value, and whether subsidy has any place in all this. I hope he'll correct me if I have this wrong, but you can check the comments for yourself here, Richard's questions were:
1. Isn't it the consumer of cultural work who gives it value?
2. Or does art have an intrinsic value/purpose?
3. Does art/do artists occupy a separate realm from other people?
4. If other cultural endeavours are not subsidised why should art be any different?
5. He also suggested that it might be better for artists to focus on forming their own non-market networks.
After I responded by saying that I thought many of the channels through which poetry is mediated to people are not necessarily in the interests of poetry as a vital creative form, that it wasn't historically markets that were the primary decider of what gets published, and that I also didn't see any value in protecting poetry as a speical case Richard made some further points:
6. He argued that the kind of anthologies I'd attacked could have a valuable role in introducing new readers to poetry and encouraging exploration beyond the boundaries of the poetics represented by the anthologies.
7. He was also clear that he thinks there is a place for poetry that I might not want to read. And of course there is, and should be.
I still have a number of questions on this subject, and I am still interested in contributions to the discussion. Like anyone on any subject I have a number of directly contradictory opinions on a range of subjects, and I'd like to know what other people think. Some of this debate is quite close to some of the areas I intend to cover in a long essay coming soon about my relationship to poetry. In it I intend to talk about how I started to read poetry, how I came to write poetry, my frustrations with what gets published, my search for alternatives, and my ongoing attempts to understand what I read, and to place myself in some sort of context. So this discussion will also help clarify my thinking for that as well as rehearse some arguments you'll see crop up there.
I mentioned earlier that I'd recap the questions I raised in the initial post. So far as I can clarify my own thinking these were:
i. Is there any value in funding cultural organisations that can't fund themselves through markets?
ii. If such funding is available, what should that funding be, and how should it be managed? To be more specific, should it be short, medium or long term? Should it be aimed at specific products/outcomes, or should it be seen as a way of funding individuals/groups/communities in specific areas for a set amount and period of time with no prescribed goal? There are many more questions that could be asked - and I'm under no illusion that these are very long running arguments.
iii. What is the consequence of a lot of art being freely or very cheaply available?
iv. Specifically what then are the impacts on artists, and their ability to produce new work? It's easier to spend years writing a novel and to make it available online than it is to produce a play for instance.
It's arguable the debate got a little side-tracked next in my distaste for art used as therapy. In that case it's about to get sidetracked again. The arguments are what value art in this context has. This is a little tricky because I don't believe that art has an intrinsic value - it only comes from the consumer of a piece of art. Therefore you could say that if someone thinks it helps, or it makes them feel better that this represents real value. To borrow a phrase, I think you'll find it's more complicated than that. To help clarify why I think that, here is the next set of questions that came out.
v. Perhaps the question to begin with is what is art for?
vi. Followed by what is the purpose of therapy?
The reason I asked these questions is not that I don't believe non-specialists have a place in art, I think they have to have an important role in art, but more that I think there's a potential for sloppy thought and confusion that could potentially harm art, and more importantly, people. Obviously I need to explain this more clearly. I think we can all agree that most art is mainly enjoyed by non-specialists - either people who don't make art, or who work in a different area of the arts. I don't think it's especially contentious to say that it's desirable and normal for people to make their own art with no intention of taking it to the market/showing it to other people/attempting to make great masterpieces etc. It's probably equally uncontroversial to say that some people can find the act of making, and/or consuming art therapuetic. But crucially the ways we use art vary from person to person, and the reasons I write poetry may be different from the reasons I read poetry. Those again may be different from the reasons I take photographs, and from the reasons why I go to galleries.
Now to an extent by publishing books, by having gigs, by displaying art in galleries etc you're placing some limitations on the way that art is used. But these limitations are nothing like the specific limitations inherent in using art as a therapy. At the most basic you have an intended goal for the interaction - to enhance or perhaps even improve a person's mental (and possibly physical) wellbeing. This goal may have no relation to the various reasons why a particular individual has previously engaged with art. But for the moment let's assume that people engaged in art therapy are there because they choose to be, and have reasonable expectations of what it involves.
I have already made an assumption about the purpose of therapy in suggesting that the goal may be 'to enhance or perhaps even improve a person's mental (and possibly physical) wellbeing'. Now although this is a crude, layperson's simplification of therapy, let's assume that it has some validity. It seems likely that the art created in art therapy is probably a different art from the art that a person may produce for their own pleasure, which is different again from the art that is commercially available. It is not unreasonable to see the potential for a conflict of interests between the person leading the creative sessions and any therapuetic goal. Or between the person leading the creative sessions and the people attending them. Or between the people attending the creative sessions and any therapeutic goal. And so on. I don't think this is necessarily harmful, or that it's damaging to art broadly in any way, but at the very least it can make measuring the outcomes and the success of projects difficult.
More of a danger is the risk I mentioned of opening the door to all sorts of charlatans.
I'll return and complete this post shortly. I will expand on my 'charlatans' claim. There are also questions not mentioned so far that I may add to:
a. Who pays for art?
b. Might the answer to this question affect the content and form of what is produced?
c. Is it useful for anyone to lump all 'cultural products' together? For instance, should sport and dance have to compete for the same money?
In the meantime, please let me have your thoughts. Especially let me know if you think the debate is irrelevant, missing important questions, or factually wrong.
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