Building Public Will For Arts And Culture

It’s More Than Just Naming A Minster of Culture And Other Measures To Help Creative Industries

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To continue where I left off from yesterday’s post about the UNESCO document, Culture in crisis: Policy guide for a resilient creative sector, the next section addresses providing support for cultural and creative industries in the wake of the Covid epidemic. Whereas the policies covered in yesterday’s post were more targeted toward helping individual artists and organizations, this section is more focused on broader sectors. This part of the document has seven separate sections, but I don’t intend to take screenshots of them all.  Some of the proposals aren’t as relevant to non-profit arts organizations so I will summarize rather than going into detail.

The measures proposed in this section include: Accelerated payment of aid and subsidies; Temporary relief from regulatory obligations; compensation for business interruption losses; relief from taxes and social charges; stimulating demand; preferential loans; strengthening infrastructure and facilities.

Since I am writing from the bias of a U.S. based non-profit, some of these measures aren’t as significant as others.  Accelerated payment of aid is basically the suggestion to pay disbursements on grants already in place rather than waiting for final reports or the completion of services in order to allow organizations to remain liquid and finish all that stuff.

Relief from regulatory obligations as described in the document are focused on broadcast networks. I am not sure there are a lot of regulations in the U.S. that are inhibiting organizations from staying liquid and aren’t important for protecting workers and participants (i.e. those that deal with employment, health and safety, supervision of children in camps).

Similarly, relief from taxes doesn’t impact a lot of non-profit arts organizations. In some locations where the organization is making a voluntary payment to local government to support infrastructure, some discussion about payment is probably worthwhile. For those organizations that pay local/state sales tax, getting that removed in a time when tax receipts are way down is probably an extremely difficult conversation.

The preferential loans section is a valuable proposal, but the content of that section can be summarized as: The loans should be made, but the banking sector has insufficient understanding of the variations in creative organizations necessary to evaluate them for creditworthiness for loans so the banks need to be trained first.

Compensation for business interruption loss of course is a big issue, especially in terms of insurance paying claims. This section definitely is definitely worth reading since it is so relevant and balances the concerns of both government and industry.

Stimulating demand is a really interesting section and something folks in the U.S would love to see the government embrace. Look at that first line “The State is sending a clear message that the art and culture are essential services to which all citizens must have access.”

I appreciated the fact they noted change and results wouldn’t happen immediately and counseled a long term view.

I also think the observation that ministries of culture (or the NEA in the case of the US) does not have the expertise to stimulate demand is valuable to note. This is something extremely important to acknowledge when it comes to discussions about elevating arts & culture to Cabinet level position in the U.S. government. It isn’t enough to have someone in the position, the overall policy and practice of the government must be aligned toward cultivating both supply and demand. Even if the culture secretary/minister portfolio doesn’t have the ability to stimulate demand, government policy should be that those that do work hand-in-hand with the culture secretary/minister toward that end.

I debated whether to take a screenshot of the Infrastructure section because it states the well-known and easily summarized “Edifice Complex” truism. People like to fund impressive looking structures, but don’t want to fund the programs or people or programs that will inhabit the structures. However, I feel like we can all use the vindication:

Saving Culture and Creativity Without Compromising Their Best Interests

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Very big THANK YOU to friend of the blog Rainer Glaap who sent me a link to an UNESCO document, Culture in crisis: Policy guide for a resilient creative sector. At this point I think I am going to approach this document over the course of multiple entries because there is so much I see to talk about. At 56 pages, it probably isn’t comprehensive but the suggestions it makes are well-considered.

UNESCO proposes three different areas in which governments can take action to support the culture and creative industries in light of the impact Covid has had upon them: 1 – Direct Support for Artists and Cultural Professional; 2- Support for Sectors of the Cultural and Creative Industries; and 3- Strengthening the competitiveness of the cultural and creative industries.

They have a number of proposed measures within each area. Today I am going to focus on the Direct Support area which had four suggested course of action areas: Social Benefits, Commissioning and purchase of works, Compensation for loss of Income and Skills Development.

I am going to provide screenshots of the content because I think they do such a good job presenting it. In each section they describe the measure, explain why it should be chosen, things to consider, pitfalls to avoid and then examples of good programs in different countries with different budget resources.

I appreciate the international perspective for the wide range of ideas of how to approach Covid related challenges, but also because it acknowledges not every country has the resources of a large industrialized nation, but can take effective measures to cultivate and preserve creative and cultural resources and practitioners.

What I really loved was Actions to Consider and Pitfalls to Avoid sections of each area because they anticipate things like support being perceived as hand outs or make work schemes as well as the problems with employing institutional standards to individual practice.

This is the one for the Social Benefit measure

Here is the one for commissioning work.  Take note about the concern for maintaining intellectual property rights, valuing the work properly, supporting artists but guarding against institutional seizure of power.

Here is the one for compensation of lost income. Note the concern for proper remuneration for female artists.

Finally, the skills development measure which is focused on experimenting so creatives are ready for the next normal.  Note that among the concerns is that this not be viewed as a stopgap until things revert back to “normal” as well as that the skills developed be put into practice quickly.

As I mentioned, there are also explanations of each category and examples of good international practices which I didn’t screenshot for this post so definitely check out the document to learn more.

The Past May Hold Answers, But They Are Imperfect

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I came across an interesting contrast in perspective about solutions for a post-Covid world last week. In American Theatre, Jim Warren, the founding artistic director of the American Shakespeare Center proposed a model for theatre to ensure long-term, consistent employment for artists by returning to the rotating repertory model and having artists fulfill administrative roles.

For those that are not familiar with the rotating repertory model, it is a practice where the same core group of performers appear in every production in a season instead of contracting a separate slate of performers for each production.   So if you have a core group of 18 performers, 10 of them may be in the production currently appearing on stage while 8 of them are rehearsing the next production and there may be an overlap of 4 – 5 working on both productions, though with less demands on their time and energy in one of those productions.

Warren also suggests artists take on administrative roles:

Perhaps we need to return to structures similar to what we had at the birth of many theatre companies, when actors split the duties of marketing, fundraising, education, bookkeeping, making websites, and every other job that needed doing. Perhaps we could hire actors full-time to create the shows, use their individual superpowers in other areas, and then hire part-timers to handle the overflow of admin work when we need more help.

The end goal is to provide everyone with a 40 hour work week, health coverage, paid vacation and sick time.

These are not insignificant goals. As Drew McManus has been writing about over at Adaptistration, the current trend in the orchestra world is to dissolve contracts with musicians and try to run the organization solely using fee for service arrangements where musicians are only paid when they perform. (While maintaining their skills and expensive instruments at a high standard while waiting to be called.)

However, there were some people who took umbrage with Warren’s proposal, particularly with the idea that current administrators must go and that most actors are equally adept at administration as performance.

Others challenged the assumption that pre-Covid many arts entities had the resources to provide their administrators with a 40 hour work week, health coverage, paid vacation and sick time.

Warren admits that he had been striving to create these working conditions for years prior to Covid and many of his solutions at the time were imperfect so there was certainly an implication that there was still a lot of work to be done on these ideas.

I don’t think anyone is necessarily debating that the goals he sets are not worthy, but given that no one was satisfied with the status quo in the decades prior to Covid, a solution is going to require casting gazes further and broader than before. I was initially tempted to say the solution would require multiples of effort beyond what had been invested before, but I think it is really more a matter of the will to blaze new paths into the unknown than mustering additional strength to lift or surmount obstacles.

We Are Gonna Need A Slower Elevator

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There has been an ongoing conversation among the arts community that there needs to be less effort invested in selling people on an arts experience and more listening to people to find out what they are looking for.

Seth Godin made a post earlier this month that encompassed that when he suggested substituting the elevator pitch with the elevator question.

The alternative is the elevator question, not the elevator pitch. To begin a conversation–not about you, but about the person you’re hoping to connect with. If you know who they are and what they want, it’s a lot more likely you can figure out if they’re a good fit for who you are and what you want. And you can take the opportunity to help them find what they need, especially if it’s not from you.

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Instead of looking at everyone as someone who could fund you or buy from you or hire you, it might help to imagine that almost no one can do those things, but there are plenty of people you might be able to help in some other way, even if it’s only to respect them enough to not make a pitch.

The truth is, unless you are in the presence of a very narrow demographic, chances are that few people you meet can fund or buy from you. Since we know that the narrow demographic most inclined to buy from us is not sufficient to support our work long term, you do need to talk to a lot of people whose general inclination toward the arts and your organization is less known. Therefore the elevator question is going to be better alternative.

Of course, the elevator part is a misnomer for this concept because there is likely no way the conversation will effectively be completed on an elevator trip between floors. It may be months or years.

Just because you aren’t practicing to deliver a frantically paced pitch between floors doesn’t mean you should neglect to provide a focused introduction of yourself and the work you and your organization does. There is so much more you can talk about if you aren’t trying to milk a sale out of precious seconds, but people will appreciate an organized, interesting self-introduction as much as they appreciate not feeling hustled to buy into something.