\n<\/p>\n
NOTE<\/strong>: This post is to introduce you to the 48th episode of Fran\u00e7ois Matarasso\u2019s and my monthly podcast, \u201cA Culture of Possibility.\u201d It will be available starting 17 January 2025. You can find it and all episodes at Stitcher<\/a>, iTunes<\/a>, and wherever you get your podcasts, along with miaaw.net<\/a>\u2018s other podcasts by Owen Kelly, Sophie Hope, and many guests, focusing on cultural democracy and related topics. You can also listen on Soundcloud<\/a> and find links to accompany the podcasts. <\/em><\/p>\n The Miaaw Review<\/em> inaugural issue comes out this week. It will appear five times each year. The first edition contains an essay by me and shorter pieces by Owen Kelly and Fran\u00e7ois Matarasso. You have to subscribe to receive it. It\u2019s free, you won\u2019t be spammed, nor will your email be shared with anyone. Just enter your emailhere<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n This episode, the 48th, marks the end of the fourth year of A Culture of Possibility!<\/strong> Owen Kelly, the mastermind behind miaaw.net<\/a>, was my guest. He and I dedicated it to cohost Fran\u00e7ois Matarasso, who is taking a break for medical treatment. I know listeners join me in wishing him a complete and speedy recovery. In the meantime, I\u2019ll continue interviewing our guests solo.<\/p>\n From time to time, we take a look at what\u2019s happening in cultural policy circles<\/strong>. David Francis of Edinburgh, whom I interviewed on episode 37 last February, drew my attention to a thick report called the State of Culture<\/a>, issued by a network of networks called Culture Action Europe<\/a>, whose motto is \u201cwe take care of the cultural ecosystem.\u201d CAE appears to be a network of networks, including artists, agencies, foundations, producing and presenting organizations, consultants, and more. Together, they have some standing in the European Community. The excerpt David sent references cultural democracy, so he knew I\u2019d be interested. <\/p>\n CAE describes the full report this way:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cCulture Action Europe (CAE) has commissioned this report primarily as a mirror for ourselves, our members and our sectors: how are we seen by others, e.g. policy makers, and how do we see ourselves? The State of Culture is thus a conversation starter that challenges and provokes our ecosystem to address some critical questions central to shaping our collective advocacy in the years to come. This conversation throughout our ecosystem, with our members and their constituencies, requires designing tailored approaches, formats and questions to their various missions. At CAE we will offer a central online and live platform to bring voices together.<\/p>\n \u201cCulture Action Europe hopes that this facilitated conversation will give the sectors more clarity on how to effectively advocate within today\u2019s political landscape and help to collectively imagine a new paradigm of action for the cultural ecosystem in Europe and beyond.\u201d <\/p>\n It definitely started a conversation between Owen and me<\/strong>. As I said on the podcast, \u201cthe question that we always find ourselves asking when we have one of these cultural policy documents is what does it have to say to us? Because we are not cultural bureaucrats, and sadly, not running the world. We are not cultural policy or any other kind of policy makers. We try to get into these documents to understand the culture from which they emerge, how they\u2019re being conceptualized, what people think the impact will be, and how that looks to us.\u201d<\/p>\n This was a different kind of document<\/strong>. It gives an impression of wheels within wheels. The report is heavily footnoted, but the vast majority of notes cite other documents and conversations about the topics it focuses on. I clicked some links, but soon realized that I would have to spend the next few months reading report after manifesto after journal article after vision statement in which others focus on the impact of artificial intelligence, the funding climate, what is called \u201chyper-instrumentalism,\u201d cultural policy edicts, and so on. I like to think of myself as capable, but I was often confused, in part by the authors\u2019 choice to offer commentary rather than concrete examples, and in part by reliance on abstract terms treated as if every reader must know exactly what they mean (the brief glossary didn\u2019t clear them all up). So Owen and I tried to figure it out by talking in turn about the meaning of several of the report\u2019s key notions. <\/p>\n On the podcast, you\u2019ll hear us discuss half a dozen of these, including cultural ecosystem, intrinsic value, hyper-instrumentalization, and art as a driver of social transformation. Here are a few excerpts to give you a flavor of the conversation.<\/p>\n Owen had some interesting observations about the notion of a cultural ecosystem<\/strong>. <\/p>\n \u201cThe idea of a cultural ecosystem or ecology does make a lot of sense. It\u2019s a way of looking at things that, as Fran\u00e7ois said in a post he sent to both you and I (\u201cThe Pike\u2019s Disdain,\u201d published at his old website Parliament of Dreams on 5 December 2013, but not currently online) that\u2019s a better model than some sort of obviously hierarchical model. And it says that the National Theater is a big fish in this pool, and this community arts group is a small fish in this pool, but we\u2019re all both just swimming around in the pool. We\u2019ve got more in common as fish swimming around the pool than we have reasons to be antagonistic to each other. That I think is the slightly cuddly intent of the of the metaphor, but I think it tends to break down, as Fran\u00e7ois pointed out, because the truth is that bigger fish eat smaller fish. That\u2019s the nature of ecosystems, that not everything survives, and that some things seen from a distance have a prime role as being prey for some other fish or whatever, whose prime role is being predators. So I\u2019m not sure this metaphor or analogy works beyond a certain point. But I do understand why they\u2019ve chosen it, because it appears to be non-hierarchical at first glance. Unfortunately, I think that\u2019s true of a lot of the report. It seems to be something at first glance, but when you start to look through in more detail, you realize there are a lot of unanswered questions behind the scenes.\u201d<\/p>\n I agreed. I explained how I see this notion working in the U.S.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a big federal agency called the National Endowment for the Arts. We\u2019ll see if it survives the Trump administration. It\u2019s very anemic. Its budget includes a few pennies for each person in the country. If you do a pie chart of its support, most of it goes to European-derived major institutions, the ballets, the symphonies, the big agencies and so forth. But they use the cultural ecosystem metaphor when it\u2019s time to go to Congress and plead for more funding. They contact people who are doing important community-based work, very often in communities of color, work whose budget is like a rounding error in say, the Metropolitan Opera budget. They have such people be the faces who come and sit at the congressional table and give testimony to say how the National Endowment for the Arts benefits all of us. So that\u2019s window dressing, a common political tactic in cultural policy world, and I don\u2019t like it very much. I know why they said it, and it\u2019s for the reasons that you said, but I\u2019m sorry that they did, because it falsifies reality.\u201d<\/p>\n Introducing the next topic, I talked about the intrinsic value of art when I should have said culture<\/strong>. Owen astutely pointed out that I did the same thing as the report, sliding between those two terms as if they were interchangeable:<\/p>\n \u201cThese are totally different. Culture is something that we have as human beings. It\u2019s not something that a group of policymakers or professionals or particularly clever people set about making. Therefore, I think culture doesn\u2019t have any value, absolutely none at all. The reason I say that is because if you were to ask a talking fish, \u2018What do you think the value of water is in your life?\u2019 It wouldn\u2019t know what you were talking about, because water is something that\u2019s not of value to it. \u2018Oh, I value water highly,\u2019 says one fish. We asked another fish, and the fish said, \u2018I don\u2019t particularly think about water very much at all.\u2019 It\u2019s not going to happen like that. Water is a precondition for the existence of fish, and the continuing supply of water is a precondition for a continuing supply of fish. And the same is true for human beings, for animals, for oxygen, the Earth\u2019s atmosphere. What\u2019s the value of the Earth\u2019s atmosphere? It\u2019s a stupid question, because it\u2019s a precondition for the existence of any members of the animal kingdom that there is breathable atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n Tune in to hear Owen talk about the proto-cultures of animals and the way the cultures we\u2019re born into influences us, and me talk about the folly of making economic arguments that turn on art and framing them as culture. <\/p>\n That part of the conversation led us to interrogate the report\u2019s answers to the question of who makes culture<\/strong>. As I noted in the podcast, \u201cThere are a number of turns of phrase as we read through the report where the implication is that artists, professional artists\u2014however that\u2019s defined\u2014artists make culture, and then everyone else consumes it somehow. We have to once again assert that distinction between art and culture. In our understanding, everyone makes culture. Artists may have a specific skill that they contribute to that enterprise, a specific set of intentions or outlooks, but everybody contributes.\u201d<\/p>\n As Owen put it, much of the report \u201cis not related to culture, this is related to a set of professional activities<\/strong>. These activities have economic problems. They make the case for this. And I think we would agree these activities\u2014the sector, whatever the sector is\u2014suffers from economic problems. But the question may not be answered by asking how the sector can get more money, because, as you said, we all play roles in different cultures. I\u2019m an Englishman, born in England, living in Finland. I\u2019m in half in and half out of lots of aspects of Finnish culture through a lack of shared memories of childhood activities, through lack of language. So I live in a different cultural world than Irma, my wife, who was was born in Finland, and has lived there all through her childhood and then lived in Paris, etc. So we\u2019ve got a different set of mixes now. <\/p>\n \u201cEverybody has a different set. So even if you\u2019re a professional photographer or a professional cellist or professional dancer, that\u2019s not all you are. You\u2019re also a wife, a mother, an aunt, a whole range of roles that play a part which you will enact within culture. You\u2019re also somebody with a particular history. Maybe you\u2019re also subsidizing your dancing by working in a library. So you\u2019re also a member of a librarian culture now. And I would say those are the various roles you have as a citizen [note<\/em>: in the U.S. context, this word can be troubling, but Owen obviously means it to indicate a member of society and not someone who necessarily has citizenship papers] and as a citizen, you have an economic problem, and those kinds of problems can best be addressed by the state or by agencies of the state or by local agencies. So it could be that a national minimum wage, various tax arrangements, various ways of distributing the communal pot of money are decided. They don\u2019t have to be decided for artists or for dancers or photographers. They should have to be decided for citizens and then, who will benefit?\u00a0 Amongst other people, low-paid workers working in checkout or for Uber, low-paid workers working as self-employed sculptors. They will all benefit. The idea of tackling this as the cultural sector, whilst at the same time the retail sector try and fight a similar argument, seems to miss, almost willfully, the fact that all these sectors are living under a particular form of capitalism, and they\u2019re all having economic problems under the same economic system. And in that system, they\u2019re all having these problems as citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n What comes next is a conversation I found very interesting about what the report calls the \u201cpolycrisis<\/strong>,\u201d the wicked problem that is the aggregrate of all the crises facing us today. I hope you tune in and enjoy it too.<\/p>\n That took us to the CAE report\u2019s many assertions about art as a driver of social transformation. \u201cDriver\u201d is an interesting word choice, as I explored:<\/p>\n \u201cDoing this podcast, A Culture of Possibility, most of the people who come on the podcast are making art with an intention, and the intention usually has been to awaken awareness, to bring more love and justice into the world, to engage people in standing up for themselves and inspirit them, help them to be advocates for the things that they think are right. That\u2019s who we pick to interview. You know, we don\u2019t usually have people who are like directors of institutions whose primary goal is just to share heritage, which is not at all meaningless but also not the same as driving transformation. But I wonder: driver is such a powerful big word. I certainly have no question about art having multiple roles in social transformation. I think, for example, that when people make art about climate, and the goal is to increase awareness, to awaken people to something that\u2019s happening, and to encourage them to to experience their own agency somehow, to do something in their sphere about it, they\u2019re definitely helping things along. If nobody was making art about climate crisis, there\u2019d be less awareness. But driver? I don\u2019t think so.\u201d<\/p>\n Owen shared my doubts. \u201cI\u2019m with Linton Kwesi Johnson\u2014the British West Indian rap poet\u2014who said when asked the question, \u2018Does art create revolution? Can art create revolution?\u2019 He said, \u2018No, art can\u2019t create social change. Art can help to create the conditions under which people might want to create social change.\u2019 And I think that\u2019s as far as I would go.\u201d How about you?<\/p>\n The report uses the term \u201chyper-instrumentalization\u201d and some of its variables<\/strong>. This bothered me:<\/p>\n \u201cIt might be hubristic to say so, but I\u2019m not easily confused. But there were just so many times reading this that I felt confused. I understand the concept of instrumentalization to be one that is primarily has to do with funders and policymakers. In other words, there\u2019s a grants program and they\u2019re telling you their evaluation criteria, and if you\u2019re working with kids, they want you to show that test scores have gone up. Dropout rates have gone down. Kids have a heightened disposition to take electives in school, whatever. Or you\u2019re doing some kind of a community play that touches on the environment or economic conditions, on employment in your community. And they want you to show that this has moved the needle somehow on those actual issues. Almost always, when funders and policymakers ask for these answers. They want them to be quantified somehow. People give a number if it\u2019s self-reporting, or you compile the statistics and give it back to them. So that\u2019s instrumentalization. That\u2019s saying that the way we\u2019re going to decide whether to give you money for your art project is by you showing us through numbers that it\u2019s accomplished some things that we think are important and and we\u2019re only going to give money to do the things that relate to that issue that we\u2019ve made our priority. We\u2019re not going to give money to do things that you might think are important, or that people that you work with might think are important, because they\u2019re not on our roster right now.<\/p>\n \u201cBut the report goes on and on about hyper-instrumentalization, and it doesn\u2019t always say that it\u2019s just a factor in the way that funders make their decisions and evaluate the work. But when artists make work, they have aims. I just said what I thought some of them were\u2014to awaken awareness and empathy. Now, you could say those were instrumental in a way, if the alternative is just making work and putting it out there, and you don\u2019t care if it reaches anyone or what they think about it. But it doesn\u2019t really seem like a problem when artists decide on the aims for the work that they\u2019re making themselves. So I\u2019m not getting why they\u2019re going on and on about hyper-instrumentalization.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t understand how you can assert art as a driver of social transformation, and talk about the polycrisis of climate, war, and so forth, and how art can help with that, and then criticize making art instrumental. There\u2019s a critique in there that I completely share, that the conditions of evaluation for work should be articulated by the communities that are participants in the work, not imposed by an agency. So I\u2019m 100% with them on that, but I don\u2019t think that that\u2019s what it says.\u201d<\/p>\n I asked Owen if he could help me understand<\/strong>. He read me a quote that didn\u2019t leave me less confused: \u201cHyper-instrumentalism of cultural policy can also erode the validity of culture as an autonomous policy domain, reflected in the removal of culture-dedicated government bodies, or its merger with other departments, as well as the weakening or demolition of the arm\u2019s-length model.\u201d <\/p>\n Have a listen and see what you think.<\/strong> <\/p>\n Let me acknowledge, as I did in the episode, that I am a recovering cultural policy wonk<\/strong>. (Indeed, Chief Policy Wonk was my title during the years I worked with the US Department of Arts and Culture, and now I\u2019m officially https:\/\/usdac.us\/team wonk Emerita.) So I\u2019ve read about a zillion cultural policy documents and written quite a large number as well. Just not lately, because the futility of the enterprise started to depress me. Let me explain.<\/p>\n On a regular basis here in the US and abroad, agencies and associations conduct studies and commission consultants to write up what they hope will be compelling arguments for support of arts and culture, or at least some specific corner of that universe. For example, way back in twentieth century, when technologies we now take for granted were just dawning, I wrote a few such documents on behalf of independent media groups, media makers and distributors who hoped to convince those holding the pursestrings that their work was worthy of funding. <\/p>\n The U.S. funding pie has always been small. General practice has always been to cut it into ever-smaller slices as new demands emerge, rather than bake a bigger pie. Internal competition has therefore been intense. If you\u2019re on the museum team or the ballet team, for instance, the argument that important work being done by independent media makers deserves a larger helping of pie sounds a lot like a call for less on your plate. Ditto if you\u2019re on the European-derived \u201cfine arts\u201d team and calls for redistribution toward racial equity resound. I\u2019d like to think I authored some powerful arguments for along these lines, but in truth, big changes were not forthcoming. Indy media is on more funding dockets than in the 1980s, and more support is going to artists and organzations of color. But it isn\u2019t that much more; it\u2019s mostly been accomplished by moving dollars from one category to another that carries the flavor of the moment, rather than enlarging the pie; and there\u2019s very little evidence that cultural policy studies and reports have been the catalyst for meaningful change.<\/p>\n One big reason is that although the groups that issue these reports are trying very hard to articulate compelling, undeniable arguments, actual existing cultural policies\u2014especially those related to funding\u2014seldom come into being in response to brilliant reasoning. Here in the U.S., cultural subvention still amounts to a rounding error in comparison to public budgets for things like prisons and the military and private-sector funding for things like scientific research and bricks-and-mortar projects. Mostly, the pattern has been that cultural projects have to be given something<\/em> (although on the public side, it remains to be seen if the Trump administration will follow Republican donors\u2019 tendency to donate museum wings adorned with their names or serve on red-carpet institutions\u2019 boards to add luster to their reputations). But there\u2019s no evidence that those somethings are conditioned on having been persuaded by masterful arguments about art\u2019s transformative power. <\/p>\n At the end of the podcast I had what was for me a liberating thought:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIf we were going to write something that was a critique of the way this cultural policy discourse is conducted and our prescription for what might be a better way, it would have to lean on the question of universality, that everyone is a participant in and everyone co-creates culture, that culture is intrinsic to human life, essential to human life the way water is essential to the lives of of fishes. Within that, people who define themselves as professional artists, culture makers, whatever, need to switch from special pleading for themselves and stop making what seem to me impossible demands. For example, the State of Culture<\/em> report says that the cultural sector (i.e., the whole ecosystem) has to better articulate its purpose. The Metropolitan Museum of Art and I can sit down together and try to articulate our common purpose, but I doubt that we would come to much agreement. So: stop asking these impossible questions. Stop pretending like there\u2019s a best special pleading argument that is going to get over and finally solve the problem. Instead, become advocates for universal solutions like guaranteed annual income, for example, like worldwide work for freedom of expression.\u201d<\/p>\n What would happen if artists and culture-builders abandoned pleading for support on the basis of their specialness? This report contains many examples, but I\u2019ll just offer one for clarity: \u201cSimply recognising art professionals as \u02bbworkers\u02bc without acknowledging their distinct social contributions risks reducing the creative sector to minimum labour standards \u2013 but cultural workers deserve more than a minimum.\u201d When I read that sentence, my first thought was \u201cWell then, who does deserve the minimum?\u201d I\u2019ve thought for a long time that trying to argue that artists ought to be supported because they are more special than everyone else is a guaranteed failure, because to succeed it would require a whole lot of folks to agree they are less special and deserving.\u00a0 <\/p>\n As Owen points out in the podcast, \u201cThe report notes that the creative industries have always been in a state of emergency. They never, ever get out of it.\u201d What would happen if this vast network of agencies, bureaucrats, and consultants took the large amount of time and money spent on cultural policy reports that fail to move the needle and and poured it instead into making common cause with everyone else who wants and deserves human rights, decent livelihood, freedom of expression, and all the rest?<\/p>\n Did that question trigger an incredulous laugh? If so, my case is proven.<\/strong> <\/p>\n \u201cPolitical World<\/a>,\u201d Bettye Lavette and Keith Richards. <\/p>\n