Programming contemporary art in the UK regions

After years of chronic underfunding by the previous Conservative administration, New Labour’s election victory in 1997 saw a massive increase in funding for arts and culture, and there was a scramble by towns and cities across the UK to open new contemporary arts centres. Since 1997, such facilities have been opened in Middlesbrough, Gateshead, Liverpool, Walsall, Glasgow, Nottingham, West Bromwich, Manchester, Wakefield, Sheffield and Margate amongst others.
 

The increase in funding was especially noticeable in supporting more contemporary, avant-garde and esoteric programming in such centres. Up until this point, ‘modern’ art, especially the conceptual, was largely a London-based phenomenon. Save for a few brave regional municipal galleries and usually poorly-funded ‘alternative’ spaces.

The opening of such institutions was a success in many ways, and helped increase access to, and interest in, contemporary art across the UK. However, as contemporary art emerged in the regions, it began to face tensions it wouldn’t have done in London, with its guaranteed middle-class art-going audience.
Many of these new galleries quickly became accused of being elitist islands of art in places that otherwise remained unchanged. Such centres were derided for being unreflective of ‘local’ culture, for ignoring audiences beyond the artistic elite and overlooking artists in their vicinity in favour of international ‘star’ names. Directors, curators and programmers have increasingly had to face this tension and criticism, and it has only got worse since the Credit Crunch. With local authority and Arts Council funding being cut, and private sponsorship hard to come by, such instiutions have had to justify their existence much harder than they had ever done before whilst simultaneously trying to please differing audiences, maintain artistic integrity and create a sustainable organisation in such austere times. Although difficult, such a balance can be achieved with skilful and creative programming, much in the same way that regional theatres, often equally poorly funded, have operated for years. A mixture of ‘blockbuster’ shows, experimental and risk taking exhibitions and something with a local focus can all be done in a year. This must be coupled with providing opportunities for local artists and a proper engagement programme for the wider community that is taken seriously as part of the core offer and not treated as an optional ‘add-on’. Operationally too, there has to be a happy medium between employing the best staff from wherever, and enough local people to, not only provide opportunities that they would have once had to move to London for, but to help shape programmes with a knowledge of, and concern for, local audiences and their tastes and quirks. Achieving such a balance is not an easy task, especially in an era when budgets are being cut to the bone. The fear is that some will panic and sway their institutions into lame, crowd-pleasing parochialism or, equally bad, rampant naked commercialism. While it is important for such venues to have different income streams such as corporate hire, becoming a conference venue with some nice, unchallenging stuff on the walls would defeat the object of its existence as a public arts institution.
These are challenging times for cultural venues, but they also represent a real chance to do things differently, to take the opportunity that has been created by opening such institutions in the regions for them to really make a difference, in artistic, social and economic terms, to their locality. The cuts should prompt new ways of working, forming links across the community to provide programming for all. Now can be the time of real flourishing for such centres, for those that pursue their own identity with focus and openness and have one foot in the local, one foot in the global, not merely be regional franchises of the international art word.