Leeds rues blank canvas

All partners involved in the £0.5m winning Yorkshire entry for Arts Council England’s flagship Cultural Olympiad programme, ‘Artists Taking the Lead’ (ATTL), agreed that the project was “unduly difficult” to manage, and on occasion reached “periods of crisis”, according to an evaluation report published earlier his month. The report concludes that it is unrealistic for artists to lead major publicly funded projects and that “final decisions will always have to be made by managers responsible for accountability and sustainability”.
The Yorkshire bid for ATTL was controversially won by Leeds Canvas, a consortium of Leeds’ major arts institutions, which commissioned the Brothers Quay to create and lead a site-specific project, ‘OverWorlds and UnderWorlds’. The report reveals some of the marketing and logistical challenges that beset the project, saying that in future the Leeds Canvas partnership “would be more inclined to provide artists with a clear brief” rather than a “blank canvas for the chosen artist to use in their reaction to the city”. The project “could have been more ambitious in its audience engagement” and “marketing and PR was unable to hit top gear”. The artists’ unwillingness to engage in PR activity, meant that the project lost its “natural PR focus” in the lead up to the performances: the brand suffered from being related to so many different artists and organisations, and having links to the city as well as to the Cultural Olympiad. Among the recommendations for future projects are the suggestion that a consortium needs a leader who takes a Chief Executive role and “who can turn the team’s recommendations into formal decisions”; but the report warns, “If this individual is drawn from the senior management of one of the partners, the workload is only sustainable if the project is embedded in that organisation’s main schedule.” All participants recognised problems with the project infrastructure, which led to “extended periods of planning without final decisions”, placing a time burden on all involved and leading to “concern about project delivery among stakeholders”.

The publication of the report coincides with the announcement of a similar new commission – this time worth only £40,000 – by Leeds Inspired, part of Leeds City Council. Artists, arts organisations and producers are invited to submit proposals for another site-specific piece of work aimed at Leeds audiences, to take place from October – December 2013. First stage proposals are due by 11 January 2013.