“The money is finite, but the number of applicants is infinite”
Jim Carroll on the Irish arts funding landscape, the issue of judging and understanding the funding process.
By now, there can be very few in the Irish arts-industrial complex who haven’t read Nialler9′s post on Music Network’s Recording Scheme awards. If you’re in the arts game and you haven’t read it, you really should. What starts out as a piece querying the under-representation of pop, rock, indie and electronic musicians becomes, thanks to eagle-eyed readers, a fascinating expose about conflicts of interest (one of the judges is connected to three of the nine winning applicants), the mechanics of arts funding and, as you would expect, the arts equivalent of Godwin’s Law (Deenihan’s Law?) with the usual tired, sorry-ass bitching about those who get funding from those who don’t get funding in the midst of some constructive and righteous readers’ comments.
It’s the latest in a never-ending series as there have been many such pieces over the years querying, poking and fuming about how the money available in the pot for arts and culture projects gets distributed. The key problem remains: the money is finite, but the number of applicants is infinite. Naturally then, conspriracy theories abound about who gets what and why and situations like this, when there’s a clear conflict of interest involving the judging panel and the award recepients, just don’t help matters.
Matters aren’t further helped in this case when the organisation in question, Music Network, put their head in the sand, send out an explanation riddled with holes and basically hang the judge in question out to dry. As a rule of thumb, any judge or panel member should have absolutely no connection or involvement in any application up for funding. Talking about the judge leaving the room when conflict-of-interest applications come up just doesn’t wash in an age when the internet and social media calls for uber-transparency.
By now, there can be very few in the Irish arts-industrial complex who haven’t read Nialler9′s post on Music Network’s Recording Scheme awards. If you’re in the arts game and you haven’t read it, you really should. What starts out as a piece querying the under-representation of pop, rock, indie and electronic musicians becomes, thanks to eagle-eyed readers, a fascinating expose about conflicts of interest (one of the judges is connected to three of the nine winning applicants), the mechanics of arts funding and, as you would expect, the arts equivalent of Godwin’s Law (Deenihan’s Law?) with the usual tired, sorry-ass bitching about those who get funding from those who don’t get funding in the midst of some constructive and righteous readers’ comments.
It’s the latest in a never-ending series as there have been many such pieces over the years querying, poking and fuming about how the money available in the pot for arts and culture projects gets distributed. The key problem remains: the money is finite, but the number of applicants is infinite. Naturally then, conspriracy theories abound about who gets what and why and situations like this, when there’s a clear conflict of interest involving the judging panel and the award recepients, just don’t help matters.
Matters aren’t further helped in this case when the organisation in question, Music Network, put their head in the sand, send out an explanation riddled with holes and basically hang the judge in question out to dry. As a rule of thumb, any judge or panel member should have absolutely no connection or involvement in any application up for funding. Talking about the judge leaving the room when conflict-of-interest applications come up just doesn’t wash in an age when the internet and social media calls for uber-transparency.