After the economic shock of Covid-19, Susan Jones unpicks the issues surrounding traditional arts policymaking and calls for more art-friendly business models.
Contemporary Visual Arts Network’s policy commitment to strategic action, to ensure an equitable sector precipitated by the shocking context of Black Lives Matter, is timely in a pandemic world which has laid bare the systemic social and economic fault lines in the arts. This England-wide network’s report last year into the immediate impacts of Covid-19 confirmed that the divergent social realities and artistic ambitions of under-represented and marginalised practitioners – who along with those with invisible disabilities including autism, ADHD and bi-polarity are over-represented within the arts constituency – are currently under-supported by contemporary visual arts infrastructures.
But the processes of devising and activating strategies to combat and excise exclusion of all kinds in the arts move at a glacial pace. That’s because ultimate ownership lies with the Arts Council as the national arm’s-length arts funded agency for England, which passes responsibility down to the chosen portfolio of arts institutions where it’s positioned in the territory of ‘arts leaders’ rather than being individually-held. Remedial measures are made manifest and delivered in bite-sized, readily-measured multi-year institutional operational plans, which are structurally over-dependent on sustained public funding and the largesse of freelancers... Keep reading on The Double Negative.
Contemporary Visual Arts Network’s policy commitment to strategic action, to ensure an equitable sector precipitated by the shocking context of Black Lives Matter, is timely in a pandemic world which has laid bare the systemic social and economic fault lines in the arts. This England-wide network’s report last year into the immediate impacts of Covid-19 confirmed that the divergent social realities and artistic ambitions of under-represented and marginalised practitioners – who along with those with invisible disabilities including autism, ADHD and bi-polarity are over-represented within the arts constituency – are currently under-supported by contemporary visual arts infrastructures.
But the processes of devising and activating strategies to combat and excise exclusion of all kinds in the arts move at a glacial pace. That’s because ultimate ownership lies with the Arts Council as the national arm’s-length arts funded agency for England, which passes responsibility down to the chosen portfolio of arts institutions where it’s positioned in the territory of ‘arts leaders’ rather than being individually-held. Remedial measures are made manifest and delivered in bite-sized, readily-measured multi-year institutional operational plans, which are structurally over-dependent on sustained public funding and the largesse of freelancers... Keep reading on The Double Negative.