British Council disbands its specialist arts departments, including dance

This story comes from Dance UK and offers their research into this new development.

British Council disbands its specialist arts departments, including dance

Some Dance UK members have contacted Dance UK this morning (Thursday 20 December) to raise their concern about a story that ran in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph that the British Council’s executive board has decided to disband its departments in film, drama, dance, literature, design and the visual arts.

We attach a link to the story below:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/12/19/bacouncil119.xml

As many of our corporate members work closely with the British Council to facilitate their work internationally Dance UK contacted the British Council to ask for their response to the story. They issued us with the following statement:

The British Council is committed to the arts and will continue to deliver arts projects internationally. Examples include the British Council Edinburgh Showcase, managing the British Pavilion and showcasing the best of Britain at the Biennales as we have done since 1938.

The British Council has a global arts programme of £30m and there will be no reduction in this budget. We have re-structured our arts group. We will retain sector expertise in all of the art forms but are mobilising our resources in different ways so that we can deliver bigger, global projects with the same amount of cash resources. This reorganisation involves the merging of sector expertise into more flexible project teams.

We are in a period of consultation with external stakeholders and a more formal announcement will be made in the January/February, 2008. A process document outlining this timeline is available on the website.

Martin Davidson CEO of The British Council said ‘The arts provide a unique space for creative dialogue and underpins our understanding of the world around us. In all its forms, the arts stimulate debate and allow us to better understand what we have in common and the differences between ourselves and other societies. The British Council is deeply committed to the arts in our cultural relations work, now and in the future - especially at a time when the arts and creative industries are flourishing in the UK’

It seems at present that we will have to wait, as do British Council staff, until the New Year to see how this situation develops and how it will affect dance. When we have more news we will let Dance UK members know, formulate a formal response, and if necessary write to the Foreign Office and the DCMS to express members’ concerns.

Sian McAulay, Deputy Director, Dance UK

Culture Vultures book, England

There is no doubt that in the last decade or so, arts in the UK has seen a massive injection of money for new projects and exhibitions... The book 'Culture Vultures: Is UK arts policy is damaging the arts?' shows official claims about the social benefits of art are based on exaggeration, and that arts practice suffers as a result. The book is being published by the think-tank Policy Exchange....

The collection of essays show that many of the claims made about the social benefits of arts are exaggerated, resulting in wasteful projects of poor artistic quality. The criteria for funding means that arts organisations are drowning under a tidal wave of 'tick boxes and targets'.

The book's authors are a mixture of academics and commentators. They recommend:

More honest and independent use of evidence in cultural policy. Too much research is driven by arts advocacy and is therefore biased.

Less bureaucracy around arts funding. The funding framework forces artists to spend valuable time and resources on ‘ticking boxes’, at the expense of producing excellent work.

Debate about true value of the arts. The government and arts quangos should promote the importance of art for its own sake.

Click here for more info.

EU funds research into roles for older female performers

An article in The Stage published Tuesday 4 December 2007 by Matthew Hemley explains:

"Grant money of more than €150,000 has been awarded from Brussels for the research, which will examine what roles exist for older women and how decisions are made when casting parts which can be played by either sex. It will also look how women over 40 are portrayed in television and theatre.

Entitled Changing Gender Portrayal: Promoting Employment Opportunities for Women in the Performing Arts, the research will include a survey that will be handed to each of the federation’s affiliated unions in Europe."

Read the whole article by clicking here.

Policies and Programs of Support for Senior Artists

D'Art research report: Policies and Programs of Support for Senior Artists
D'Art Topics in Arts Policy, no. 28, December 2007
IFACCA and Joyce Zemans

The research, headed by Professor Joyce Zemans of York University, was undertaken at the request of the Canadian Artists’ Heritage Resource Centre Steering Committee. The D'Art report outlines a selection of policies and programs that provide support to senior artists who are experiencing financial difficulty or are no longer able to work. The initiatives, which come from eighteen countries, are classified into six broad types:

• pension schemes
• multi-year grants
• guaranteed income
• subsidised housing programs
• dancer’s transition centres
• grants for senior artists awarded for artistic contribution.

Click here to download the document in pdf.

Conference on Art Institutions as Catalysts or Indicators: the Role of Art Institutions in Gentrification Processes

Conference on Art Institutions as Catalysts or Indicators: the Role of Art Institutions in Gentrification Processes - click here for more info.

The conference on the role of art institutions in gentrification processes will focus on the interaction of culture and art institutions with processes of urban development, and the role of such institutions in gentrification processes in Latvia and abroad.

CHRC's Mentorship Strategy for Managers and Administrators of Cultural Organizations

CHRC's Mentorship Strategy for Managers and Administrators of Cultural Organizations (March 2005)

The goal of the mentorship strategy is to increase support for and invovlement in the mentorship of managers and administrators in the cultural sector across Canada.

To view the Mentorship Strategy, click here.

CHRC Online Module Critical Thinking for Cultural Planners

The Cultural Human Resources Centre has released a new online module – Critical Thinking for Cultural Planners. This interactive module works to further clarify the roles critical thinking plays in cultural management. The material is designed to allow Cultural Managers to engage with various aspects of critical thinking as it pertains to their everyday work.

The module is available here. CLICK HERE.

The internationalisation of cultural life (Ministry of Culture Sweden)

Here's a fact sheet from the Ministry of Culture in Sweden (October 2007) on the Internationalisation of cultural life.

excerpt:

The development and vitality of Swedish cultural life is dependent on international exchange and cooperation. As a result of this, an international perspective must permeate the activities of cultural institutions and action to promote internationalisation must be integrated into the infrastructure of cultural life and government grant systems. Culture has assumed an increasingly important role in building relations with other countries in such fields as the promotion of Sweden, democracy promotion and development cooperation. The role of culture and the media for the development of democracy and freedom of expression is becoming increasingly clear. The consequence of this development is that the creators of culture both should, and must be given more scope in the international dialogue. Internationalisation is a long-term cultural policy process...

There are three major objectives:
1. High quality, artistic integrity, a long-term perspective and reciprocity
2. Swedish successes abroad
3. International cultural meetings in Sweden
4. Deeper cooperation between different policy areas

The turn to cultural internationalism is happening across the board.
Read the full Swedish version by clicking here.

Add Value to Contents: the Valorisation of Culture Today

This article (on www.transform.eipcp.net - a site worth checking out) talks around and through the industry-paradigm of culture.

As a critique of the industrial frameworks surrounding valorization of culture, Esther Leslie offers a thoughtful portrayal of perspectives on culture, and she responds to it. Starting with UNESCO's insistance that:

‘cultural industries’, which include publishing, music, audiovisual technology, electronics, video games and the Internet, ‘create employment and wealth’, ‘foster innovation in production and commercialisation processes’ and ‘are central in promoting and maintaining cultural diversity and in ensuring democratic access to culture’

She rapidly moves on to attest that within this paradigm, "value is a gift of industry, not a quality of artifacts themselves."

What I find particularly resonant (and strangely not paradoxical, even as it ironically tempts hypocracy), is the say she frames her statement that value has become a debased term. She rephrases the cultural economic argument (the value that is more valuable than all others is monetary) with cultural marketability.

Alongside, Adorno and Benjamin, she invokes Marx in the article.

Click here to read the whole article

excerpt:

In Britain today, as elsewhere, culture is the wonder stuff that gives more away than it takes. Like some fantastical oil in a Grimm fairytale, this magical substance gives and gives, generating and enhancing value, for state and private men alike. Culture is posited as a mode of value-production: for its economy-boosting and wealth-generating effects; its talent for regeneration, through raising house prices and introducing new business, which is largely service based; and its benefits as a type of moral rearmament or emotional trainer, a perspective that lies behind the ‘social inclusion’ model, whereby culture must speak to – or down to – disenfranchised groups. Culture is instrumentalised for its ‘value-generating’ spin-offs.

Raises for me broad questions of value, valorization, partnership, leadership, and the relationships between culture and art (both theoretical, perceptual, and functional) in post-industrial capitalism and productive consumerism.