Maybe a better question might be what kind of support would we like?I would like access to space to exhibit in and to curate projects for on a regular basis and access to making facilities and technicians. I would like to have regular access to a space not just to make and exhibit work but also to discuss work in and to use for reading groups, workshops and discussions series etc. I think that these things are more important then the multitiude of funded organisations out there all clammering to attract artists with promises of accessing educative and diagnostic services. We have the skills within the arts community to co - educate, to advise each other, and to make information about opportunities available to each other, what we need are the opportunities to make and show work which would automatically drive all of those interactions forward as well. I constantly come back to asking myself why it is that society distrusts artists so much, why must all provision be so prescriptive of outcomes, why can't the money that is fed through agencies and into paying administrators be given to artists to make work with? The answer to this question lies in the insistence that the arts must be harnessed and targeted at problems. I would argue that practitioners should be able to be funded to make work and that the degree of social engagemnet in that work should be up to them and should not influence funding. Art should just be supported because it makes life better. Artist led projects should be supported because they offer windows into artistic consciousness independent of government led prescriptive funding agendas and the art market. When artists are working in ways that are their own with concerns that are their own we are all closer to innovation, and innovation is after all what has always driven civilization on.
[We have the skills within the arts community to co - educate, to advise each other, and to make information about opportunities available to each other]
agree, but how much such sharing is actually going on apart from the normal informal/occaisional networking amongst neighbours? what's the baseline, I mean, and q would a space facilitate its development more, or is there also an attitudinal shift to be made in this direction? Any research in this area you can point us to?
[practitioners should be able to be funded to make work and that the degree of social engagemnet in that work should be up to them]
yeah, what the work does socially is maybe less relevant than what it is - but you can see why the funders and their bureuacrats want measures and standards etc, it's what they do - and it's to counteract the perception/charge that they are funding artists who are largely narcissists [why it is that society distrusts artists so much] on the (old?) theory you're supposed to do work "for yourself" and any effect is second order to the creative process (hopefully) manifested in the work. OR that the work is so mired in/determined by theory that you have to have read the books before you can get the work at all...
(To my mind it's often more about play than work anyway - which further distances the rationale for getting funded to do it - another topic though.)
[because it makes life better]
if that's not an "outcome" dunno what is - better for whom though? (That's the socail outcome). Should funding applications just ask "How does this proposal make life better?" and then apportion funds on the basis of a measure of the bettement?
[closer to innovation]
innovation is not so much an outcome as a process, and that's more where you started me off, looking at how/whether collective actions/processes can work in the context of the highly individualistic (generally) notions and manifestations of the artist we have nowadays, atomised and untogether and needing the ministrations of the nanny to get anything done.
[We have the skills within the arts community to co - educate, to advise each other, and to make information about opportunities available to each other]
agree, but how much such sharing is actually going on apart from the normal informal/occaisional networking amongst neighbours? what's the baseline, I mean, and q would a space facilitate its development more, or is there also an attitudinal shift to be made in this direction? Any research in this area you can point us to?
[practitioners should be able to be funded to make work and that the degree of social engagemnet in that work should be up to them]
yeah, what the work does socially is maybe less relevant than what it is - but you can see why the funders and their bureuacrats want measures and standards etc, it's what they do - and it's to counteract the perception/charge that they are funding artists who are largely narcissists [why it is that society distrusts artists so much] on the (old?) theory you're supposed to do work "for yourself" and any effect is second order to the creative process (hopefully) manifested in the work. OR that the work is so mired in/determined by theory that you have to have read the books before you can get the work at all...
(To my mind it's often more about play than work anyway - which further distances the rationale for getting funded to do it - another topic though.)
[because it makes life better]
if that's not an "outcome" dunno what is - better for whom though? (That's the socail outcome). Should funding applications just ask "How does this proposal make life better?" and then apportion funds on the basis of a measure of the bettement?
[closer to innovation]
innovation is not so much an outcome as a process, and that's more where you started me off, looking at how/whether collective actions/processes can work in the context of the highly individualistic (generally) notions and manifestations of the artist we have nowadays, atomised and untogether and needing the ministrations of the nanny to get anything done.