Phil Miller is right to be worried about our fledgling new public funding organisation for the creative world - Creative Scotland (The Herald, March 1). There is a danger of the arts bit of creative endeavour being lost in the breadth of the anticipated remit for this new organisation.
It is one thing to find new and interesting ways of supporting and developing the ability of not-for-profit arts organisations to become more financially resilient in the fast-changing wider environment, by encouraging use of the full range of available financial instruments to support their mission - from grants at one end to loans and quasi equity at the other; it is another to start to think of the arts simply as a subset of the creative industries with primarily commercial imperatives to match.
Anne Bonnar talked wisely of the need for big brains to understand new ways of supporting creative endeavour. We do need them. However, the arts are much more about heart and soul, about difference and challenge, about passion and individuality, drive and contrariness, about not knowing, and about a distinctive kind of intelligence - and all other difficult intangibles that one can't easily fit into a traditional policy box, or even commercial approach; policy is often about conformity, about equity, about finding order. One of the biggest concerns about Creative Scotland is that by not fully addressing that difficult tension between art and commerce, between meaning and money, and by conflating different values and different motivations under one banner of creative industries, we could end up with the wrong kind of policy frameworks and methods to support the kind of artistic creativity and innovation which is not motivated by commercial objectives, and miss what the art bit really has to offer.
This is important stuff. Whatever one thinks of the detail of the McMaster Review for the arts in England, its attempt to focus the agenda on to the intangible stuff of quality, of judgment, of new work, of art and artists, is a breath of fresh air at a time when our artists and what they make matters so much; when what they are doing is of such high standard; and when the potential for artists and their work to be understood and appreciated for the meaning and value that they make in the world is so high. The starting point of artistic practice, making and creating is very different from the world of for-profits.
There is much to be gained in the mix between these worlds, but in order not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, a deeper understanding, debate and conversation about the real relationship and difference between the commercial interests of the wider creative industries, and artistic motivation and knowledge, will be critical to the success of this new and potentially exciting venture.
Roanne Dods, Director, Jerwood Charitable Foundation, 171 Union Street, Bankside, London.
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