Case 1: Formulating Government Arts Practice
PLANNING A POLICY INTERVENTION
The theory of the evolution of complex adaptive systems suggests the circumstances for the rapid and powerful evolution of an arts culture. In this set of four
papers, we test how the theory might be applied to specific areas of the arts.
1: DESCRIBE THE ECOLOGY
FORMULATING GOVERNMENT ARTS
PRACTICE
DESCRIBE THE ECOLOGY
EXPLANATIONS AND EXAMPLES
1. Identify the main evolutionary "agents"
In an arts ecology, we might expect these to
include artists, arts organisations, the
expectations and traditions of the culture,
audiences, sources of funds, government
regulators and so on. Less specifically, there are
general "agents" or ecological circumstances such
as the state of the economy, war/peace, larger
non-artistic forces within the culture such as
religion. The choice of objective for our action will
possibly narrow the focus among these agents.
The span of government is so encompassing that
the number of agents is enormous. Context
immediately relevant to the arts is set in the
context of all possible agents and actions.Some
possibilities: priority given to the arts and arts
policies and actions / government's structure of
values / ideology. Government's view of
electorate's valuing of the arts. The policies and
practices of relevant government entities eg
funding bodies, liquor licensing, media regulators,
building regulators, copyright legislators and
administrators, education departments, tertiary
education regulators etc. Economy generally and
government's economic beliefs and policies.
Political discourse, ideologies, partisan priorities,
promotions. And of course, more.
2. Identify the major forces acting upon the
agents and how agents do or might adapt
Above all, the agents are acting upon each other.
The actions could be immediate and direct,
sometimes called 'proximate', or less immediate
('distal'), eg through another agent or
participation in the broader ecology. Identifying
relevant agents requires reference to the objective
below - otherwise everything in the ecology is
included.
Is there a succession of disrupting events that
might lead to an emergence of a major change in
the ecology?
Given the scope of government, practicality
requires selection of only the forces identified as
relatively immediately relevant to the objective
below
a.
Evidence of punctuated equilibrium or
power law
b.
Regularity/chance; certainties/probabilities;
situations in which predictibility is in principle
impossible
All of these are possible in a complex adaptive
system.
We could look eg at the developments in
intellectual property law provoked by the digital
disruption of the music, film/television and
publishing industries.
Identify in relation to the objective.
2: ACT UPON THE ECOLOGY
3. Decide objective(s)
a.
It might be narrow or broad, singular or
multiple
Generally speaking, we would be trying to
influence change in the cultural ecology. The
concept is usually then not one of linear cause and
effect but of multiple agents acting upon each
other to take us in the desired direction, possibly
in surprising ways.
The term "government" here includes its arts
agencies.
It is suggested that the
government's role is not to impose a view of the
arts but to facilitate evolution of the arts ecology.
By inviting bottom up concepts/ proposals for
support, it is doing this. What becomes crucial are
its eligibility requirements and selection criteria
and the amount of energy it injects or subtracts via
funds and regulations. These will fit with, at
minimum, concepts/definitions of the arts,
inevitably some values, probably distinctive
strategies for various sectors, e.g. major
performing arts companies, community arts. There
is inevitable interaction between top down and
bottom up.
A key issue is
the degree of governmental involvement and
support which is to say, the government's role as a
cultural agent in the culture of which it is a part.
(What follows upon that concept?!)
b.
Describe the rationale for the objective(s).
[Readers, please recall that this paper is intended as
a test of the utility of complex adaptive systems
theory in artistic planning. You may or may not
agree with the rationales given here, but that is not
the point.]
The ecology will evolve without our guidance. But
this document is intended to describe the nature
and consequences of deliberate intervention. The
intervention has an objective and the objective has
a rationale.
Artists exist in and respond to all aspects of the
natural and cultural ecologies with their various
abilities to perceive and create. We believe that
their activities and productions have a special
value. We also believe that the community and its
members are strengthened by broad participation
in art-making. The arts are a public good, and
government has an important role to play in
supporting arts activity. Governments are not
artists - they do not create artworks and they
should not presume to dictate the forms and
content of artistic production. Artists make their
greatest contribution if they are allowed free
expression. Governments' role is to facilitate
artistic creation by supporting the circumstances
in which it can flourish and they do that by
allocating material resources - funds, facilities - for
valued art which is not commercially viable, and by
applying regulations that foster, or at least do not
impede, the arts. We acknowledge that
governments will have varying priorities
depending upon their own political values and
these result in differing policy emphases. They can
be exercised with care, within the structure
proposed here.
4. Choose or create a non-equilibrium
environment
An environment where agents must adapt to
continuing change relevant to the objective. If the
environment were completely in equilibrium, there
is no cause for evolutionary change. In the arts,
there might be an almost ritualised repetition of
events. Of course, unchanging repetition is not
possible - probably even if intentional. In the
natural world, accidental mutation can bring
change, in the arts world, unplanned events. The
disequilibrium sought after here would serve to
foster the objective.
As a whole, the arts is a non-equilibrium
environment. The injection of the government's
decided objective, supported by rewards for
achieving it, will result in a disequilibrium as agents
shift their activities to adapt and possibly compete
with each other. Or the injection might penalise
agents for not acting in a prescribed way, eg in
Turkey, singing prohibited music. The
disequilibrium could be less directed, could simply
create a more diffuse disturbance eg reward
innovation generally with no particular focus or
direction.
a.
Injection of the objective removes existing
equilibrium
If it didn't, the objective would be redundant? But
the point is that no more may be needed.
Competitive applications for funding remove
equilibrium as agents must compete. If the
government is to act on the objective, it will
reward or penalise, draw towards or drive away
from an action, engage agents with each other.
There may be disengagement too, which may or
may not be of concern to government.
b. Disequilibrium could be introduced without
specific reference to the objective with the
possibility that beneficial change will follow
For instance, shake things up and see what
happens. The objective will be introduced by other
means so it already has influence. If the
environment is already unstable, some
interactions can be influenced by the objective.
Novel responses may be more likely where there is
broad change.
That may even be what motivates the objective
For example, government could abandon
categories or definitions so that agents find
themselves adapting to other new and unfamiliar
agents, perhaps towards new and unfamiliar
objectives, only one of which is the particular
objective of the exercise.
c.
The environment may already be out of
equilibrium in a way relevant to the objective
d.
A coevolutionary partnership can be a
powerful and focused form of productive
disequilibrium
Each of two parties in a coevolutionary
partnership must maintain its position against
developments by the other in order to achieve
reward or avert threat.
Examples. Two arts companies in the same city
competing for the same audience, or for funding,
or for forms of recognition. Two creators of
technology addressing similar functions compete
with new innovations.
5. Seek an optimal balance between top-down
and bottom-up actions in pursuit of the objective
What is optimal will depend upon the nature of
the objective. If the objective is tightly prescribed,
the top-down injection will need to be stronger.
What we are seeking is the fastest, most effective,
most imaginative evolution. As a general rule, this
is more likely to result from strong, diverse
bottom-up activity.
The objective may seek to take advantage of the
disequilbrium or conversely, introduce greater
equilibrium to consolidate support.
Would it be possible to consider the relationship
as coevolutioary between the arts and
government, in which their success is interlinked?
One imagines this possible with eg France where
the arts are regarded as an important illustration
of accomplishment and prestige.
There is a danger off too much co-dependence;
requiring the arts to symbolise the government
could be very confining.
Government should err towards bottom-up.
Government personnel are selected for other than
arts skills. Governments do not create the arts.
Governments tend to prescribe, seek tidy
processes, accountability, likely to be
counterproductive to arts imagination and
production. The optimal balance will usually
involve a light touch from government.
6. Bottom-up activity is generally to be preferred
but may need top-down to stimulate activity or to
guide its direction
In bottom up activity, more people, forces
contribute, more solutions appear. People,
solutions can interact, solutions evolve. There are
more possible solutions, more interactions, faster
evolution.
If
there is equilibrium, there may be little bottom-up
impetus for adaptation. Or there may be
disequlibrium but it does not guide action towards
particular objectives. Top-down action may be
needed to unsettle equilibrium or guide
movement.
Govt is powerful, can survive wild ideas from
bottom-up, can even benefit from the disruption.
Dilemma: it has to provide top down stimulus,
while dealing with its conflicting motives to
encourage or suppress. For the purposes of
evolutionary efficiency and to maintain freedom of
expression, government intervention into the arts
should inject substantial resources with no more
guidance than necessary. The balance inevitably is
a matter of judgement.
a.
Encourage participation by more people,
of diverse views and experience; give more
freedom to individual participants
More diversity of people and ideas produces more
diversity in outcomes, more possible permutations
and combinations of actions, more opportunities
for selection of best outcomes.
A side-effect is that broader participation can lead
to greater resilience.
Government has access to the entire population,
to all the diversity in the country. It can optimise
this resource by energising it with resources and
giving it freedom to use its skills to address
skilfully designed objectives.
Eligibility and assessment criteria should be expert
and as open as possible
b.
Ensure rich diversity of inputs, but not so
much diversity that participants lose orientation or
sense of purpose
Too much diversity can lead to incoherence or
aimlessness, or retreat to narrower certainties.
Government has the resources to provide diversity
of input. Diversity can come also from other
participants in the line of activity and from
communications about outcomes.
Perhaps, because of its wealth and power, the
most important task for government is to judge
the balance of its interventions between top down
and bottom up.
Teaching the re-creation of music involves passing
on the laws of style and so probably requires more
of a top-down prescription than teaching the
creation of music, where the student will be
encouraged both to meet and break laws. The
rules for financial reporting are more prescriptive
than the rules for making a profit.
The top-down intervention by government to
establish accountability is inherently top-down.
Complaints are that it is typically excessive and not
well-judged. Some governments seek to censor,
using arts funding as a tool; the US, occasionally
an Australian government has done so. More
typically, funding criteria are more free, mostly
constrained by stated objectives.
a.
Top-down is necessary to define and
reward the desired evolution
This is somewhat tautologous: a desired evolution
is one that is defined. There may be little relevant
bottom-up activity without top-down
intervention. On the other hand, the very
definition of the objective limits evolutionary
options; top-down can limit options, participation.
An evolution could be agreed and acted upon
bottom-up. Sometimes that is called a revolution.
A government intervention is by definition topdown, although it might be in response to bottom
up opinion whether sought or otherwise received.
Top-down government interventions come
normally from government arts agencies although
governments themselves may also define
objectives.
b.
Top-down is more suitable and could be
more efficient for achieving tightly defined
objectives
For example, if an organisation wishes to
implement an already well-defined procedure, it
does not necessarily want the staff to divert time
to inventing alternatives.
Top-down may limit options and development
See 5. above.
d.
Niches of opportunity are shaped by what
fills them so do not rigidly prescribe them in
advance.
For examples, a community is ready for
development of its musical life. It could be a tidy
solution to begin a music school and that will then
fill the niche in a particular way, and lead to
particular sorts of development. But it may have
been imposed and not have been the most fruitful
solution.
Better for government to impose a process on
agents that could lead to optimal outcome than to
decide the outcome itself. If the government
wants to see a professional theatre in
Wollongong, do not prescribe its program, its
style, its operation but go through a process to
evolve the company that succeeds in that city with
that audience, preferably in a distinctive way that
also induces adaptations elsewhere.
e.
Imposition of gateway events on an
unready environment should be avoided as it can
be disastrous.
Remember the imposition of ANAM on Melbourne
without prior consultation, planning and the
resulting dishevelment and poor outcomes, only
more recently being overcome.
Such an imposition is made on the less powerful
by the more powerful, and government is a likely
candidate.
7. Top-down intervention is of strength suited to
the objective
c.
It seems that generally while the speed,
flexibility and effectiveness of evolution is
maximised by bottom-up, which therefore is to be
encouraged, it may be constrained by top-down,
which therefore is to be minimised.
In the arts, there are some inhibitors to top-down:
eg ideologies supporting free speech/freedom of
expression, difficulties in defining limitations to be
imposed, politicians' incomprehension of artistic
statements. But as noted, simply to define an
objective is to limit activity.
8. Relate the objective to moving within the
"fitness landscape".
The evolutionary "fitness" of the agent under
consideration is a concept of its success in the
ecology. It can achieve success in a "shallow basin
of attraction" - e.g. a band has good audiences in
its local neighbourhood or city - but is not
successful in a deeper basin of attraction - eg in
the USA or in wider sales of recordings. What
would cause it to move to a deeper basin? [Is this
redundant in light of the considerations prior to
this one? Perhaps it is a sort of summarising.]
Since government represents the entire country
(or jurisdiction), fitness might be defined as the
fitness of its entire arts sector. This might to a
large extent be described in terms of values which are matters to be agreed. For instance,
fitness might be defined as financially profitable or
alternatively artistically successful regardless of
financial outcomes. For argument's sake, the
fitness of Australia's arts might be defined in
terms of artistic quality in the view of the general
public, or Australians knowledgeable about the
arts, or people internationally knowledgeable in
the arts. It might be judged via its success in
defining a distinctive Australian identity, or
through the level and quantity of artistic
innovation. Or in the growth or decline of artistic
activity, or in participation in art-making in the
population at large.
For any of these, there
would be indicators of "fitness" or success. Which
ones are important, according to whom?
3: SOME PARTICULAR OBJECTIVES
a.
9. Achieve excellence
Excellence is defined top-down
b.
Excellence is more likely to be achieved
bottom-up
10. Achieve innovation
a.
The process of innovation is encouraged
by disequilibrium in the environment
b.
The process of innovation benefits from a
diversity of input and multiple agents/people
c.
Innovation is accelerated by
communication of outcomes to other participants
and potential participants
A belief by an individual artist in his own
excellence is not enough. There must be
agreement by an audience. For the artist, the
audience is then imposing top-down its criteria.
Whose definition is applied is decided
circumstantially. Do we have regard to the number
in the audience, or its expertise? Generally, we pay
more attention to relevant expertise.
In the funding race, the candidates selected are
those that are most excellent by the criteria
adopted. The government (agency) sets the
criteria to fit its objective. It should set criteria and
choose from among the candidates in consultation
and with expertise and wisdom. Innovation may
be a criterion, which is to say there may be some
departure from current signs of excellence.
Even an individual music student is more likely to
achieve a depth of excellence if subject to multiple
influences and allowed a freedom of response,
than if obliged to imitate the master. Excellence is
more than precision and accuracy
Government itself is highly unlikely to produce
artistic excellence because it is not selected for its
artistic expertise or executant skills. Relative to
government, artistic production is inherently
bottom-up, even when tightly constrained. The
question is then how best to achieve excellence
from government-supported artistic production
and our answers above are that it is more probably
where freedom and diversity of expression are
enabled.
If there is stasis and general satisfaction with it,
there is little motivation for innovation.
To innovate is to produce something that evolves
further from the status quo and the more the
diversity of inputs and agents, the more the
opportunities for new couplings and adaptations.
Each new innovation is a building block for the
next, if it is communicated to the innovators.
Communication is also intrinsic to the public good.
Disequilibrium can be created by government
provision of reward for innovation
It may be appropriate for government to assist a
diversity of input to support an objective of
innovation.
Government has the power to ensure broad
dissemination of innovative concepts and
outcomes to the active agents and to others.