ai
The only magazine for THE arts SECTOR available online and in print
July 2016 / Issue 331 / features / jobs / www.artsindustry.co.uk
AI / 331 CONTENTS
22
FEATURES
7 Controversy
Over the edge
When controversial art challenges the rules of public
order, how should the police respond? Arts Council
England have created tools for them to work by
10 Circus
17
14
A flying success
As Circomedia, one of the UK’s first circus schools,
celebrates its 30th birthday, Helen Dorritt finds out
about plans for the next three decades
14 Funding
Getting the arts back into the
bloodstream
In five years the British Council has undergone a
transformation in its cultural influence in the world,
Graham Sheffield discusses the strategy for the next
five years with Simon Tait
17 Arts venues
HOME is where the art is
Manchester’s newest arts venue is one year old.
Patrick Kelly pays a visit
20 Good practice guide
Crossing the floor to the ring
Déda has appointed a creative producer to help
drive forward its vision to become the Midlands’
leading creative centre for dance, contemporary
circus and outdoor performing arts. CEO and
artistic director Stephen Munn explains how Déda is
becoming a creative lead in fusing these art forms
REGULARS
4 AI Profile
Colin Matthews OBE, composer
9 Papertrail
22 The Word
Steve Ball, executive producer of the World
Festival of Theatre for Young Audiences,
considers the current state of play of theatre
for children and young people in the UK
22
10
24 Simon Tait’s Diary
26 My Story
Dr Paul Cabuts, director of Falmouth’s Institute
of Photography and creator of Falmouth
University’s new online-led MA Photography
30 Passing by...
Antony Thorncroft wonders how our culture
ceased to be popular – at our expense
Cover photo: Dean Clough presents a series of summer exhibitions including a retrospective by the impasto painter, Edward
Beale; innovative printmaking about building development in York by Catherine Sutcliffe-Fuller and oil paintings like this one
by Alan Pergusey (best known for his sculpture and community art work). The Halifax arts centre’s own collection is also on
display, together with a huge model of the site made of Lego bricks. Exhibitions run from June 11 to August 30.
2 Arts Industry July 2016
LEADER
All for one, but one for all
I
n this issue we join, wholeheartedly, in
the celebrations of HOME’s first birthday,
which has had a triumphant inaugural
year and is a vindication of a new spirit of
combination, co-operation and mixed funding.
That it is in Manchester, the main dynamo of
the Northern Powerhouse, is also good for
the mood that prevails at the moment against
London as the nation’s cultural leader.
What the creation and development of
HOME shows is that the pragmatic approach
not only allows cost saving in that duplication
is eliminated, it allows an airing to new art
through co-production and the realisation of a
new audience that previously, perhaps, knew
only what it didn’t like, and that was what was
being offered.
It couldn’t have happened without the fullon support of the local authority who agreed
that there was an artistic case for a merger
(between the Cornerhouse visual arts centre
and the Library Theatre to create HOME), not
just an accommodation one. It was a meeting
of minds between Manchester’s chief executive,
Howard Bernstein and HOME boss, Dave
Moutrey.
It is a philosophy that has been put to
practical purpose for the last five years by the
British Council, whose arts department was all
but wound up four years before that but is
now taking the lead around the world in
showing the intrinsic and applied value of
creativity in the most basic aspects of life,
where the council’s experts work together with
local practitioners whose cultures are quite
different from ours.
But while co-operation in a non-hierarchical
network is giving opportunity to gifted creative
people that found it much harder to make their
way before, a successful culture also needs the
influence and inspiration of individuals, such
as our profile subject this week, the composer
Colin Matthews who has guided generations
of contemporary composers safely through
the minefield of an artform that has limited
appreciation compared with other artforms.
Making a career as a classical musician is hard
enough, but as a composer of contemporary
classical music it would be almost impossible
without the guidance of this septuagenarian
and his ilk towards sources of funding and
specialist teaching.
The system is right to be inclusive and
collegiate in its approaches, but it must not
ignore the needs of the individual artist, the
raw material of all we work for.
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© Arts Industry 2016
Arts Industry July 2016 3
AI PROFILE Colin Matthews OBE, composer
The new boy
T
o put Colin Matthews in his place in the pantheon of British composers, the critic Paul Griffiths
summed him up in industrial terms: “The Isambard Kingdom Brunel of contemporary music;
master of great time machines, steamy with energy derived
from pulse and from massive, surging harmony, and openly displaying their structural engineering, all finished with
a craftsman’s care”.
It’s exciting music, unexpectedly melodic for those not
accustomed to enjoying contemporary work, that doesn’t
conform to the norms of composition. But what Griffiths’s
description ignores is that almost throughout his career
he has been a leading champion both for new music and
young composers, and that he has become one of the
world’s most commissioned composers in spite of having
been through a musicless state education.
As well as being one of our most prolific composers,
Colin Matthews has run important elements of contemporary music in this country. He is the administrator of the
Holst Foundation, a grant-giving charity set up 35 years
ago by Gustav Holst’s daughter, Imogen, to support living
composers. He is a trustee and music director of the BrittenPears Foundation which, among other things, commissions
new music, and he chairs the Britten Estate. He’s been a
council member of the Royal Philharmonic Society since
2005 and sits on its executive committee. And alongside a
sheaf of other fellowships and honorary roles that testify to
the high regard he is held in, he is the Prince Consort Professor of Music at the Royal College of Art. He was made
an OBE in 2011.
Reading that you’d think that our subject was the product of a childhood and education that was steeped in classical music. In fact, he and his brother David, the older by
two years and also a successful composer, effectively taught
each other from the age of ten until they began to get formal
teaching while at university (not studying music).
He celebrates his 70th birthday this year with yet another new work at the BBC Proms, while his current task is
at the other end of the scale, a choral piece to celebrate a local amateur choir’s own 40th birthday. But that is not what
is on the music stand on the piano in his Clapham home:
4 Arts Industry July 2016
it’s the 70th Birthday Sonata, composed by David Matthews.
Born in Walthamstow their childhood home was not
a musical one - “Mother liked music but that’s as far as it
went” – and the family had graduated from Brick Lane and
Bow. His father had six brothers all of whom could vamp a
piano but none could read music. Both boys won scholarships to Bancroft School in Woodford, “ a reasonably good
school, though musically useless”.
But somehow, though they knew no-one in the music
world, the musical gene asserted itself in both boys and
they would scour Leytonstone Public Library’s music collection obsessively.
The catalyst, however, was the 1960 centenary of the
birth of Mahler, a composer still little regarded then but
who was accorded broadcasts of all his symphonies by the
BBC Third Programme, as Radio 3 still was. At the end of
the year came the 10th, the unfinished symphony which
had been completed by the musicologist Deryck Cooke –
the performance of which was forbidden by Mahler’s widow until she relented after she’d listened to it, and Cooke’s
work was not then broadcast. Enchanted and intrigued by
the music, the 14-year-old wrote to the BBC requesting a
copy of the score, which he was sent; with even greater
temerity, having examined the music, he wrote to Cooke
himself to say he’d found some mistakes. “Instead of saying ‘go away’ he was very welcoming and extremely open
with me” he recalls, and they became friends and collaborators. Mahler’s completed 10th was first performed in the
1964 Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, with Matthews the
only acknowledged aide.
He studied classics at Nottingham University, began to study composition
privately while he was there and
later was invited to Sussex
University to do a music
doctorate; he began to
teach at Sussex.
>>
Arts Industry July 2016 5
AI PROFILE
>>
In 1975 Matthews won the Scottish National Orchestra’s Ian Whyte
Award for his Fourth Sonata which
brought with it not only five live performances of the piece but publication by Novello, “so I had a published
piece which made it easier to take me
on – being published was really almost the only way through then”.
By then he had begun working at
the Aldburgh Festival where he met
Imogen Holst with whom he helped
set up the Holst Foundation, and also
got involved with what was to be the
Britten-Pears Foundation, vital lifelines which meant that he was paid
while having the freedom to compose. He worked with Britten and
though he admired the great man,
he was not at first an influence on his
own work. “I was only beginning to
find my own voice, but to work with
Mahler and Britten was extraordinary, watching two great composers
actually at work” he says.
The work was flowing: his orchestral Night Music, the Sonata No.
5 called Landscape, and then his BBCcommissioned First Cello Concerto. A
series of London Symphony Orchestra commissions began with Quatrain,
conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas
(another champion of new music),
and he became the LSO’s resident
composer. He wrote string quartets,
oboe quartets, ballet music, film music and a huge choral-orchestral piece,
Renewal, commissioned by the BBC to
mark its 50th anniversary in 1996. He
wrote Hidden Variables for the Royal
Ballet and the opening of the Royal
Opera House in 1999, and his output
has not flagged. From 2001 to 2010 he
was associate composer for the Hallé.
His major First World War choral
piece, No Man’s Land – inspired by a
trip to the Somme with his mother to
find the grave of her father who was
killed there 1914 - won him the 2012
British Composer Award.
He also spotted a gap in recording for new music so, 27 years ago,
set up NMC Recordings to conserve
performances of British composers’
work that might only get a single
live performance. It was created as
charity with some funding from the
Holst Foundation, and now is pros6 Arts Industry July 2016
Curriculum vitae
1946Born in London
1958Bancroft School, Woodford, Essex
1965Nottingham University
1968Sussex University
1971-84 Working with Imogen Holst
1972-76Assistant to Benjamin Britten
1975 Wins Ian Whyte Award for Fourth Sonata
1984 Commissioned for
BBC Proms
1989Founds NMC Recordings
1989First commission from LSO
1992 Co-founder with Oliver Knussen of Contemporary Composition and Performance
Course at Aldeburgh
1992-95Board director,
Performing Right Society
1998-09Visiting composer, Tanglewood
2000Pluto addition to Holst’s Planets, commissioned by Hallé
2011OBE
pering, counter-intuitively in an era
of downloads and streaming. “The
demand for CDs is still high, we don’t
rely on dealers, we sell direct form the
website so we get twice the money.
The whole digital revolution has been
quite good for us”.
This almost cursory resumé of his
output does not do it credit, but alongside he has been as tireless on behalf
of young composers and their work.
Now, few composers are published,
computer technology makes it less
vital, but there are more opportunities
for young writers to get their music
played in conservatoires than before,
partly thanks to the championing of
Matthews and his friend Oliver Knussen, the composer/conductor. It was
with Knussen that he set up the composition course at Aldeburgh which
takes composers at the beginning
of their careers and allows them to
work with players. “There’s a whole
new generation of young performers
now for whom new music is a natural
language” he says. “We’ve been very
concerned with the gap when you
leave the conservatoire into the real
world, and the course Olly and I set
up in 1992 was very much aimed at
that”. In their first year they had Thomas Ades and Julian Anderson, two
of the biggest names in classical composition today.
With the LSO he also created the
Panufnik Composers’ Scheme which
allows young talents to work with
an orchestra, based at St Luke’s and
sponsored by Helen Hamlyn Trust.
Not all of them make it. “If you were
looking statistically at the list of composers I’ve worked with over the last
25 years it might be as many as 200,
and to be brutally honest not much
more than a dozen made in terms of
getting through. It’s not surprising really – there wouldn’t be room if they
were all successful, nobody would be
playing them. But half of them are
making a decent go of it”.
But his own work continues to delight. Between now and next March
there will no fewer than 18 public
performances of his music Berceuse for
Dresden. His birthday is being marked
in this year’s Proms by the National
Youth Orchestra playing his Pluto
the Renewer, Matthews’s 2000 commissioned addition to Holst’s Planet
Suite, and his Berceuse for Dresden (to
be played in August by the Hallé under Mark Elder), inspired by the Victor Klemperer diaries. They record a
Jew’s survival in the city through the
Nazi years, and the piece was commissioned to mark the restoration of
Dresden’s Frauenckirche in 2005.
The world premiere of that piece
by Lorin Maazel’s New York Philharmonic in the Frauenkirche is one
of two career highlights that come to
Colin Matthews’s mind, but the other
is characteristically about an innovative young ensemble.
“It’s Spira Mirabili, an Italian
chamber orchestra that works entirely
without a conductor, and sometimes
even without music in a completely
dark hall. They commissioned a piece
from me (a tongue-in-cheek “missing” slow movement for Beethoven’s
8th Symphony, which Spiru Mirabilis
duly played as part of the whole symphony at the Leipzig Gewandhaus)
and we must have had 40 hours’
rehearsal, extraordinarily intensive.
Amazing and totally uplifting.”
CONTROVERSY
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ArtsIndustry
IndustryJuly
July2016
2016 7
CONTROVERSY
A
ll of us who work in arts
and culture cherish the
principle of freedom of
expression, but presenting
controversial work can, in practice, be
extremely challenging.
Executives and boards will often
have many sleepless nights about
what might await them – legal challenges, police intervention, or damage to their organisation’s reputation.
Sometimes it may seem a lot easier
not to proceed.
Recently, we have seen some good
work from the sector to support organisations involved in presenting
controversial work. For example, the
movement What Next? has developed comprehensive guidance for
fundraising or programme decisions
that have the potential to cause ethical or reputational risk, and Cause4
has developed a best practice ethical
fundraising policy template.
The role of the Arts Council in
relation to particular events is necessarily limited. Responsibility for
decisions about proceeding with a
particular project must rest with the
executive and board of the organisation involved. But we do think we can
play a valuable role in engaging in
high level conversations with the relevant authorities and advocating on
behalf of the sector in trying to ensure
that wherever possible the principles
8 Arts Industry July 2016
of freedom of expression in relation
to artistic endeavour are understood
and respected. We recognise that public order is
a challenging legal area to navigate.
The circumstances in which work is
shown varies enormously around the
country; police forces must take into
account the particular local context
when planning advice and any police response. Often multiple critical
factors come into play and the police
service – and arts organisations – will
be faced with difficult decisions on
how to proceed in order to maintain
public order.
This can result in different police
forces taking different approaches
to the same artwork when it is, for
instance, on tour. To date, the police
service has had no agreed guidance
to help them deal with potentially
controversial art works. In this vacuum, police forces have often tended
towards caution to minimise the potential risk of disorder. The result,
in our view, is that in too many cases
the public’s ability to experience art
(however controversial and difficult)
is being restricted.
Alongside our colleagues at the
Tate and Index on Censorship, we’ve
been working with the Director of
Public Prosecutions, her team in the
Crown Prosecution Service and the
police service to address this challenge. We focused on how we might
encourage police forces across England to develop a more consistent
approach to policing controversial
art. We wanted to give the police
service tools to help them make more
informed decisions with regard to
controversial works of art. We were
determined, wherever possible, to see
freedom of expression supported.
As a result of this work, we are
happy to report that the Crown Prosecution Service and the National
Police Chiefs Council have now officially recommended and distributed a
public order law pack to every police
force across England and Wales.
This pack is one of five produced
by Index on Censorship and Vivarta
and funded by the Arts Council. The
packs outline the legal parameters
and provide case studies in five areas
where controversy commonly arises:
child protection, counter-terrorism,
race and religion, obscene publications as well as public order. With
this law pack now in circulation
among police forces, it should
be easier for arts or cultural organisations planning to present potentially
controversial work to enter a dialogue with their local force. The two
parties can communicate on the
PAPERTRAIL
Tilt trouble
Councillors in Inverness have
called an emergency summit over
controversial plans for a £300,000
tilting pier artwork over the River
Ness, says the Aberdeen Press and
Journal. The proposal, designed
by arts practice Sans Facon, is part
of a wider £760,000 riverside arts
initiative, mainly government
funded. However, the plan has
divided opinion in the city and
earlier the council agreed to move the
preferred site for the artwork after
public opposition. Some councillors
have criticised the council-appointed
Inverness City Arts working group,
which says that the installation
would reap huge economic benefits.
Police and community service officers
pose with performers from Duckie, the
“post gay” performance collective.
Photo © Holly Revel / Duckie
basis of this document.
While the sector continues to lead
this debate, we recognise that it’s never been more important to ensure that
the sector have access to guidance and
decision making tools to help make
informed decisions that respect and
protect the right to freedom of artistic
expression. We strongly recommend
that if you are considering presenting work that might be controversial,
you read these packs and familiarise
yourself with the legal issues and the
various case studies that they explore.
Remember to start planning early, involve your board in your discussions
and talk to the police well in advance.
We recognise that getting this law
pack circulated is just the start of the
journey. We are now in conversation
with What Next, Index on Censorship
and Cause 4 to explore what further
training and support might be put in
place for executives and boards considering presenting controversial art.
We want to do what we can to help
organisations plan with more confidence – and ensure that there are a
few less sleepless nights for both trustees and staff!
www.artscouncil.org.uk/read-allblog-posts/controversial-art-and-publicorder
Lochhead Lashes Out
Scotland’s former Makar Liz
Lochhead has criticised the way
the Scottish Government handled
her departure, and launched a
scathing attack on the country’s
cultural establishment. Lochhead
told the Sunday Herald that she was
abruptly dropped as Makar without
warning and criticised Creative
Scotland, suggesting that the quango
believes it can “create art by a lot of
bureaucrats deciding whether you
should be allowed to write it or paint
it or compose it or make”. She also
claimed that it was a “great pity” that
“there’s a shortage of Scottish people
working in the National Theatre of
Scotland” and asked whether the
NTS is “about theatre for Scotland or
is it part of the heritage and tourist
industry?”
Making a spectacle
Visitors to the San Francisco Museum
of Modern Art were fooled into
thinking a pair of glasses set on the
floor by a 17-year-old prankster was
a postmodern masterpiece, writes
Buzzfeed. To test out the theory that
people will stare at, and try and
artistically interpret, anything if
it’s in a gallery setting, TJ Khayatan
set a pair of glasses down and
walked away. The teen tweeted the
moment on 24 May and it’s already
attracted over 45,000 retweets.
Khayatan previously had similar
success with a baseball cap and a bin.
Slush slashed
Arts funding is an election issue
in Australia. The Guardian reports
that Labor has pledged to close a
controversial arts funding body
established by a previous arts
minister and return remaining
funds to the country’s equivalent
of the Arts Council. The party’s arts
spokesman, Mark Dreyfus described
Catalyst as a “ministerial slush fund”
and pledged to give the Australia
Council an extra $20m a year for four
years from 2017. Cardiff call
Major arts figures are urging Cardiff
to make a bid for European City of
Culture in 2023, writes the South
Wales Echo. More than 50 senior
culture bosses including Geraint
Talfan Davies, chairman of Welsh
National Opera (WNO), Ian Jones,
CEO of S4C, Phil George, chair of
Arts Council of Wales and David
Anderson, director of National
Museum Wales have written to the
city council to support the idea.
They argue that since its previous
unsuccessful bid in 2001 for the 2008
title, Cardiff has upped its cultural
offerings and now boasts the Wales
Millennium Centre, Artes Mundi,
National Theatre of Wales and NoFit
State Circus. Talfan Davies, chair of
the WNO, said that the bid would
be “just what Cardiff needs”. Details
about the scheme will be released by
the Government at the end of this
year but Dundee, Leeds and Milton
Keynes have begun preparing for
their bid.
“There’s nothing new to see here, move along”
shadow culture minister Thangam Debbonaire MP
on the government’s Culture White Paper, quoted
in The Stage
Arts Industry July 2016 9
CIRCUS
As Circomedia, one of the UK’s first
circus schools, celebrates its 30th
birthday, Helen Dorritt finds out about
plans for the next three decades
A flying success
P
eer behind the heavy wooden door of St Paul’s
Church in Bristol and you won’t see a typical
ecclesiastical interior. Gone are the pews and
the hymn books, replaced with a sprung floor,
crash mats and an impressive grand volant flying trapeze rig. Welcome to Circomedia, the centre for contemporary circus and physical theatre.
Since its humble beginnings in a community hall
as its original incarnation, Fooltime, Circomedia has
grown to become a powerhouse on the contemporary
circus scene. It offers a degree, a BTEC, and vocational
training for aspiring performers, plus 28 weekly classes
for adults and children and a public programme of
60 performances a year. All this takes place on two
sites, St Paul’s and a former Victorian school in
the suburb of Kingswood which houses four
of Circomedia’s studios.
Circomedia’s 30th birthday in April was
a chance for the organisation to reflect on
its history and its future. Since replacing
the executive director role in 2015 with a
new artistic and managing director post
- complementing the existing artistic
and education managing director role
held by Bim Mason, one of the original
founders - Circomedia has reviewed its
mission statement, making it clear that
it seeks to become the “European centre
for research and production of transformational experiences arising from circus”.
One of the first jobs for the new post
holder, Nic Young, was to cast an outsider’s
eye over the 2013-18 business plan. “I was able to
take a fresh look at what Circomedia does, and how
it does it, and work with staff to clarify and amplify the
vision” explains Young, who joined the organisation
from being director at Newport’s Riverfront Theatre
and Arts Centre. “We’re now in the middle of writing a
new business plan for 2016-22 that’s more overtly ambi>>
10 Arts Industry July 2016
Arts Industry July 2016 11
CIRCUS
>> tious in our aims for the next 15 years”.
So while Circomedia has delivered the
BA that was talked about in the plan
(it’s now in its third year), it’s adding
an MA in directing for circus to start in
September 2016. The new plan has also
doubled the number of performances
taking place at St Paul’s, to increase the
scope to support artists and to develop
audiences. “We’ve changed some of
the language we use: we no longer
talk about a ‘creation centre’, which
has very specific connotations that we
couldn’t deliver, but we do talk about
being a development agency and providing support for artists, audience
development and the artform through
this” notes Young.
The introduction of the BA in 2014
alongside Circomedia’s existing
vocational courses has brought
some changes to the student
make up, with most of the degree students coming from
the UK and an additional
few from the EU. “The increased importance given
to contextual studies,
reflective practice and
practice-as-research de12 Arts Industry July 2016
mands a greater intellectual dimension
to balance out the physical training”
explains Mason. He has also noticed
a slight shift towards students from
more affluent backgrounds alongside
an increase in ethnic diversity, plus a
higher proportion of female students.
The students taking up the vocational option tend to come from further
afield, with the current intake hailing
from USA, Canada, Australia, Mexico
and Japan, as well as those UK students who aren’t eligible for the degree or who have used up their loan
allocation on another course. One of
the aims for the next two to three years
is to increase student numbers by 50%,
both by accepting new students onto
existing courses and with the establishment of the MA. The latter will bring in a new type
of student, as Mason says:
“They will obviously have
a more mature profile;
again, most of those interested are women”.
Student fees make
up the bulk of Circomedia’s income – 60%
– while 11% of fund-
ing comes from being an Arts Council
England NPO, with another 4% from
its position as one of Bristol City Council’s key arts providers. “The level of
support from these two organisations,
other than financial, is just as valuable
and that is good from both of them”
acknowledges Young. The remaining 25% comes from evening classes,
programming and hires. One of the
aims of the original business plan was
to diversify the organisation’s income
stream, particularly in regard to commercial activity – hiring out St Paul’s
for weddings, corporate events and the
like, taking advantage of Circomedia’s
unique offer: the lure of a beautifully
restored historic city centre space with
added circus performers is an attractive marketing tool. All this requires a
careful balance alongside the needs of
the students in a space where capacity
is strictly limited, so this has been addressed by taking on fewer events but
those of a higher value. This pragmatic
approach is working, as evidenced by
the generation of a small surplus last
year.
Also on Young’s amended business
plan is offering more outreach com-
munity projects, harking back to the
earlier work of the organisation. He’s
keen to work with children in the areas
around Circomedia’s two sites, particularly those who have limited life opportunities – St Paul’s is in the top 10%
most deprived areas on the Indices of
Multiple Deprivation – using circus as
an inspirational tool to provide those
transformational experiences mentioned in the mission statement.
Alongside its teaching and performance activities, advocacy for circus theatre in the UK is also now a fundamental part of Circomedia’s remit,
which includes promoting Bristol as
the UK’s circus city. “We’re part of the
Bristol Circus Forum, whose key aim is
to raise the profile of circus within the
city, and to increase awareness outside
of the city of the quantity and quality of work that is happening here”
says Young. Circomedia will also be
contributing to the national steering
committee for Circus 250 – the celebration in 2018 of 250 years since Philip
Astley first put on a show in a ring
and founded modern circus, and
which is intended to raise the profile
of circus across the UK in a similar way
to Shakespeare 400.
All these expanded activities require more space, and so it seems
inevitable that Circomedia will need
to grow physically. “In the long run
we’ll need to find somewhere else, but
we’re looking at least 15 years hence”
says Young. “I don’t know if we could
ever get the 7,200 square metres that
the Ecolé Nationale de Cirque in Montreal has, but I am sure we will need
more than the 1,200 or so that we have
now”.
So what’s the vision for the organisation by the time its sixtieth birthday
rolls around? Nic Young is expansive
in his scope. “I would like to see us
having fulfilled our mission statement,
with the unique combination of circus
education, circus theatre and circus
community giving thousands of people new and exciting ways to discover
and develop live performance. Not
only would this be fantastic for those
involved, but Circomedia’s influence
would continue to reach far beyond
its doors as the outcomes from those
60 years filter into the wider world. It’s
ambitious, yes, but if you’re not ambitious, what’s the point?”
Arts Industry July 2016 13
FUNDING
Getting the arts back into
In five years the British Council has undergone a
transformation in its cultural influence in the world, guided
by its director of arts, Graham Sheffield. He discusses the
strategy for the next five years with Simon Tait
Your Ad Here Nigeria byAritst Karo Akpokiere in partnership
with Create London. Photo credit: Medina Dugger
14 Arts Industry July 2016
the bloodstream
I
n 2007 the British Council’s renowned international arts
programmes were decimated in a policy lurch that saw
a proposal to disband its specialist departments and
revert to a mission of “cultural diplomacy” with staff
drastically pared down.
But then a letter of protest signed by artists including
Antony Gormley, Bridget Riley and Anish Kapoor to the
then chief executive, Martin Davidson, led to a last minute
u-turn. The director of arts resigned and the arts director of
the Barbican Centre, Graham Sheffield, was drafted in with
a former Arts Council chief, Graham Devlin, as consultants
to help formulate a rebuilding of the British Council’s arts
programmes.
Two years later their plan was put into operation when
Sheffield was recruited as the British Council’s new director
of arts, with a five year plan. Diplomatically, he said then
that the British Council (BC) was a “cultural relations organisation, and the arts has a big role to play”. Since then
the BC has become a major international force in the arts
and proselytising and putting into practice the social healing qualities of creativity, with diplomatic harmony almost
an incidental benefit.
“It’s been a five year journey” he says now “of re-establishing the arts at the core of the council’s thinking - more
than just money or numbers of people but to get the arts
back into the bloodstream of the organisation again. It had
got dissipated and diluted”. But more than accomplishing
a blood transfusion for the BC, through working with Sheffield’s experts governments and authorities across the world
are now recognising the power and influence of having a
successful creative sector within the economy.
Since Sheffield arrived in 2011 the BC’s core grant from
the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has shrunk to 16%
(from 25% in 2010) while its spend on the arts has grown by
30%, to just shy of £50m. He identified key areas in the world
and set up flagship programmes in places such as South Africa, Mexico and Nigeria, has made inroads into former nogo areas like China and Iran and finessed relationships with
tricky zones such as Russia. The number of individual artists
who have directly benefited from involved with the BC has
doubled.
His policy has been to knit BC expertise with the cultural structures on the ground, tailoring programmes in collaboration rather then imposing them. The BC has taken on
cultural leadership, developed a creative economy network
around the globe, built creative capacity where it is needed,
introduced the arts into all BC programmes, and has built
confidence at home where almost nothing had been known
about BC activities. Strategies have been changed and refreshed as political situations have altered. There is a virtual
queue at Sheffield’s door of nations wanting to tap into the
BC cultural nous.
>>
Arts Industry July 2016 15
FUNDING
Company Wayne McGregor perform Random Dance
Feria Internacional del Libro, Mexico
>>
As his fifth anniversary approached Sheffield was
asked by Davidson’s successor as CEO, Ciarán Devane,
what he wanted to do. He said he wanted to finish the job,
but only with the full support of Devane, and was duly
pledged it.
So last week Sheffield celebrated by announcing a new
five year plan, which includes running a new Cultural
Protection Fund, a four year £30m programme for the Foreign Office and DCMS to safeguard the world’s heritage
sites from the depredations of organisations such as ISIS
and the Taliban. Aimed especially at the Middle East and
North Africa, the new fund that starts later in June will
give grants to preserve the heritage and arrange partnerships and training to care for and protect it.
There is to be a programme of showcasing, giving new
opportunities for British artists and organisations to introduce audiences around the world to what we do, including long-term seasons and festivals. Sheffield wants to
strengthen the arts sector’s capacity to innovate, develop
skills and support livelihoods, with designers and makers
around the globe swapping skills and experience.
He wants more collaboration, working with organisations such as the Arts Council and the British Film Institute, expanding the £2.5m Artists International Development Fund (AIDF), for instance, which helps UK artists
develop internationally. And there will be more policy and
research studies to enhance the role of culture in peace
making.
“We have refreshed our strategy to take into account
global changes as well as the needs of the UK sector and its
increased desire to internationalise” Sheffield said at the
strategy launch. “We have been exporting the best of UK
arts and culture around the world for 80 years and this
new vision will ensure that that work remains relevant
and beneficial to UK arts organisations and continues to
benefit the UK’s international security, prosperity and influence.”
Behind the scenes it has meant an on-going
campaign to encourage the government to have a
greater sense of pride and ownership of the cultural resources there are in the UK. “Is the creative dimension strong enough in our education
system? Answer, no. Are we valuing our creative
professionals enough? Answer, no”, and yet the
16 Arts Industry July 2016
demand for our skills across the world has risen to a clamour. “It’s not just a case of firing UK culture at distant
parts of the world, it’s about mutual respect and engaging
laterally”.
That takes time and careful planning, and in the last
five years Sheffield has increased his staff from 60 to 85,
some of those in new offices around the UK to make links
with artists and organisations outside London. The BC
was seen as irrelevant to individuals’ international ambitions and that is being addressed through showcases and
involvement in the Cities of Culture programme.
The BC is also going into new areas, working with
major libraries in the UK to extend their international influence, and for the first time into gaming at which the
British are acknowledged world leaders. “In general, with
decreases in funding in the UK, the arts sector is looking
to see if it can make more connections overseas, and we
can help with that”.
In his first year there was a massive international
celebration of Dickens to mark the bicentenary of his
birth that brought a staggering response, the BC’s biggest single campaign ever, and this year’s Shakespeare
Lives campaign, organised with the GREAT Britain programme, has surpassed it. On the anniversary weekend
in April it reached an audience of three-quarters of a billion online, and tributary programmes are springing up
all over the world with the guidance of BC staff. The Olympics in 2012 had a profound effect on the understanding of the arts and disability, and the BC will have a strong
presence in Rio this summer.
“The challenge now is how we scale up our capacity
with larger amounts of funding, whether through programmes like the Cultural Protection Fund or contracts
like the £5m skills building scheme in Russian neighbouring states” Sheffield says.
“What used to be a boutique operation has now become a department store on rather a large scale.”
Graham
Sheffield.
Photo credit:
Frank Noon
ARTS VENUES
HOME
is where the art is
Manchester’s newest
arts venue is one year
old. Patrick Kelly
pays a visit
W
e know that Manchester
likes a party. So what
better way to celebrate
the first birthday of the
city’s new arts centre than by throwing
a major anniversary celebration in the
venue itself, complete with installations,
performance, theatre productions, film
previews, live music, workshops and
family events.
Unlike the occasion which opened
the £25m arts complex, this one didn’t
have Danny Boyle doing the birthday
honours, but it did have a sculpture
cascading down the main staircase,
painting and storytelling, a book launch
with Scottish poet laureate Jackie Kay, a
rooftop food festival, puppets and a film
crew recreating iconic scenes from the
hit TV programme Queer as Folk.
One year on, Home’s chief executive
Dave Moutrey is confident that the new
venue, HOME, has won the affections of
a city that doesn’t bestow them lightly.
“Things have gone even better than we
hoped” he says. “We have proved you
can change the geography of the arts in
the city”.
This was an important shift. Home
is the result of a merger between two
of Manchester’s much-loved arts institutions, the Cornerhouse cinema and
art gallery and the Library theatre. Although both had good reasons for joining up, Cornerhouse was bursting out of
its old premises and the Library theatre
had to leave its iconic basement home in
the city’s library, the move was not universally popular.
Critics said that both organisations
would suffer a loss if independence, that
the new HOME was too far off the beaten track to attract audiences and that the
homely environments of the previous
buildings would be lost in a mega-building surrounded by glitzy office blocks.
But HOME has established itself,
as the figures show. Over 1 million visits since it opened in May 2015, easily
surpassing its 550,000 target. It has sold
>>
Arts Industry July 2016 17
ARTS VENUES
Jackie Kay
>> more than 211,000 tickets, generating
some £30 million for the Greater Manchester economy and supporting 125
jobs.
The arts venue has recruited over
280 volunteers, from a wide range of
backgrounds, providing them with opportunities to develop, gain new skills,
share expertise and give something back
to the community. More than 32,000 visitors, including 3,800 young people, have
taken part in 745 talks, workshops, tours
and engagement events. 57,000 visitors
Manchester String Quartet
tre tickets for £10 have been sold. “Cinema audiences have grown by 25,000
since the old Cornerhouse days” says
Moutrey. “And we have tripled the theatre audience”. The Inspire Scheme, supported by the Oglesby Charitable Trust,
has enabled HOME to provide low cost
tickets to specific community groups
and those who might not normally have
the opportunity to take part in cultural
events.
Moutrey adds that the strong emphasis on talent development has seen
“(HOME) has already made a huge impact on the cultural
life of Manchester and the North West, making the city
an even more compelling place for audiences and artists”
have been to see the art exhibitions.
Highlights of the year include critically acclaimed group shows The Heart
Is Deceitful Above All Things and Safe,
Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige’s
I must first apologise…, and AL and AL’s
Incidents of Travel in the Multiverse. The
theatre programme has produced its
own work such as The Funfair, The Oresteia, Inkheart and collaborations with the
Young Vic, Citizens Theatre, Glasgow,
and Complicite.
The film programme (530 films
shown so far) has been widely praised
for its breadth and diversity, with specially curated film seasons (James Benning, Jim Allen) and one-off events.
HOME has redeemed its promise to
keep ticket prices low, and 13,500 thea18 Arts Industry July 2016
more than 230 local creatives showcasing their work, while 1,800 hours’ worth
of free rehearsal space has been provided
to theatre companies. A young creatives
scheme, led by industry professionals,
helps develop skills and encourage innovative thinking.
Arts Council England’s Northern director Alison Clark is a fan of the “wonderfully buzzy atmosphere” of HOME
which she says “has already made a
huge impact on the cultural life of Manchester and the North West, making the
city an even more compelling place for
audiences and artists”.
The idea of a new centre for contemporary art, theatre and film – what The
Guardian describes as “Manchester’s
version of the Barbican or Southbank
Centre” had been around for some time.
Indeed, the first conversation between
Dave Moutrey, then in charge of the
Cornerhouse, and Chris Honer, director
of the Library theatre, about a new venue had taken place as far back as 2006.
“We thought there was an artistic
case for a merger, not just an accommodation one”, says Moutrey. But nothing
came of the idea and both sides were
looking for their own premises when
they met Manchester City chief executive Sir Howard Bernstein.
Bernstein was looking for a project
that would help pull the city out of the
post-crash doldrums and he was keen
that project should be culture led. He
mooted the idea of a brand new building shared by both organisations, in an
area of the city that was central, but in
need of regeneration.
“But Chris and I said, ‘Not sharing,
merging. Two organisations sharing one
building would be a recipe for disagreement.’” says Moutrey.
Instead they set up a new organisation with an artistic bent towards new
ideas and home-produced creativity,
spiced with national and international
productions.
Moutrey is proudest of Viva, a weekend of Spanish and Latin American
culture, which included film premieres,
scratch theatre performances by a Cuban writer and an array of visual art
from Spanish speaking areas at home
and abroad.
He also points to the co-commissions
with the Young Vic and Citizens Theatre
as examples of work which could not
have been done before the merger.
Manchester city council became the
biggest funder of HOME, committing
£19m at a time when many local authorities were beginning an annual round of
arts cuts.
But does the council’s support for
another arts hub at the Factory represent
a threat to HOME’s audience? Has Manchester’s market for culture reached saturation point? Moutrey is dismissive.
“These are not questions that would be
asked in London” he says. “Two-thirds
of the UK’s population live within a two
hour drive of this city. We have the largest international airport outside London. There’s plenty of room to grow.
Something like the Factory will become
another part of the city’s arts ecology”.
Arts Industry July 2016 19
GOOD PRACTICE
Crossing
the floor to
the ring
Déda has appointed a creative producer
to help drive forward the Derby
organisation’s vision to become the
Midlands’ leading creative centre for
dance, contemporary circus and outdoor
performing arts. CEO and artistic
director Stephen Munn explains how
Déda is becoming a creative lead in
fusing these art forms
D
éda’s vision is to enrich people’s lives through
dance and the arts – connecting locally, nationally
and internationally. And in May, a symposium in
Derby launched our ambition to be a leader in the
fusion of dance and contemporary circus – strengthening
links with existing partners and forging new relationships
both in the UK and abroad. Crossing Over was attended by
arts professionals from the dance and contemporary circus
sectors and explored the relationship between the art forms
from the perspective of artist, producer and audience.
Having worked in dance for many years I have been fortunate to work with fantastic institutions and inspirational
choreographers. It has always been the highest levels of
physical skill that captured my imagination and as dance
merges with other art forms such as visual arts, I see opportunity around talent and audience development. Working
with artists such as Michael Clark and Lea Anderson has
allowed me to look beyond the pure dance aesthetic. This
is where my interest in contemporary circus and the connection with outdoor work stems from.
I don’t like to see art forms categorised into boxes and I
am most excited by the point of crossover. Our partners such
as Crying Out Loud present and produce great work which
is not necessarily genre specific - dance and contemporary
circus are natural bedfellows through the sharing of physical
movement, technique and expression.
20 Arts Industry July 2016
The symposium also contributed to a new piece of research funded by The Esmée Fairbairn Foundation which
investigates the relationship between dance and circus practice and how the use of narrative translates between the two
forms. Rachel Clare, artistic director of Crying Out Loud
shared her extensive experience of working across the two
genres. Rachel and I also led a debate featuring Déda’s current associate artists, choreographer Jorge Crecis and acrobatic and physical theatre artists Nikki Rummer and JeanDaniel Brousse.
Nikki and JD are part of the National Centre of Circus
Arts’ Labtime programme, and worked with students from
our BA (Hons) Dance Degree on a piece performed as part
of the event. Based at our venue, the degree is a partnership
with the University of Derby and launched in September
2014.
Ahead of this event, we adapted our programme and resources to encompass this expanding artistic vision. A new
dance and aerial studio was created with additional equipment installed throughout the building as part of a £412,000
capital expansion project, completed in August 2014.
Déda’s Class and Performance programmes are now reflective of both genres, with adult and academy classes offered in a multitude of styles and techniques from trapeze to
hip hop. This has been a positive step change both in terms
Jorge Crecis with BA dance degree students at Déda
of artistic and audience development. Being part of the Circus Evolution Network managed by Crying Out Loud has
had a significant impact in developing audiences and profile
through offering the presentation of high quality national
and international companies.
We are also artistic lead for Derby Festé, an annual international street arts festival which is part of the Without Walls
Associate Touring Network and produced by Déda, Derby
LIVE, Derby Theatre and QUAD. 2016 sees the 10th presentation of Festé with the event now established as one of the
leading international street arts festivals in the UK.
Our goal is to create a Midlands hub here in Derby for
creative excellence and explore where dance and circus meet
in performance both for the indoor and outdoor sectors as
well as in educational contexts. It’s an exciting time with the
national devolution agenda offering opportunity through
initiatives such as the ‘Midlands Engine’ and Déda is well
placed to take advantage of this political and cultural shift.
The symposium also marked the launch of Déda’s new
business plan that outlines an innovative financial model
to address the continued reduction of public funds. It is vital that organisations such as Déda continually evolve and
break new ground both artistically and through financial
modelling - particularly in the landscape of reduced public
funding.
The input from our new board Chair Geoff Sweeney, development director at Birmingham Royal Ballet, has been
invaluable to focus our strategic fundraising direction. We
recently submitted a Catalyst Evolve application to ACE
which will further develop a positive fundraising culture
within the organisation.
The appointment of Phil Hargreaves as creative producer
is the latest step in our mission. Phil will take a lead in embedding dance and contemporary circus practice across all
artistic and learning programmes including performance,
artist support and talent development. He has extensive
arts experience working and producing with a wide range of
companies like Dep Arts, 2Faced Dance Company and Joss
Arnott Dance.
A new piece of research will also be produced over the
next three years exploring the relationship between dance
and contemporary circus from the perspective of the artist,
producer, audience and education.
By looking at new ways of working and broadening the
scope of the organisation, I am confident that Déda can confirm its position as a national lead and spearhead the creation of some exciting new work.
For more information please visit www.deda.uk.com
Arts Industry July 2016 21
A Feast of Bones
Theatre Lovett.
Photo credit:
Ros Kavanagh
Looking you
22 Arts Industry July 2016
THE WORD
T
his July, for the first time ever in the UK,
ASSITEJ, the international association of
theatre for children and young people
will be holding its Artistic Gathering in
Birmingham from 2nd to 9th July.
On The Edge, the World Festival of Theatre for Young Audiences is jointly presented by
TYA UK and TYA Ireland and will bring 16
productions from around the globe alongside a
Work in Progress strand and a symposium with
lectures, workshop and discussions posing the
question “Where are the pioneers; who is on the
edge of practice and research?” The symposium
will examine many of the key issues facing TYA
today including issues of gender and sexuality
and ways in which digital technology can engage
audiences during and after the initial performance
event.
The fact that the UK was chosen as the venue
for this prestigious event is an indication of the
increased confidence of the TYA sector and the
regard in which UK work is held internationally.
Long regarded as an undervalued Cinderella of
the industry, largely ignored by mainstream media and often unfairly associated with the didacticism of some of the worst elements of Theatre in
Education, TYA in the UK has often struggled to
gain the profile and funding it deserves.
Don’t expect to see a second rate version of
Goldilocks performed in a school hall by a group of
drama school graduates using children’s theatre
as a stepping stone into showbiz. Rather be prepared to see work of outstanding quality which, in
Lyn Gardner’s words, reminds us that “theatre for
young people has often not just matched theatre
for adult audiences but often surpassed it”.
The productions that have been selected for
On The Edge are indicative of the developments
that have taken place in TYA in recent years. Companies that are not afraid to shock and take risks
as in Hetpalais’ (Belgium) production of The Hamilton Complex featuring 13 teenage girls and a body
builder, testing boundaries, staking their individuality and having fun. Likewise Pim and Theo by
New International Encounter, in a co-production
with three European theatre companies, is not the
typical stuff of children’s theatre. Pim is Pim For-
ung
tuyn, the far-right Dutch politician assassinated in
2002 after claiming that “the Netherlands is full”
and Theo is the provocative Dutch artist and filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was murdered in Amsterdam two years later over a short film he made.
Productions for babies and very young children are slowly finding their way into theatres’
programmes, exemplified by Sarah Argent and
Theatr lolo’s (Wales) Out of the Blue.
Terrapin Puppet Theatre’s I Think I Can (Australia) is an interactive artwork that invites audiences to enter a miniature town with a model railway, encouraging them to become active members
of a tiny community. It’s a great example of site
specific projects increasingly taking place outside
building-based theatres.
Increased collaborations with other art forms
characterise much theatre for children and are
beautifully demonstrated by Brush Theatre (Korea) in Brush, its production mixing comedy, puppetry and painting and in Seydou Boro’s blend of
drama, dance and music in Why Do Hyenas Have
Shorter Front Legs Than Back Legs And Why Do Monkeys Have Bare Bottoms? (Burkina Faso and France).
20 Stories High and Theatre-Rites’ The Broke’N’Beat
Collective (England) is a raw, funny and moving
gig fusing hip-hop and poetry.
The UK has led the world in terms of challenging attitudes and creating shows specially created
for children and young people with complex disabilities. Bliss (Northern Island) is an excellent but
hitherto low profile example of such an immersive, multi-sensory pirate adventure for up to six
profoundly disabled young people performed in
the Replay Theatre Bubble in an inner city school.
One of the challenges facing TYA, not just in
the UK but across the world, is that like Bliss, it often happens under the radar, away from the glare
of the media in schools and small studio theatres.
This is one way in which On The Edge can help
to bring about changes in perception about theatre for children and young people, by raising the
profile, sharing best practice and proving that TYA
can be and big, bold and brave.
Steve Ball is Executive Producer of On The Edge
and associate director at Birmingham Repertory
Theatre.
Steve Ball, executive producer of the World Festival of
Theatre for Young Audiences, considers the current state
of play of theatre for children and young people in the UK
Arts Industry July 2016 23
Last of the tiger tales
SIMON TAIT’S DIARY
Starma’am
It’s 40 years since the Sex Pistols released their God
Save the Queen, with its reference to the Windsors
as a “fascist regime” to chime with Her Majesty’s
silver jubilee. For the Queen’s 90th birthday there
is a rather less jarring range of iconoclasty from the
curatorial collective Art Below with depictions of
the monarch which will be seen in an exhibition
opening at The Tabernacle in Notting Hill on June
13, and across the London Underground from
June 20. The likes of Gavin Turk, Goldie and Mr
Brainwash are offering their impressions of the
monarch, and this portrait, Eyes Wide Shut, is by the
ballpoint artist James Mylne who spent 50 hours on
it as a double homage to Banksy (whose own royal
likeness was a feature in Bristol during the 2012
diamond jubilee year) and to David Bowie.
For those of us still in tune with The Last
of the Summer Wine, the bizarre couched in
the Yorkshire cosiness of coalfires, scones
and home-knitted cardies that is Holmfirth
is not only relished – it’s expected. But
even Roy Clarke, creator of that marathon
of superannuated mischief, would never
have thought of writing Fenella into the
script alongside Compo, Nora Batty and
Cleggy. Well, this is Fenella, on the left,
with two-year-old Rosamund. Fenella
was the Holmfirth Tiger who lived in the
Overend’s home in Holmfirth, brought there
by Rosamund’s circusfolk grandparents in
the 1940s, and she was familiar to Nora’s
neighbours as she was led about the streets
on a string by Kassie Overend and her
sister Meg. The tiger died in 1950 but is
still remembered, and will feature in the
Holmfirth Arts Festival (June 17-26) with
Rosamund, daughter of 93-year-old Kassie,
telling the story, and the Yorkshire poet Ian
McMillan and musician Luke Carver Goss
creating songs about Fenella. There’s even
to be a mosaic of Fenella the Tiger installed
in Holmfirth Library during the festival by
a Yorkshire artist who could be none other
than Morwenna Catt.
Dazzling signal
This is the Turner Prize nominated Ciara Philips
with her Edinburgh Festival commission Every
Woman, a title that refers to a little more than the
fact that all ships are female. It’s Scotland’s Dazzle
Ship, commissioned as part of the 14-18 NOW First
World War centenary of which the first was created
by Sir Peter Blake to lie at anchor in Liverpool. The
original Dazzle Ships were warships adorned in the
first attempts at maritime camouflage which were
not always subtle but never dull. This one is moored
in Leith Dock, Edinburgh, and is actually MV
Fingal, docked in Leith a century ago, and is now
dedicated to the forgotten women that were vital to
the war effort.
24 Arts Industry July 2016
William the 950th
Hearing it for the girls
Oxbridge is famous for its choirs, though
its children’s choirs were largely a thing of
medieval colleges. But these are some of the
choristers of the St Catharine’s Girls’ Choir,
the first ever girls’ college choir and the first
children’s choir to come out of either of the
universities since, probably, the 15th century.
Consisting of 20 girls aged from eight to 15 and
drawn from local schools, it was formed in 2008
by St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, and has
already made its mark with 14-year-old Agatha
Pethers, its head chorister, becoming BBC Radio
2 Young Chorister of the Year last year. The
choir is about to release its first solo album on
Resonus Classics, with Agatha as a soloist and
featuring the world recording premiere of John
Tavener’s complete Missa Brevis. The record is
published on July 1.
Photo courtesy of Wonderfruit
This is Hastings’s centerpiece to celebrate the 950th anniversary of the
Battle of Senlac Field (well, it jars to have to write Hastings twice in one
sentence) with verdant laser beams reaching out across the Channel
towards St Valery in Normandy from where William sailed. It has been
created by Chris Levine and is called Iy Project: The Nature Of Sound And
Light and is very much not 11th century technology being harnessed to
mark the Conquest, but a technique Levine developed on a commission
from the Eden Project, diffusing the light from high-powered lasers into
geometric, wave and nebulae forms which interact in extraordinary
ways with natural phenomena such as rain, mist, plants, trees, people
and buildings. So how is this relevant to the battle? “The festival is all
about shining a light on both the heritage and contemporary culture
of Hastings and 1066 Country” says Root 1066 festival director Polly
Gifford, “and the iy Project will do that in a spectacular way from the
fantastic location of Hastings’s newly reopened pier”. It will happen
there in September, but you can get a preview if you’re at Glasters on
June 25 when the piece, with sound designed by Marco Perry, will
headline on the Park Stage. And what does iy mean? No idea.
Arts Industry July 2016 25
If photography is now accepted
as an art form, why is this course
necessary?
Photography has taken a central
position within contemporary art
but photography also has far wider
applications. Indeed, photographs
have become central to contemporary
life and surround us at every turn.
This new MA, which is a flexible and
part-time course aimed at working
photographers, is delivered online
but with opportunities to attend
bi-annual residential workshops
around the world linked to major
photography events. It is designed to
help photographers to maximise their
personal potential in this image-rich
world.
MY STORY
A sharper image
Photography, until fairly recently considered merely a
mechanical and chemical technique of image-making,
is now accepted as an art form, and fine art at that.
Falmouth University has launched a new online-led MA
Photography devised by Dr Paul Cabuts, director of
Falmouth’s Institute of Photography, in partnership with
CEG Digital, part of Cambridge Education Group
26 Arts Industry July 2016
How will students qualify for the
course – will they have to have a
photography first degree – and how
will it be taught?
To join the course the student must
have a photography-related practice.
Whilst this may be at a very early
stage it should already have a
sense of purpose. A first degree is
desirable but not essential – students
can be considered for entry to the
course via what we call Approval
Prior Learning or Approved Prior
Experience. Our ambition is to raise
a student’s practice to the next level
by focusing on three key areas: how
best to place the work in front of
audiences and markets – publishing
work can take the form of digital
portfolio, hard copy, exhibition or
a combination of these – and the
best options are explored relative to
the student’s specific practice; how
to manage the business of being a
practitioner – to have a financially
sustainable practice is essential for
success; finally, students are guided
in the development of a sophisticated
understanding of the critical contexts
for what they produce.
“The more that
society engages with
photographs in their
multifarious forms,
the more visual
literacy becomes
important”
Why is it so hard for photographers
to realise their commercial potential,
and is it harder than for, say,
painters?
There are many commercially
successful photographers and
there will always be a demand for
photographic practitioners in the
future. Whether working as an
artist on self-directed projects, or a
commercial photographer working
to a client brief, it is essential to
be equipped to manage the everchanging contexts to successfully
deliver professional outcomes. The
course helps to develop professional
resilience in providing the knowledge
and skills to enable practitioners to
manage change. The basic challenge
is the same whether you are a painter,
filmmaker, designer or photographer.
Each will have to shape their work
within their own particular field, in
their own particular way.
Your course is distancing itself from
teaching photographic skills. How?
The big difference between our
new MA and typical professional
development programmes is we do
not teach new creative photography
skills as such. Students come
equipped with a level of practice
and they should have a grounding
in the fundamental skills they need
to successfully undertake their
studies when they join. The course
allows these to be built on, with new
perspectives and insights emerging
throughout the studies. Technologies
are constantly evolving – good
practitioners keep themselves up to
date with whatever is appropriate to
their work. Equally, we encourage
students to try new things that may
appear counterintuitive – sometimes
innovation comes from unexpected
directions.
You are a successful practising
photographer yourself. Do you
have a speciality?
Early in my career I was a
photographer’s assistant undertaking
social photography (portraits
and weddings) and advertising
photography (sofas and industrial
components). After a couple of
years of doing this I started formal
studies in photography resulting in
my entry into new fields of work
and undertaking culturally-related
photographic projects. It’s hard to
know whether or not a course like the
MA Photography would have taken
me down a different path. However
it is likely that I would have reached
my destination sooner.
The role of photography has gone
a long way beyond illustration.
How do you hope this course might
develop it further?
One of the course’s core strands
enables the understanding of
the critical contexts in which
photographic work is made. The
best practitioners move beyond
illustration to take up a questioning
or challenging stance in relation to
the world around them. Whether a
cultural or commercial practitioner,
you need to be familiar with the latest
ideas around what you are exploring
in your work.
“Technologies
are constantly
evolving – good
practitioners keep
themselves up to
date with whatever
is appropriate to
their work”
Advances in photographic
technology and the development of
digital cameras and phone lenses
has meant the use of photographic
images is much wider then
even, say, five years ago. Is there
anything in this course for nonphotographers?
This is an important point. The
more that society engages with
photographs in their multifarious
forms, the more visual literacy
becomes important. During the
last century Laszlo Maholy-Nagy,
professor at the renowned Bauhaus
Design School, stated that the
illiterate of the future will be a
person ignorant of the use of the
camera as well as the pen. Therefore,
the photographic practitioner, if
they are informed about the use of
the camera, may also be a curator,
a writer or a critic – the MA course
is very much open to this form of
practice.
With the advances and potential for
the art form, is it time – and will it
ever be – to create a University of
Photography?
By its very nature and
application photography is itself
interdisciplinary. There needs to be
an extensive engagement beyond
photography itself if anyone is
to succeed as a photographic
practitioner. A University of
Photography would need to be
one engaging with the cultural and
commercial challenges of the world
– you have to be in that world to
do so. An enclave of photography,
remote from other disciplines, sounds
appealing, but might ultimately
prove self-defeating in terms of what
photography actually contributes to
our world.
For more information about the MA
Photography, and to apply directly,
please go to http://flexible.falmouth.ac.uk/
Arts Industry July 2016 27
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major net contributor to the
economy to the tune of £225 million
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30 Arts Industry July 2016
How the
Antony Thorncroft
wonders how our
culture ceased to
be popular – at our
expense
I
t was around a hundred years
ago that the western world
changed, and democracy, and
the acknowledgement that
governments must safeguard the
interests of working people, became
generally accepted. And what was the
reaction of the arts and artists, then,
as now, dominated by progressive
thought, to this seminal shift?
Did they rejoice in the revolution?
Did they hell. Instead there was a
wholesale move in the arts towards
elitism, a seeming consensus that they
at least would not be subject to the
will of the people.
In opera, instead of tuneful
Verdi and Puccini came Berg and
Stravinsky; in classical music the
Second Viennese school acted as a
challenging successor to the melodic
First; in art the decorative works
of the Impressionist and PostImpressionists were overtaken by
Cubism, Supremacism, Vorticism and
more; in literature readers brought up
on George Eliot and Joseph Conrad
were confronted by James Joyce and
Ulysses, while the poems of Swinburne
and Houseman were discarded in
favour of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.
Later it was the turn of the
architects, who studiously ignored the
wishes of the growingly prosperous
lower middle and working classes
for semi-detached suburban houses
built in the Tudor style for the stark
idealism of Le Corbusier and homes
in the sky. In sculpture, adherents
of Rodin were mocked by the solid
shapes of Henry Moore and Barbara
Hepworth. It was almost as if artists
said “So you think you are in charge
now, and so clever – well, see if you
can get your minds around this”.
ANTONY THORNCROFT
elite stole the arts
The early decades of the 20th
century found all established art
forms move away from popular taste
with an almost perverse relish. While
the great artists of the 19th century
had widespread appeal - anyone
could sing-along-a Verdi or enjoy a
charming Pre Raphaelite painting their successors seemed to revel in the
ugly, the challenging, and the obscure.
The arts, like nature, abhors a
vacuum so the people, aided by
developments in marketing and
science, quickly embraced new art
forms, notably the cinema in the first
half of the century and popular music,
jazz and television in the second. In
time some of the arts establishment
realised its mistake and attempted
to adopt these creative activities
into the wider arts family, and soon
French philosophers were finding the
hidden depths in a Hitchcock thriller
and English professors the Keats-like
profundities in Bob Dylan. You could
say that the people won. But did they?
It seems to me that the
establishment is still determined to
preserve much of the arts for itself and
to keep the wider public at a distance.
Of course art forms must develop
and the best of the new and the
experimental should be welcomed,
but there must also be some
relationship to the past and an attempt
to bring on board popular taste. In
that rather uncomfortable hybrid,
contemporary classical music, and
what was once called fine art
in particular, the link between
creators and consumers seems
to have been broken to the
detriment of all.
The atonality and serialism of
Schoenberg and others, and the
post-1945 peculiarities of the Paris
School, had no appeal at all to
the man in the street, at the time or
since, and they were little more than
the philosophical experimentations
of a group of intellectuals, playing
with noise. Classical music, which
had enriched lives in the 19th
century, became the province of a
small elite.
This happened at a time when the
state started to subsidise the arts and
unfortunately those charged with
handing out the money seemed in
thrall to the experimentalists. It would
be very interesting to know how many
of the commissions to composers
financed by the Arts Council in the
past 50 years have enjoyed a second
(or even a first) public performance.
You only need to look at the current
repertoire of orchestras, large
and small, to realise the pathetic
contribution of the 20th century, and
especially the late 20th century, to the
music enjoyed by concert goers. The
greatest musical innovation of recent
decades has been the re-discovery of
early music and the baroque.
“If composers and
artists want to
despise popular
taste that is up to
them, but it becomes
questionable when
they are financed with
taxpayers’ money”
It is the same with contemporary
art, which to all intents and purposes
has divorced itself from the public,
at least as potential owners. Perhaps
a handful of millionaires have the
space and inclination to possess an
artwork created by a Turner Prize
winner or a favourite of the Venice
Biennale but no ordinary home owner.
The most reviewed art is of a size and
pretension which makes museum
curators the only possible market
and it is ironic that even then few
museums have the space to put it on
permanent display.
Has there ever been a more antihuman art form that conceptualism:
what percentage of the population
would regard Duchamp’s notorious
urinal, Fountain, as art. It was an
attempt to epater la bourgeoisie at
the dawn of the age of the common
man. But conceptualism still raises its
pretentious head: who could own and
enjoy any of the exhibits on display at
the current show of British conceptual
art at the Tate. Any work that needs
the ramblings, however incoherent,
of a curator to explain what it is about
should be viewed with the greatest
suspicion.
If composers and artists want to
despise popular taste that is up to
them, but it becomes questionable
when they are financed with
taxpayers’ money. I am all in favour of
government support for the arts but
it could often be better spent helping
young people in school learn to play a
musical instrument, how to draw and
design, how to write and appreciate
literature. Money should also flow
into art schools, conservatoires and
creative writing classes, as long as
the students know that very few will
ever earn a living from their chosen
art form and that it will be the public,
as consumers, that has the final say.
There are signs that opinion in the
21st century has seen through the
emperors’ lack of clothing and is
responding more to the will of the
people. It is about time.
Arts Industry July 2016 31
>
Holmfirth in Yorkshire hosts
an increasingly ambitious
annual arts festival. This
year it features appearances
from poet and broadcaster
Ian McMillan and musician
Luke Carver Goss, Yorkshire
Dance bringing ‘random acts
of kindness’ and the ‘Art in
the Woods’ sculpture trail and
competition. The annual event,
which runs from June 1726, will present a fresh take
on the town through newly
commissioned work, theatre,
spoken word, comedy, music,
community and participatory
projects. (See Diary, page 24)
>
LOOK
..
OUT FOR.
AI’S PICK
OF THE
BEST
A series of live readings will help to launch a
specially commissioned anthology of North
East poetry by the Northern Poetry Library this
month. Among Woods and Water is a collection of
poems penned by Northern Poetry Library poets
in residence and celebrates the region’s poetic
legacy, and future. Poets John Challis, Jo Colley,
Lisa Matthews, Carolyn Jess-Cooke and Degna
Stone worked with the community groups to
explore different poetic forms and encourage more
people to create poetry. Readings are at Newcastle,
Morpeth, Alnwick and Berwick. Details http://
northernpoetrylibrary.org.uk
>
>
Young theatre companies from around the UK
are coming to the National Theatre to mark the
21st anniversary of largest youth theatre festival
in the world. Connections will see the work of the
UK’s most exciting playwrights and performances
by 12 companies on the stages of the National
Theatre from June 28 - July 4. 450 youth theatre
companies and 10,000 young people from every
corner of the UK, working with 45 partner theatres,
have performed twelve outstanding plays drawn
from 150 commissioned by the NT since the festival
began. An exhibition, Making Connections is in the
Wolfson Gallery at the NT from June 13. As Britons vote on whether to remain in Europe, Be
Festival, Birmingham’s festival celebrating the best of
European theatre, returns to the city. Featuring over 20
performances from ten European countries, plus live music,
exhibitions and workshops, the week-long festival brings
together daring and unforgettable new theatre, dance
and circus performances from Spain, Italy, Switzerland,
France, Germany and Slovenia. It all takes place in vast set
construction workshops at Birmingham Repertory and other
locations in the city, from June 21 – 25.