The Business of Art: Blog 75

Good morning!

So Easter and Passover continue with quality time with family and friends I hope.

And its April 1st, so apart from some tomfoolery what does this mean? Well certainly no hints of summer yet, but all in its time I guess. It was even snowing yesterday when I travelled to see my family in Kent! 

And its the beginning of the new financial year so my thoughts inevitably turn to the challenges and successes that will inevitably come this year. The accounts are closed for 2012/13 and we made it through again with a small profit as we do every year. Its the nature of this business to be up and down, mirroring the general vagaries of the overall economy. 

I spend much of my time on this blog talking about and reflecting on the artistic imaginings, excitements and fears of leading an arts organisation. You could be forgiven for thinking that I am one of those lucky people who get to do what I want to do and make a living at it to boot. You are absolutely right of course.

But in the middle of all of this I might lead you astray into a spurious belief that it all just happens and that I get to muse incessantly on the nature of art and theatre. Well its partly true, and indeed much of my creative energy must be centred on coming up with new ideas, plans, mad escapades into imagination and possibility. Without that there wouldn't really be much point. However the truth of the matter is that I spend at least 75% of my daily life in the business of the business.Yes, that means when you look closely you will see that this is the same as running any business. Fortunately I am blessed with a great Board of management, always on tap for a bit of direction and support and the best General Manager in Nita Bocking who keeps me grounded and on the straight and narrow! (well at least that's what I tell her!). 

Business is business, it means selling something in exchange for money.And it
means making sure that you get more coming in than going out. Simple really. 

Its a long debated thing, the question of whether the art we make is compromised by a market economy? 

What about selling out, not making the work you really want to make? Is the starving artist in their garret in some way more laudable and pure than those of us that make the decision to feed ourselves from the proceeds of our artistic imaginations?  I do often find a gentle niggle in this, particularly when I see the unadulterated joy of my friends who participate in amateur arts simply for the love of it, and course its the true meaning of the word. But I like to think of myself as a lover too. So the niggle never lasts for too long. 

Raising money for creative projects of the heart and soul seems as reasonable a pursuit as any. If the idea speaks to me then the writing of a funding bid or a proposal for a contract is a fine occupation, and can be relatively painless. Of course I do spend hours sometimes jumping through hoops set up by mechanistic processes devised quite rightly to protect public funds and ensure quality outputs and outcomes. These challenges of articulation are painstaking and often tricky.We are asked to guarantee benefits and evidence them. Few funders invite us to imagine with them and enter a process of shared discovery - well why would they? It could all end t**s up after all and then who looks stupid?  So I get the guardianship imperative, I do really. But sometimes it means that an idea is killed off before its been given a chance to be born and that's sad. On the plus side though I find that being forced to be absolutely clear about the ambition of a given project and who will benefit from it is an excellent exercise in thinking. 

Often even though I pick up my pen with a leaden heart to do this bit of my job, within no time at all I find that the flow of ideas and the challenge to be specific or 'SMART' as is demanded of me does indeed lead to honing and improvement of ideas. 

I was talking yesterday to a friend about this very thing in regard to a current project in development. She offered to help with some of the research and wanted me to give her 3 key questions to ask her interviewees. And I procrastinated, didn't reply to her. This laziness is unusual for me but it certainly means I don't have all the information I need to find my way through to answer or proposition. Indeed it niggles me that she then says its because I don't know what I am looking for. Niggles me because she's right. I know that I am on the right track but there are bits missing from the picture. This is largely because I started out with an idea which I am excited about and think has some real potential and then had to jump to the budgetting end for pragmatic reasons, and hey presto idea not fully developed or realised! 

Budgets are good. They are really - they mean we will get paid to make this work. Its realistic not some far fetched fancy. But getting the balance right is an art that too often eludes me! When I simply focus on the funding I lose sight of the essence, and when I spend too much time on the essence I lose sight of the spreadsheet. My dilemma I appreciate as I live with a foot in both artistic and financial worlds. Many organisations very sensibly keep these two areas apart, seeing them as almost mutually exclusive.  But there is possibly another way of looking at it, and one I have learned over the years of attempting to balance them. This is that both creative energy and financial energy are two sides of the same coin. Of course this is obvious to most people. But if you can find the oft too elusive alchemy of both, magic is possible. This means not doing something 'just' for the money maybe, and not expecting the money 'just' to fund what you fancy doing either! The art is in balance. Both artistic endeavour and money are energy forces, and if you block either you stem an organic flow. 

Money can be scary, 'it speaks' they say (who say?). Of course it does. But in my experience when you don't over attach to it, it has an uncanny way of arriving just at the moment you least expect it and often from a source you have no idea about! 

So in the middle of these austere years when we see public sector cuts and welfare reforms decimating lives, why would the arts matter and why should they get any of these scant resources? Well you know what I would say don't you - they make us human, they raise us up, they make us imagine the unimaginable, they are good for the soul. 

Walks are great for conversations and sharing ideas!

I got an email from a colleague yesterday who ran off to find retreat from thinking about "work" only to discover of course that a chance conversation about this very thing happened on a walk with a family member. He really couldn't help himself and the walking talk helped him imagine new ways of potentially finding funding for a beloved project!  It made me laugh and I suggested to him that one thing we can't stop in this game is that the imagination has no idea when its Easter. It will still insinuate itself unbidden on you, and ironically more so when you are supposedly at rest! That's the way of it, and frankly I wouldn't want it otherwise. 

And so I begin looking forward to another year of curiosity and adventure and the hours of pouring over balance sheets and outputs! There is no willing escape. I just need to get my laptop out today and finish a bid that I have been putting off for the past couple of weeks because I know I am going to find it hard! But a good talking to is all I need really and I 'll be onto it before I go on my adventures to Poland.

Enjoy more chocolate today - diet tomorrow!