DEMOS

I welcome the report as a useful stimulus to debate about the very notion of culture, who makes it, and its purpose and significance in how we define our social and communal well-being. I start from the principle that art, culture, creativity are powerful tools for making society, and not just a reflection of it. I would therefore encourage policy makers to adopt strategies that help young people in particular to make culture, creatively, imaginatively, curiously, by taking risks and employing innovative techniques, as well as to consume it.

I anticipate that the press and media will exercise themselves endlessly about excellence – what does it mean? is it signalling an elitist approach to culture? who defines and who decides what is excellence? all the while, ignoring the fact that the report is just as emphatic about innovation and risk-taking…

I share his appreciation of courage, curiosity and desire and spontaneity.

Rick Hall

www.rehearsal.org.uk

I am concerned about this report. On a glance through I think it is full of platitudes and to my mind empty, ungrounded rhetoric about risk taking and innovation. I certainly have real issues with how 'excellence' is being used. Some immediate thoughts:There is lots of stuff about 'valuing diversity' but there seems to be a desire to remove the use of cultural indicators altogether - i.e. we just don't worry about the fact that only so few managers/leaders in the cultural industries are from ethnic minority backgrounds ? That its disproportionately difficult for people with little cash to make a living as artists, musicians or cultural businesses? We worry a little about the fact that our 'elite' cultural and educational institutions (and funding agencies....) are overwhelmingly populated by white kids from affluent middle class backgrounds, and that its much more difficult for kids from poorer backgrounds to break into the arts, but we're not prepared to require those organisations to change to become more inclusive and be tough with them when they don't? We worry about who 'the audience' is, but we don't want to collect statistics or data about their demographic profile in case it tells us uncomfortable truths that we don't want to hear?Surely 'assessing quality'- which, like 'excellence', can't be reduced to a single definition to fits all circumstances - is both about judgement AND measurement. Not one or the other. Isn't there more than a whiff of a suggestion in there that culture is what what 'cultured people' provide for less cultured people? {"Once the initial barrier of engagement is overcome, audiences must be given the opportunity to deepen their experience and be introduced to more complex work]. So, once people have 'engaged' they can 'move on' to 'more complex' (read:'high'?) forms? Hmmmmm. Longer post about this on my blog - generalpraxis.blogspot.com

There is much to welcome in Sir Brian McMaster’s report and one or too things to worry about.  McMaster tries to bat aside historic associations between excellence and elitism and suggests self-reflection and peer assessment as the way of assessing excellence in the future.  There is merit in this.  But what the report doesn’t directly address is whether excellence is an absolute virtue or whether it is more relative and should be contextualised. 

 

Historically, excellence in the arts has tended to be viewed as an absolute virtue with a yardstick based on quite a traditional and narrow aesthetic palette.  But this approach is not helpful in a diversified society and with an ever growing body of commercial and subsidised cultural goods.  A fixed view of excellence and can re-inforce the ‘culture is not for us mentality’.  Relativism and contextualisation can be equally dangerous, leading to all manner of post-modernist muddles.  This is where McMaster is astute by stressing the importance of innovation and risk – I prefer to call the latter striving. 

 

The best art has always pushed the boundaries and striven to go beyond the known and whilst McMaster’s language can occasionally feel a little ‘stuffy’ and hidebound by terms, I think this is what he’s calling for.  The main thing we need to now urge is that excellence is not limited to traditionalist views of high art. ‘The Sultan’s Elephant’ was excellent and millions thought it so.  Instead, we need to judge on the basis of social context, cultural tradition and artistic ambition.  How does the work relate to its social and cultural context.  Is it a comfortable reproduction that sits safely within the tradition or does the work seek to stretch beyond the comfort zone to comment on its context and make its audience feel, think and respond?  This is the innovation and risk that I think McMaster is rightly seeking.

 

Sometimes language and definitions get in the way of debates like this.  When listening to live jazz performances, I have always been struck how, when a soloist starts to say something really interesting, the perennial background chatter dies and the whole room goes quiet and focuses on the moment.  Sometimes people don’t need to be told or debate what’s excellent.  When it is, they just get it and respond accordingly.  

 

Paul Kelly

Cultural Futures