Artist Professional Development
by Simon Poulter
August 2004
Artist Professional Development has become the next big thing across the arts. A growing network of administrators now offer a variety of services to artists. This industrialisation of the role of the artist runs completely against the romantic notion of the solitary individual battling against deeper metaphoric forces.
Our political culture is ready to cut a deal with artists, one which offers them an expansion of the idea of success. The payback for more political capital heading towards the arts is a tacit agreement that artists, in becoming more professional, will contribute to the social, educational and economic fabric of society (which is now back in fashion).
In 1935, Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration and within this developed the Federal Art Project. The programme aimed to get people back into work, albeit on very basic wages. The Federal Art Project was introduced across the whole of the USA. WPA artists included Jackson Pollock, David Alfaro Siquieros and Philip Guston. The role of the project was to give work to artists in the decoration of public buildings and parks. Artists were selected on two main criteria: their need for employment and their 'professional ability'.
Philip Guston was categoric in stating that "all of the best painters of my generation developed on the projects such as Pollock, de Kooning, Brooks, Hague, B. Greene and Baziotes." Perhaps inadvertently the FAP created a network of artists and a supply of work that sustained the radicalisation of American art in the post war period. Notably, as Guston testifies, all kinds of art styles and degrees of talent were employed. In short, "everyone was given an opportunity to improve himself".
The Blair Government adopted Roosevelt's 'New Deal' nomenclature, as if to set out a straight talking no fuss approach to regeneration. At the heart of both these 'new deal' models is a socialist agenda, where honest work and inclusion are a means of pulling economies up literally by their bootstraps. Artists, who perhaps have been the best patrons of the benefits system, may have cause to reflect on David Blunkett's avowal that "we have toughened up the benefits regime so there is no option not to work for anyone between the ages of 18 and 50 who can work."
So what options are there for artists to work? The Arts Council of England has significantly reorganised itself around a new scheme - 'Grants For the Arts'. The scheme is relatively simple, offers much easier pathways to funding and a decision in a short space of time. However its implementation across England has been varied. The new organisation wants to put more money into the hands of artists and has legitimately sound aims in supporting diversity and experimentation. This is not unlike the Federal Art Project, although mercifully we are spared the murals on public buildings. The weakness in the scheme has been to set organisations and artists against eachother in the 'tendering' process, instead of looking at the interwoven roles of art production and distribution. Many artists lack the confidence to map out a successful application but want the opportunity to improve themselves. Arts organisations are left precariously wondering if they'll have any cash to programme their new capital buildings. 'Grants For the Arts' was established against the backdrop of a major restructuring of the arts funding system in England. It set out to remove privilege and the platinum client status that had emerged in the funded sector, replacing it with transparency. Artists, even within a meritocracy, would not argue against the need for a more equitable system. What however is missing is a rather more complex appraisal of cultural development and the cash behind it. Investment in culture is in no way different to that of other businesses, even if the outcomes are not the same. In order to see sustained development artists need a marketplace and distribution system for their work.
APD (Artist Professional Development) has brought us a whole new language and process to address development. Within this as Alison Branagan states in her notes for Self Employment on the ArtQuest web site: "many artists make a living from a mixture of sales, commissions, workshops, teaching, arts administration, residencies and other creative work." So to follow the language through we emerge with a new breed of 'culture-preneurs' eagerly seeking out work wherever it may take them. They in turn are supported by APD officers who may be able to signpost them towards even more opportunity. Cynicism aside, there is just not enough space (or talent) for everyone to bask in the glory of a major retrospective at MOMA or the Tate Modern. Rooted, even more deeply, is the quaint way in which many of our art schools continue with the modernist pedagogy of the Fine Art department, quite literally encouraging young people to have unreal expectations of becoming an artist.
So what then is the difference between an Artist and a Culturepreneur? Perhaps the latter "adds value to the ecomony" while the former "adds value to life"? This returns us uncomfortably (or not) to the romantic solitude and reflection of the studio. Or maybe the office/studio with a laptop?
Some solutions or further problems are offered by way of debate. Artist Professional Development needs to be crafted by practitioners and those who make (not made) work. A wider skill base, even the construction of the odd web site, is not selling out - it's just how we make money (given David Blunkett's words above). Artists always invent hybrid systems on top of existing ones (created by governments). Arts education must endeavour to widen the experience and understanding of creative practice and how this relates to the workplace. Making art without recourse to political or propagandist models has no right to funding - but a civil society will always seek to encourage critical and creative criticisms of itself. The arts funding system in England needs further research into the advocacy and interwoven development of practice and presentation.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dustbowl/peopleevents/pandeAMEX10.html
http://www.wpamurals.com/
http://artarchives.si.edu/oralhist/guston65.htm
http://www.artquest.org.uk/manage/selfemployment/index.html
http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/funding/individuals.php
http://www.interrupt-symposia.org/