A side-effect of my recent love affair with Adrian Searle’s Private Views has been an expanded interest in the other cultural podcasts offered by The Guardian’s website. While the critical heft doesn’t quite compete with CBC’s Ideas (a long-standing favourite of mine), the series of recordings from the 2009 Cambridge Festival of Ideas have been a great accompaniment to my recent snowy attempts to walk the puppy.

Gratuitous Puppy #3

A Festival panel entitled ‘An age of austerity for the arts?’ took on that ever-popular recessionary theme of last year, one that will no doubt continue to make itself felt in 2010 as arts organizations worldwide continue to struggle to make ends meet. The first speaker, Sue Hoyle of the Clore Leadership Program in the UK, quoted a particularly useful simile on the problem, one with which I think many arts administrators - particularly those in artist-run culture - would easily identify:

“I feel like I’m captain of the Titanic and there’s an iceberg ahead. But rather than being on top steering the ship, I’m in the bowels shovelling coal in the furnace. I’m afraid if I stop shovelling coal we’ll run out of steam, but I know that if I don’t start steering the ship soon, we’ll run into an iceberg.”

Ever more often, arts organizations are being asked to make that choice between steam and steering when common sense dictates that any thriving entity needs both to survive. CultureGrrl recently argued against US deaccessioning practices with the belief that “Smarter management, intensified fundraising, improved marketing, innovative earned-income strategies, and (truly the last resort) temporary cuts of expenses and staff are the right ways to meet financial crises,” and while I tend to agree with her core points about the sale of permanent collections as a fiscal solution (being that it’s a dumb and shortsighted idea), I’m still not convinced that her seeming solutions hold much water once a true financial crisis has hit the proverbial fan. Particularly in smaller artist-run centres, smart innovation most often requires time, perspective and resources that are difficult to grasp when one is occupied with that afore-mentioned coal shovelling (which no doubt you’ve been forced to undertake because your previous coal-shoveler has been cut from the payroll). To quote WomenArts’ executive director Martha Richards in her response to CultureGrrl:

“Most of us in the non-profit arts world have been trying to be smarter, intensify our efforts, and cut costs for the past 10 to 20 years. I think many institutions are at the point where they have hit the limits of those strategies—the staff members are worn out and there is nothing left to cut.”

What this leaves to consider is a range of solution from the most basic grassroots interventions to improved government support, to that great ungraspable model that arts organizations continue to dream of but which lacks a distinct shape just yet (and it’s a very seductive “yet”).

To listen or download the complete ‘An age of austerity…’ podcast, both options are available here.

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