Whom does the Grail serve? The arts strategy dilemma

I’ve had the opportunity over the last number of years to meet and chat with a number of arts officers – and several Heritage Officers in local authorities and agencies. I’ve also spent a lifetime in the company of artists of different kind and calibre, and in recent times I’ve brokered meetings between these groups and held the space in public meetings between the officers and the public.

I’ve come to realise that Arts Officers face an almost insurmountable challege. Its a challenge beyond the size of their budgets or the lack of adequate staffing. The challenge is that the Arts Office (and the Arts Officer) is in a constant state of what science fiction writers like to call “phasing”. They flick between dimensions, never fully at rest in any one of the dimensions.

This quantum nature (to continue with the science metaphors) creates a very particular dilemma when it comes to developing Strategy, a policy, or even a plan!

The dilemma is, what dimension are they making strategy in? Or, to put it another way, who are they making strategy for?

Mode A

On the one hand the Arts Office is a functional office within a Local Authority. It reports to Directors of Service and Special Purpose Committees, and through them to local elected representatives. It is required to align its ambitions and actions with local authority Economic and Community development plans and other plans as appropriate. Its budget and staffing levels are set by the senior management and council. Therefore the Arts Office is making strategy with and for the local authority. And that strategy allows the local authority to do something to the sector based on a deficit analysis.

Mode B

But if we tilt the model slightly we see that the arts office and the arts officer exist as agents within the wider arts ecosystem. The arts office (and their officers) behave very like their clients: they spend too much time making and worrying about funding applications to the Arts Council (and other sources), they develop and deliver projects, they work directly with artists, they broker relationships, they look for audiences – and yes they are also resonsible for channeling their very limited funding to all the other agents in the ecosystem. Like most of their clients they are underfunded and understaffed. From this perspective they are making strategy with and for ALL of the other players in the ecosystem.

If we take the hierarchial, functional perspective (Mode A) we are forever trying to do something to the sector with very limited resources of money, people, and time. There are very real limitations on what can be acheived working in this mode.

On the other hand, if we take the ecosystem view (Mode B) in which the arts office is one more node within a wide a complex system then we can begin to sense the actual size and capability of that system. Partnerships proliferate, KSAs multiply, ideas emerge, capacity increases etc. In the functional mode we plan in terms of deficits and in the ecosystem mode we collaborate in terms of strengths.

I suspect that many arts officers are compelled to make strategy in Mode A, but strive to deliver it in Mode B.

This is not a good idea.

There is an additional level of irony. Because its impossible to deliver a Mode A strategy in a Mode B fashion, many of the other players in the wider ecosystem just want a more efficient and better resourced version of Mode A because they perceive the arts office as a Functional Office within the local authority. And the final great irony is that the senior levels of management that the arts office reports to want Mode B results with a Mode A Strategy.

From the perspective of a healthy working environment that’s a recipie for madness!