As Peter Brook once remarked, theatre is now, and always has been, in crisis. Whatever the nature of the continuing existential threat that Brook Identified the truth is that theatre in Ireland (as in many other parts of the world) is facing a sustained economic and ideological challenge that will change how we conceive of, create, and experience theatre.
“What shall we do, now that we are happy?” – Reconciling the intrinsic and the instrumental in the Culture Industry
I was in conversation recently with one of our leading theatre artists. The topic of the government’s impending national culture policy discussion document, culture2025, came up so I asked their opinion. They looked up from under lowered brows and uttered, in that tired contemptuous tone, a single word: “Instrumentalist”.
Culturally Creative or Creatively Cultural? What the hell are we talking about?!
I’m sorry, you say I’m doing what?
For artists, arts policy makers, politicians, strategists, consultants, entrepreneurs, CEOs and, well, mostly artists “the world is in a terrible state of chassis”, as Sean O’Casey wrote. (“Chassis” meaning “chaos’ for those of us not familiar with his work). Time was you could talk about Arts and Culture (nearly always with capital letters) and everybody – including you – knew what you meant. It’s why the Irish Arts Act lists what can be considered as art with great confidence and only included cinema in its second iteration. It made life easy for the funding agencies that were brought into existence to protect and develop The Arts (because we all knew what art was) and allowed us to quietly divide the society between the cultured (those who appreciated The Arts) and the uncultured (those who did not). Alas, all has changed, a terrible beauty has been born, as Yeats would say.
We now have to contend with arts, culture (no capital letters), heritage, co-creation, prosumers (yes its a word), creative, industry, imagination, creative industries, culture and cultural industries, Culture 3.0, and of course the ongoing manichean struggle between intrinsic and instrumental value. It ain’t easy.
So, with the Irish Government’s first ever cultural policy – Culture2025 – in the pipeline I thought I’d try to tease out some of the key terms that are going to get thrown around in the forthcoming debate. It’s important that we all agree on the meaning of the words we use in this debate and how they relate to each other or we’re in danger of leaving the table with very different expectations. Agreeing on the meaning of what we’re saying is the first step toward strategic alignment – that magical state where everybody works together toward the same goal.
Continue reading Culturally Creative or Creatively Cultural? What the hell are we talking about?!
Event Cinema and Ireland’s Culture Industry
Is there an opportunity for Ireland’s arts and culture industry to carve out a niche in the Event Cinema Market? After all, this is a market that has grown from nothing to almost $1 billion dollars in just under a decade; it’s a market that allows the Metropolitan Opera (the Art form with the smallest audience in the world) to post profits in the millions of dollars on its cinema seasons; it allows the National Theatre of Great Britain to reach audiences it would not otherwise reach, (sometimes in excess of 100,000 per performance) and it allows for occasional hits to break cinema box office records as in the case of Billy Elliot, The RSC’s Richard II, and of course the irrepressible Andre Rieu (who recently pushed himself to the top of the Box Office again). It also allows for exhibitions by Museums and Galleries to share both the objects and – more importantly – the stories behind them with hundreds of thousands of people around the world who would never otherwise experience them. It’s given cinema owners access to a whole new audience, its generated a host of new distribution businesses and its opened arts and culture providers to new business models and investment sources. (Digital Theatre has built an impressive business model around an ever-increasing catalogue of live events for private consumption through an impressive subscription strategy and significant venture fund investment). Julie Taymor’s recent production of A Midsummernight’s Dream carried the art form a step further by being – to my knowledge – the first Event Cinema production to take an award at a Film Festival. Without a doubt Event Cinema is one of the more effective bridges between the cultural and creative industries.
After two years of research and networking, analyzing the business models, the marketing strategies, the audience distribution and behavour within this industry the answer to the opening question is a resounding yes. With the following caveats:
Continue reading Event Cinema and Ireland’s Culture Industry
You’re not from around here, are you? You, your audience and your Online Presence.
Have you ever walked into a bar, or a restaurant, or a shop, or even into a friends house and experienced a feeling of being unwelcome? You know the one, when everybody at the bar looks at you kinda suspicious like and you know they’re all thinking “you’re not from around here, are you”. Nearly every single time that happens we close the door and head on down the street, or we make our excuses to our friend and get the hell out of their house as soon as possible and make arrangements to meet them somewhere “neutral” next time. Why is that? It’s simple, if I open a door and I don’t see me or my people staring back at me, then there’s no way I’m staying. Truth be told I didn’t come here to meet you, I came here to meet me. Think about this the next time you look at your website, or your print material. People don’t want to see you, they want to see themselves. Continue reading You’re not from around here, are you? You, your audience and your Online Presence.
“You Want me to Give you WHAT??!” How to ask for money and stuff.
I’ve asked a lot of people and organisations for money and stuff over the years. Some people have said yes and some have said no. I’ve attended workshops and seminars, and researched the psychology of the ask and there’s a couple of principles you should always keep in mind. It doesn’t matter whether you’re looking for a grant, a donation or an investment.
The first principle is the most important: nobody ever gave money to somebody they didn’t know. Continue reading “You Want me to Give you WHAT??!” How to ask for money and stuff.
Say what now? The APAC15 Conference
This years APAC was great – in the literal sense of the word. The nature of the art of theatre, its value, its language, its potential for social change, its political nature were all up for discussion. As Gary Keegan summarised it on twitter ” Kindness, grassroots, intrinsic value, artists leading the way, fearlessness in challenging the status quo”. The speakers and panelists – some of whom I agreed with and some of who I vehemently disagreed with – were all committed, passionate and inspirational. But I think we would all agree that everything paled in the light of Sir John Tusa’s keynote: it was a Masterclass in Public Speaking, or as somebody put it, “a masterclass in just plain speaking“. The Conference was also, in my experience, unique in terms of who turned up – and who didn’t turn up. What struck me most, on reflection, was that for all the words that were used, we actually don’t know what we’re talking about. Continue reading Say what now? The APAC15 Conference
Culture as an Asset Class
The story going around, particularly in Ireland, is that Arts and Culture are not – and can never be – a business because it can never ever turn a profit. Arts and Culture – by their very nature – are not commercial assets and are not worthy of investment. I mean look at all the struggling artists and small arts organisations fighting for a small piece of the tiny pool of state support. While it may or may not have a certain intrinsic or social value it’s just not a realistic investment risk.
Yet, according to Niamh Bushnell, Dublin’s Start-up Commissioner, 95% of all start-ups fail. 95%. That’s a hell of an attrition rate. It means that the risk of investing in a start-up is at least equal to, if not greater than, investing in arts and culture. And we need to bear in mind that no industry has a 100% hit rate. The market failure that we associate with Arts and Culture (and that is used to justify state subsidy) is at least on a par with start-ups. The big difference is that the failure is corrected in the Arts through subsidy, while in start-ups failure is accepted as an essential part of the ecosystem. I accept that there are certain institutions and activities that should be funded, but not that the current model of funding is effective or that they should be denied access to private investment capital. But that’s a different discussion (watch this space)
I want to look at this story from the investors viewpoint for a moment. Because, to take the single example of theatre, an investor can realise a a very significant (30%+) return on an investment and turn the whole thing around in four months and I’ve never met a start-up that can offer that. Further, if you choose to invest in a portfolio of productions over a three-year period you can also avail of a number of interesting tax opportunities depending on how you choose to promote and deliver the shows.
Dogs, Stars, Cows, Question Marks and the Art of Arts Programming.
So, you’re running an Arts Centre or a gallery or a “cultural Institution”; or you’ve just started a new festival or theatre or dance company. How do you decide what to programme? What will you actually do, and what factors – internal and external – will inform that decision? What criteria will you use to justify the massive investment of time, talent, energy and public or private money. It’s a tricky one. Continue reading Dogs, Stars, Cows, Question Marks and the Art of Arts Programming.
Dreamwalkers, Boundary Scanning and Antoine O Flatharta
Antoine O Flatharta is – in my opinion – one of the greatest, and most under-acknowledged Irish playwrights. He is the only one whose plays I would go to see again and again (five times in the case of Silverlands). He wrote a beautiful play for TEAM many years ago called Dreamwalker. I won’t go into the details of the plot but at the end the protagonist gives this great speech about what he learned living with a tribe. The tribe believed that the borders of their land marked the end of the world. They would elect (or select, I can’t remember which) a person to walk beyond the borders into the non world. Their job was to travel the non world and dream the dreams of the tribe. On their return they would share the stories of their dream travels, describing what lay beyond the borders of the known. In doing this the dreams were made real, and the borders of the tribe, the borders of the known world expanded. These people were called Dream walkers. It fascinates me how much of the hard, rational language of business is built on mythic stories just like this.
Continue reading Dreamwalkers, Boundary Scanning and Antoine O Flatharta
Consultant - Arts, Culture and Creative Industries 