2007-09-21
Making the case for the Arts
Given the reputation which economists have nowadays as desiccated calculating machines, you may have been surprised to find that any economist is interested in the arts, let alone spends part of his time chairing a body such as the Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board.
Yet in fact economists have been instrumental in the development of public policy towards the arts in both the United Kingdom and Australia. The best-known, and arguably the most influential, economist of the twentieth century was John Maynard Keynes. The arts, and artists, played a major role in Keynes life.
The two great loves of his life were the painter Duncan Grant and the ballerina Lydia Lopokova. His lifelong friends included the writer Lytton Strachey and the sisters Vanessa Stephen and Virginia Woolf. Keynes was Chairman of the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts from 1941, which in 1945 became the Arts Council of Great Britain. Keynes was Chairman of this Council until his death in April 1946. Keynes was very much aware, in 1930, of one of the problems that artists and arts organisations continue to face today: It is impossible, in my experience, to go on continually getting financial support for something which is perpetually losing money and presents itself as a bottomless sink to the friends and supporters who come in enthusiastically at the start.
There is a contemporary relevance to his observation (in the same article) that: When one sees how much money is spent in a year on useless and hideous objects, it seems monstrous that it should be a serious struggle to provide some of the most promising artists in the country with £150 a year.
Why does the general public find it so extraordinarily difficult to get over its reserves and hesitations towards contemporary art? The arguments he used to advocate government support for the arts nonetheless resonate today no less than in the 1930s when he made them:We have persuaded ourselves that it is positively wicked for the state to spend a halfpenny on noneconomic purposes. Even education and public health only creep in under an economic alias on the ground that they pay One form alone of uncalculated expenditure survives from the heroic age war. And even that must sometimes pretend to be economic.
The founding Chair of the Australia Council, Herbert Cole (Nugget) Coombs,was also an economist. During his nineteen years as its Governor, the Commonwealth subsequently the Reserve Bank acted to some degree as a patron of the arts, particularly those related to painting, sculpture, architecture and associated crafts, acquiring a variety of works by contemporary Australian artists who have become recognised as the most distinguished of our time.
Coombs views on funding of the arts were similar to Keynes:The arts have always needed patrons, and it has seemed to me that those on whom the arrangements of society confer control of great resources have an obligation to society to perform this function. The natural successors of the noble families of the Middle Ages are today the great corporations, public and private.
Coombs became the inaugural Chairman of the Australian Council for the Arts in 1968 and remained until June 1974. Coombs philosophy in administering the Councils programs of support for the arts was clear: The arts are not merely for the practitioners, they are also for the patrons, for the audiences. Their representatives are as likely as artists to assess ways of meeting their needs, or of adding to their opportunities and range of choice. It continues to be important to make the case for government, corporate and individual support for the arts.
Inevitably, even though I acknowledge the frustration it causes for those working in the arts who believe that their intrinsic and aesthetic value is sufficient justification for public and private support, that case has to highlight the ways in which the arts can and do contribute to other objectives. Advocates of funding for sport rarely have to do that because, according to Australia
Council deputy chair Joseph Gersh:the community at large is actively invited and encouraged to be part of elite sports, by being spectators and supporters. In the arts, whether intentionally or not,elite' often comes across as exclusive.
George Mason Universitys Richard Florida suggests that a vibrant arts scene is one of the things which acts as a magnet for what he calls the creative classes who are increasingly the drivers of differences in regional economic performance; while, by contrast, government support for professional sports conspicuously doesnt. A vibrant arts scene acts as a magnet for the creative classes
Yet, as he notes:States and regions [of the United States] continue to pour countless billions into sports stadiums, convention centres, tourism-and-entertainment centres and other projects of dubious economic value. The payback would be far greater if these regions channelled only a fraction of such funds into creative capital, for example, by supporting new biotechnology and software research or by investing in the arts and cultural creativity broadly.
Although Floridas research was focussed on the United States, the message of it is also applicable to Australia. The preference for spending on sport rather than the arts is much more pronounced in business than it is in government. In 2000- 01, the latest year for which figures are available, Australian businesses gave $628m to sport and recreation by way of donations or sponsorship, representing 43 per cent of their total donations and sponsorship expenditures, compared with less than $70m to the arts and culture (and, for that matter, compared with $339m to community service and welfare).
This strong bias towards sport on the part of business people extends beyond where they spend their shareholders funds. As Ralph Kerle of the Centre for Cultural Studies and Analysis points out,rather than use arts as their inspirational role models for creativity, corporate leaders exhort their senior managers to embark instead on a quest to succeed and find new heights in performance by learning from Australian sporting heroes a sporting champion and his [sic] mindset represent the least threatening metaphor for commercial innovation and creativity. Yet in many ways the arts, more so than sport, embody and require skills and attitudes that are increasingly called for in contemporary business contexts:
critical thinking
the ability to challenge conventional wisdom, to in the clichés so loved of business
leaders and consultants push the envelope and (gulp) think outside the square
the capacity to look at familiar objects or themes from new angles and perspectives
the ability to innovate with new media, new forms, and new technology
the ability to borrow and adapt from things that appear to work in other settings.
Although some individuals have been and continue to be amazingly generous in their support of the arts, the vast majority of those individual Australians who do make taxdeductible donations prefer to direct their generosity elsewhere. According to a survey conducted for the Commonwealth Department of Family and Community Services and the Prime Ministers Community Business Partnership which defined giving more broadly than the Tax Office found that fewer than 5 per cent of all individual donors gave money to arts or cultural associations, and that arts or cultural associations received just 2.3 per cent of all donations. Religious and spiritual organisations, international aid and development organisations, community and welfare associations and medical research institutes account for nearly three-quarters of all individual donations. So there is still a major task before the arts community to engage not only with government but with business and with individuals to secure greater financial support for the arts. Although they may wish it were otherwise, people in the arts community cannot expect this support as of right. I think Joseph Gersh put it well recently when he said that arts organisations need to find out the goals of businesses and identify who within them is going to see the benefit in a partnership with the arts and then, once established, to nurture that relationship.
The Australia Business Arts Foundation plays an important role in helping to make and sustain these relationships, and I'm delighted to be able to support it.
Download: http://www.abaf.org.au/documents/connect_web_june_07.pdf
This is an edited excerpt of an address to a dinner for the Australia-Israel Chamber of
Commerce and Australia Business Arts Foundation South Australian Chapter, 16 April 2007. Go to
Saul Eslake is chief economist of the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. However, the views expressed here are entirely his own, and do not purport to be (and should not interpreted as) representing those of his employer or any of its other executives. Mr Eslake is chair of the Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board.
The two great loves of his life were the painter Duncan Grant and the ballerina Lydia Lopokova. His lifelong friends included the writer Lytton Strachey and the sisters Vanessa Stephen and Virginia Woolf. Keynes was Chairman of the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts from 1941, which in 1945 became the Arts Council of Great Britain. Keynes was Chairman of this Council until his death in April 1946. Keynes was very much aware, in 1930, of one of the problems that artists and arts organisations continue to face today: It is impossible, in my experience, to go on continually getting financial support for something which is perpetually losing money and presents itself as a bottomless sink to the friends and supporters who come in enthusiastically at the start.
There is a contemporary relevance to his observation (in the same article) that: When one sees how much money is spent in a year on useless and hideous objects, it seems monstrous that it should be a serious struggle to provide some of the most promising artists in the country with £150 a year.
Why does the general public find it so extraordinarily difficult to get over its reserves and hesitations towards contemporary art? The arguments he used to advocate government support for the arts nonetheless resonate today no less than in the 1930s when he made them:We have persuaded ourselves that it is positively wicked for the state to spend a halfpenny on noneconomic purposes. Even education and public health only creep in under an economic alias on the ground that they pay One form alone of uncalculated expenditure survives from the heroic age war. And even that must sometimes pretend to be economic.
The founding Chair of the Australia Council, Herbert Cole (Nugget) Coombs,was also an economist. During his nineteen years as its Governor, the Commonwealth subsequently the Reserve Bank acted to some degree as a patron of the arts, particularly those related to painting, sculpture, architecture and associated crafts, acquiring a variety of works by contemporary Australian artists who have become recognised as the most distinguished of our time.
Coombs views on funding of the arts were similar to Keynes:The arts have always needed patrons, and it has seemed to me that those on whom the arrangements of society confer control of great resources have an obligation to society to perform this function. The natural successors of the noble families of the Middle Ages are today the great corporations, public and private.
Coombs became the inaugural Chairman of the Australian Council for the Arts in 1968 and remained until June 1974. Coombs philosophy in administering the Councils programs of support for the arts was clear: The arts are not merely for the practitioners, they are also for the patrons, for the audiences. Their representatives are as likely as artists to assess ways of meeting their needs, or of adding to their opportunities and range of choice. It continues to be important to make the case for government, corporate and individual support for the arts.
Inevitably, even though I acknowledge the frustration it causes for those working in the arts who believe that their intrinsic and aesthetic value is sufficient justification for public and private support, that case has to highlight the ways in which the arts can and do contribute to other objectives. Advocates of funding for sport rarely have to do that because, according to Australia
Council deputy chair Joseph Gersh:the community at large is actively invited and encouraged to be part of elite sports, by being spectators and supporters. In the arts, whether intentionally or not,elite' often comes across as exclusive.
George Mason Universitys Richard Florida suggests that a vibrant arts scene is one of the things which acts as a magnet for what he calls the creative classes who are increasingly the drivers of differences in regional economic performance; while, by contrast, government support for professional sports conspicuously doesnt. A vibrant arts scene acts as a magnet for the creative classes
Yet, as he notes:States and regions [of the United States] continue to pour countless billions into sports stadiums, convention centres, tourism-and-entertainment centres and other projects of dubious economic value. The payback would be far greater if these regions channelled only a fraction of such funds into creative capital, for example, by supporting new biotechnology and software research or by investing in the arts and cultural creativity broadly.
Although Floridas research was focussed on the United States, the message of it is also applicable to Australia. The preference for spending on sport rather than the arts is much more pronounced in business than it is in government. In 2000- 01, the latest year for which figures are available, Australian businesses gave $628m to sport and recreation by way of donations or sponsorship, representing 43 per cent of their total donations and sponsorship expenditures, compared with less than $70m to the arts and culture (and, for that matter, compared with $339m to community service and welfare).
This strong bias towards sport on the part of business people extends beyond where they spend their shareholders funds. As Ralph Kerle of the Centre for Cultural Studies and Analysis points out,rather than use arts as their inspirational role models for creativity, corporate leaders exhort their senior managers to embark instead on a quest to succeed and find new heights in performance by learning from Australian sporting heroes a sporting champion and his [sic] mindset represent the least threatening metaphor for commercial innovation and creativity. Yet in many ways the arts, more so than sport, embody and require skills and attitudes that are increasingly called for in contemporary business contexts:
critical thinking
the ability to challenge conventional wisdom, to in the clichés so loved of business
leaders and consultants push the envelope and (gulp) think outside the square
the capacity to look at familiar objects or themes from new angles and perspectives
the ability to innovate with new media, new forms, and new technology
the ability to borrow and adapt from things that appear to work in other settings.
Although some individuals have been and continue to be amazingly generous in their support of the arts, the vast majority of those individual Australians who do make taxdeductible donations prefer to direct their generosity elsewhere. According to a survey conducted for the Commonwealth Department of Family and Community Services and the Prime Ministers Community Business Partnership which defined giving more broadly than the Tax Office found that fewer than 5 per cent of all individual donors gave money to arts or cultural associations, and that arts or cultural associations received just 2.3 per cent of all donations. Religious and spiritual organisations, international aid and development organisations, community and welfare associations and medical research institutes account for nearly three-quarters of all individual donations. So there is still a major task before the arts community to engage not only with government but with business and with individuals to secure greater financial support for the arts. Although they may wish it were otherwise, people in the arts community cannot expect this support as of right. I think Joseph Gersh put it well recently when he said that arts organisations need to find out the goals of businesses and identify who within them is going to see the benefit in a partnership with the arts and then, once established, to nurture that relationship.
The Australia Business Arts Foundation plays an important role in helping to make and sustain these relationships, and I'm delighted to be able to support it.
Download: http://www.abaf.org.au/documents/connect_web_june_07.pdf
This is an edited excerpt of an address to a dinner for the Australia-Israel Chamber of
Commerce and Australia Business Arts Foundation South Australian Chapter, 16 April 2007. Go to
Saul Eslake is chief economist of the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. However, the views expressed here are entirely his own, and do not purport to be (and should not interpreted as) representing those of his employer or any of its other executives. Mr Eslake is chair of the Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board.
An article by Saul Eslake, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd.
Source: Australia Business Arts Foundation
Source: Australia Business Arts Foundation
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