Defining terms of arts and culture
I must have been rather annoying lately. I’ve been on a bit of a mission to encourage serious commentators and researchers to employ more precision with terminologies they use to advocate the arts and the cultural sector. I’ve done this through a couple of emails, comments on threads and lots of tweets, asking the Guardian’s Culture Cuts blog, the RSA State of the Arts conference, Arts and Business and a few other cultural advocates to clarify their terms but have had virtually no response. So after a day of intensified nagging on Twitter I thought I had better explain what I mean and why it matters. The context is well known. The UK Government has decided to tackle the deficit much more rapidly than anyone expected, targeting many public services for cuts, with culture absolutely on the front line for the execution squads, especially in local authorities and in education. In the face of this the cultural sector has not united to challenge the cuts, though there are active networks challenging cuts to the arts and to libraries. There are several bodies well placed to advocate for the whole cultural sector, and I certainly feel grateful for the platforms they are offering. The problem is that they generally undermine the case they are making, and do some parts of the cultural sector a particular disservice, by their lazy terminology. I don’t think this is about linguistic style or agreeing the specific words we use for parts of the sector, but about category errors and conflations which affect statistical claims about the value of culture. For example, Arts & Business has just published a report which was tweeted with headlines that 80% of FTSE 100 companies don’t sponsor the arts, but the research included heritage, museums and libraries.
I should set out how I interpret the shape of the sector, though I fully accept that my model is subjective and provisional. I admit that it can be helpful to ellide or conflate categories to suit some situations, for example when applying for funding. However, when advocating value in the public arena, I think we need a good deal more consistency and transparency of terminology.
The shape of the cultural sector is a matrix of two axes. Axis one is a spectrum from:
- the preservation of cultural heritage
- through interpretations and reinventions of existing cultural forms or knowledge to
- the production or performance of the most novel and contemporary art at the other end of the spectrum.
Axis two is a spectrum from:
- public assets maintained by public funding for public good
- through practices with mixed economic practices, generating social/cultural and economic value
- right through to commercial creative industries at the other end.
One cultural organisation might map its activities all over this matrix, but many can place their core remit squarely in one area. You have to draw the line somewhere around the cultural sector, excluding for example natural heritage and sport, while acknowledging that some cultural organisations might include sport or nature in their remit. I include science interpretation in the cultural sector.
The main concerns of the cultural advocacy campaigns are to protect the organisations or practices which are dependent on full public stewardship and to build more commercial capacities through public investment. As far as I understand from forgotten reading, and I would be happy to be corrected, there are more museums, libraries, archives, and sites of archaeological, domestic and industrial heritage in the public sector than there are arts organisations (excluding individual artists from that count). I’m not promoting one part of the cultural sector over any other, as I’ve worked in and am passionate about all of the parts. I mention the size of the MLA/heritage to suggest that it isn’t a small niche area that is easy to overlook.
The research reports, newspaper articles, blogposts and conference speeches by the main cultural advocates tend to do one of three things:
- Use the term ‘arts’ to denote the wider cultural sector, referring to non-arts practice under the arts umbrella
- Use the term ‘cultural sector’ (or ‘culture’) but then also use the term ‘arts’ interchangeably without acknowledging that arts are a subset of culture.
- Use the term ‘arts’ or ‘culture’ but only focus on the arts, where it might serve their case better by referring to other aspects of the cultural sector.
I should point out that there are some exceptions, where care is taken to be precise, inclusive and consistent. These include the Cultural Learning Alliance (currently asking for definitions of cultural learning), and the Collections Trust.
To summarise in cod maths terms:
Arts + culture = culture ( – heritage) = nonsense
Culture = arts + heritage = makes sense
I’d be very grateful for comments and corrections.
Leave a Reply
Recent Comments
My Flickr
|
A very interesting thread of thinking, Bridget. I’m sure lots of people will comment; but I’d like to add a few low level comments before more depth is reached.
Firstly, I think this is not about terminology; you admit early in the post that you are exploring why it is that the various sectors appear not to have united against the public sector cuts. My feeling is that each part of the culture sector has it’s own political dynamic and because of that, opposition to the cuts has not yet coalesced into concerted action or campaign.
Secondly, I think people cling [for security] to terms defining their part of the cultural landscape, and develop whole projects based on pointless vocabulary-driven constructs. Most of us are guilty of that, particularly in the museum world. I’ve lost count of the number of times people have told me that their funding, their research, their culture product is aimed at ‘museum audiences’ or ‘gallery goers.’
Indeed, in your piece above you say: “As far as I understand, and I would be happy to be corrected, the majority of cultural organisations that are publicly funded are museums, libraries, archives, and sites of archaeological, domestic and industrial heritage.” Many artists and arts companies funded by the Arts Council would disagree with that.
Lastly, I think the state of society and the public funding environment require us to firmly re-situate the arts [whatever sort, wherever they are] in a meaningful audience-facing context. If I can explain it [ie funded culture] to a stranger on the 46 bus back home at the end of the day, then I’m on the right track.
That’s not to say they’ll get it, or approve, or have a right of veto, necessarily. But the terms you use when making a simple elevator pitch about arts and culture need to be words that are widely understood, and have meaning and resonance in a wider societal context.
So maybe the answer is not to be stuck on certain phrases, but to be mindful of who you are talking to, and what their cultural or linguistic context is.
All the best
Jon Pratty
@jon_pratty
Thanks for all your helpful comments Jon, which mostly I agree with. On the point about the quantities of arts versus MLA/heritage organisations, I didn’t have time to find some data I remember reading which confirmed it. It didn’t include individual artists as arts organisations. I made the point simply to show that MLAs/heritage orgs aren’t a small niche to be overlooked.
On your last point, I entirely agree that you have to be mindful who you are talking to, but the audience for advocacy messages is the wider public realm, in particular people with political influence. Messages on that level need as much transparency and explanation of terms as possible.
I agree with Bridget. It has been bothering me for some years.
Possibly those of us who work across the domains in culture are more aware of it. I have so far held off backing a ‘savemuseums’ campaign on Twitter because I think that we need to have a much broader ‘save uk culture’ campaign. Other parts of culture have also been hit hard by cuts.
What we call things does matter. Bridget is right to think it matters. There is a natural tendency for people to try to protect their own bit of the culture sector when cuts threaten. People currently perceive libraries as being under greater threat than any other element in heritage.
There are excellent reasons why famous people backed the idea that we need to save public libraries from closure. I have observed myself that the public libraries have been the best, overall, at connecting with the ordinary residents and getting across that libraries are an everyday place. In urban areas, this has been emphasised for decades by the presence of homeless people in libraries. I think that this puts across a message that these places are not too élitist for anyone.
I think we need a Venn diagram to explain how things overlap…I may even try to create one (if I can remember how). “Museums” does not = “heritage sites and historic houses” although there are museums at many heritage sites and historic houses. “Arts” are not the same as “museums” although many of the museums have collections of arts artefacts and hold arts events.
A while ago, I suggested to 1 or 2 people that I could set up a website to gather in and disseminate information about public culture for public culture professionals and volunteers. This could include a ‘naming of parts’ of culture, definitions, and some kind of a map to them.
I had wondered if people might find it easier to give (informally) information about how cuts might or would affect them if they could do so without their names being broadcast, and whether we needed a list of “at risk” organisations or institutions, with 3 or 4 grades of risk identified (perhaps a traffic light system?), with highest grade for those in imminent danger of closure (maybe a memorial for those that had died?).
Personally, I think that the Guardian is doing an excellent job of gathering data, and would recommend that public culture sector people use it and add to it.
I am still willing to put together a website to which others can contribute/run sections that could pull together information and links to where information is held. I think that I even bought a domain for it (but I’d have to check, it might have been another domain I bought for a cultural website with lighter purpose).
This is a very clear expression of something that certainly has become very confused of late!
Like you say this has very often been using “the term ‘arts’ to denote the wider cultural sector, referring to non-arts practice under the arts umbrella.”
I would argue though that another piece of the confusion has been talking about ‘the arts’ or ‘culture’ when it is only organisations with funding being referred to i.e. not independent or private organisations.
I don’t think it is intended as a slight on the wider sector – although at the various arts funding meet-ups I’ve been at it is taken as one by some people – but rather reflects the fact that people working in different parts of the cultural sector have very different experiences of it.
As everyone is saying – language is important – and the lack of clarity in what the sector is saying no doubt doesn’t help communicate to the outside world why they should care about funding for culture.
Nick Sherrard
@nicksherrard
To a point, I agree that the terminology and uses needs to be defined a bit more, but when you’re talking on twitter, the luxury of using the required wording is not always an option.
Janet touched based on the ‘SaveLibraries’ and why it worked. I did write my thoughts on this here http://bit.ly/eTT5yj It doesn’t really matter what Museums, and art galleries, and heritage venues, etc. call themselves collectively, what’s important is for them to start showing why their important and why we need to fight for them to stay open. SaveMuseums was called that as it was related to @AskACurator but it’s an umbrella for all cultural/heritage/art Galleries to use as needed.
Getting back to the technically of the names… I agree that there needs to be a clearer definition. However, I do not that that the ‘average Joe Q’ really cares and most people in the industry really do not care what they are called on any given day, and are willing to adjust to whatever the funding body requires. So how do we go about using a model that will work for all? I love the Venn diagram idea and it would help tremendously. However, realistically, would the next researcher working on a report regarding FTSE bother to ensure s/he is using the right wording? Probably not. And sadly, these are the reports and articles that ‘Average Joe Q’ usually reads.
I’m not sure what the answer is. I asked on twitter what the difference between Arts/Cultures /Creative Arts were and the responses were so diverse (from both industry and Non-industry people). There are so many variables that are needed to clarify before we can work on getting the answers. But hopefully, this fantastic and insightful blog will start the conversation going in the right direction.
Thanks for your helpful thoughts Mar. Just to clarify my point a bit more, since I’m really grinding this axe to a fine polish. I’m not talking at all about how cultural sector organisations define themselves collectively in order to be commonly understood, but how advocates (politicians, journalists, civil servants etc) manage their terminology to ensure their arguments make logical sense. I’m not so wishing to arrive at fixed definitions, but at a shared understanding of common category errors and how they can undermine their case. I’m pretty confident that some open deliberative thinking about this, if directed at cultural advocates, would have some impact.
I’m posting a comment emailed to me from Dr Dave O’Brien (@DrDaveOBrien on Twitter) who was having trouble posting here:
“Apologies, I have quite a bit to say on this and haven’t had a moment to really get my thoughts down. I’ll confine my comments to one observation. Definitions are clearly important, but for who and what purpose (echoing Jon’s point). Often there is a pragmatic type of sloppy thinking behind some of the elisions you mention e.g. For the CASE programme almost all of DCMS’ main arms length bodies were involved, meaning the definition of ‘engagement’ was very confused e.g. doing sport once a week vs. going to a heritage site once a year.
It’s worth remembering the pragmatic nature of definitions has an iterative quality. Thus the association of ‘cultural’ activity and economic productivity goes through stages of economic impact of the arts-cultural industries-creative industries-creative economy. Creative industries is especially important as the term has been widely taken up to make the case for central government funding, by the media, admin, practitioners academics and central govt itself! thus ACE making claims about economic impact that were based on the performance of things like database development, which is a far cry from the arts. Indeed the loose definitions are seen in documents like this: http://www.nesta.org.uk/library/documents/beyond-creative-industries-report.pdf
Perhaps then it’s worth asking how did we get to the situation where these terms are so confused and confusing?”
How did we get into this situation? I think that it may be at least partly due to people trying frantically to find another skin with which to cover the arts in order to try to retain, justify, bid for or attract funding.
We need to clarify, and encourage clarity by others. At present, the confusion is hampering our efforts to argue the case for culture.
By the way, after our chat on Twitter last night, I am starting to draw diagrams that I think might become a presentation on Google Docs so that other people can (hopefully!) see and contribute to/change it.
Can’t wait to see them!
Janet:
this:
http://nknu.pbworks.com/f/FROM%2BCULTURAL%2BTO%2BCREATIVE%2BIndustries.pdf
and this:
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/15478/1/Cultural_industries_and_cultural_policy_%28LSERO%29.pdf
might be useful reading