Posts with tag Cultural economy

When EU leaders gathers to discuss and form policies for the European Union each participating member is balancing 1) their own nation’s interest and 2) the interest for EU as a whole. In that specific order.

EU leaders have been greatly criticized for not being able to put up a strong and convincing plan for how to come out of the financial crisis and save the euro. The balancing act between the interest of the nation and that of the structure as a whole is, to put it mildly, in conflict.

The discussion in the EU Platform for Cultural and Creative Industries is a miniature of the same problem.

EU Commission invited cultural organizations and networks in late 2007 to form platforms within different topics and policy-areas with the aim of coming up with recommendations to put in to the Commission’s work on culture. Spring 2008 these different platforms started their work.

Through the method structured dialogue the Commission hoped for a better – and more structured – dialogue between the Commission and the different actors in the cultural field.

The platforms have worked very differently. The Platform for Cultural and Creative Industries, a platform formed by around forty organizations, has proposed recommendations for the development of CCI but the road to finally agree on something has been bumpy. Some of the Platform’s participating organizations have refused to sign the final proposition, some have been objecting along the way.

No-one is surprised. Forty organizations representing publishers, audio-visuals, label companies, musicians and composers, architecs, universities and training centres and more gather in this one platform. The needs, structure, possibilities and challenges differ within each of these areas, so much that they can hardly be seen as one industry.

Is it just impossible, then, for the cultural field to agree and in consensus propose  strong overall recommendations to the EU that would benefit the sector as a whole?

Well, it’s symptomatic. What EU leaders fail to do on the large EU level, cultural organizations fail in their particular area. The interest of lobbying the agenda of the organization you are representing stands in the way of the interest for the sector as a whole.

It also needs to be said that the mandate for these platform called for by the EU Commission has been extremely vague if at all existing. The organizations forming the Platform for Cultural and Creative Industries have been working hard and with great seriousness taking the task of forming relevant recommendations.

The reception from the Commission has been lukewarm and the question hangs in the air if they have at all had any impact on forming the new cultural programme Creative Europe.

Still, Xavier Troussard, Head of Unit Cultural policy, diversity and intercultural dialogue, stresses that they now propose more money for the new programme, which of course in times of financial crisis would be an accomplishment however small it is.

It’s easy to in a haste and with frustration draw the conclusion that the actors in the cultural field can’t cooperate. It would be nice when the Commission now aims to evaluate the process, if it remembers to also look at the prerequisite set up for these platforms.

Sometimes the result you get depend on what question you asked.

Reflections from the meeting with The Platform for Cultural and Creative Industries, Brussels, February 6. Read also post here. 

The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) used to be an organization seeing art and culture as a tool within international development. It was so important that a Department for Culture and Media was created with its own responsible officer.

Now winds are blowing differently.

The department is closed down since several years and to find art and culture, you have to look under the department responsible for questions such as freedom of speech, democracy, equality, environment and climate.

Between 2007 and 2011, the Sida budget for culture declined from 180 million SEK to 40 million SEK, Swedish Televion’s Kulturnyheterna (Culture News) reported on the 18th of January. With a fourth of the originial budget, many international cultural projects have lost their funding, among them now Selam, an established world music festival and organizer of education, development, inspiration, exchanges for artists in Sweden and East Africa.

Where art and culture used to be seen as a tool for grassroot development and democracy building, Minister for International Development Cooperation, Gunilla Carlsson, is instead talking of efficiency, results agenda, more distinctiveness. Sida is saying that the changes are due to orders from the government. The Minister says, in the tv interview, that this is a complete misunderstanding.

The fact is that the decline in money to culture projects at Sida coincides with the Conservative government in power since 2007.

It also coincides with the years when the Ministry of Culture published the report from the work of Kulturutredningen (Committe of Inquiry of Culture Policy) in February 2009, an inquiry proposing that culture should mainstream all policy. Sida’s decline in culture projects is exactly on the contrary of this.

It’s also during the years when Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communications decided to release a plan for supporting Swedish development of cultural and creative industries. Small money has been invested, it’s true, but it’s at the same time the first time Ministry of Enterprise is discussing culture. Where this discussion goes, we will see.

Gunilla Carlsson seems to have missed all this.

Read post here and here on the proposal from Kulturutredningen.

American artist P Nosa, he draws art on a sewing machine, is planning a sewing tour in the US with the mission: ”…to navigate the country promoting people’s creativity, providing a tangible patch of their ideas, and to teach how to use alternative energy sources”.

To fulfill his idea, he has created a website where you can donate money. If he gets to the total amount of the cost (7500 USD) he is on his way, otherwise the tour is cancelled.

The funding idea of the project goes in line with the idea of crowdfunding, where people pitch in a sum of money, big or small, to an idea they like. If fully funded, the projects runs. It’s the thought of ”the crowd decides”. These types of alternative funding ideas are growing and in Sweden you find for example the site Funded By Me.

Support the sewing tour here. Read another post of P Nosa here.

Sarah Thelwall, a British researcher and consultant in creative and cultural industries, has written an interesting paper (July 2011) based on research on the value of small visual arts organizations in the arts ecology as well as society. Some of the outcomes include:

• The role and value of small visual arts organizations in society and within the arts ecology is often under-estimated by public authorities.

• The evaluation and measurement methods, ”the metrics”, of government and funders do not correspond to the value produced by these small organizations who build their operation on collaboration and flexibility.

• By investing in risk-taking and development of work, small arts organizations contribute to the development of larger art organizations.

• Small art organizations have very few tangible assets to capitalize income on compared to larger organizations, un often unacknowledged incomestream to be found in these small organizations is the intangible assets such as organizational expertise and experience, intellectual property, research skills, risk-taking etc.

• The report suggest a new investment model in order to measure the value of small visual arts organizations.

Download the report here: Common-Practice-London-Size-Matters.pdf. Sarah Thelwall also initiated the service MyCake as an easy way to manage your finances.

For a long time Region Västra Götaland has been a model region in Sweden with its offensive cultural policy. But what’s happening now?

Cultural critic and Chair of Nätverkstan board, David Karlsson, puts the light on the regional cultural policy in an article posted in the daily Göteborgs-Posten last week.

On Thursday November 17, the Cultural Affairs Comittee of the Region took two important decisions; a new Cultural Policy Strategy, and a detailed budget for 2012. As the Cultural Policy Strategy is a visionary and analyzing document, probably the most powerful cultural policy document in the country, the budget is depressing reading. It shows nothing of the visionary, or interest for the art and culture outside the traditional art form limitations.

The whole question falls back on the leadership of the region. Does anyone know where Region Västra Götaland is heading?

Download the article (in Swedish) here: vgr_debatt.pdf. 

A large international conference was held in Tallinn, Estonia, in October 2011 discussing a paradigm shift in the way the Creative Economy is understood and supported. The conference was facilitated by Dr Tom Fleming with speakers from around the world addressing the role of the creative economy as a provider of growth to the wider economy.

Some of the ideas have now been put down into the document Talinn Manifesto. Download the document here: Tallinn_Manifesto_Re-thinking_the_Creative_Economy_Dec2011.

Read more from our meeting with Tom Fleming in London, October 19 2010, here.

Nätverkstan is running workshops around the Region of Västra Götaland (West Sweden) on The Art of living on Art, a project funded by European Social Fund.

So far the first course, with workshops taking place at four different places in the region with around 8-10 participating artists in each, has ended and a new round of courses started. Last Saturday we had the full-day conference with David Karlsson talking about Cultural Industries, Gothenburg Combo on how they live on their art, and Ulla-Lisa Thordén on selling and pricing with all participants gathering in Vänersborg.

This is the road-trip around the Region of Västra Götaland this fall meeting artists in Skövde, Borås, Ulricehamn, Uddebo, Tranemo, Lidköping, Gerlesborg, Vänersborg. More to come!

Read more here.

The Encatc 19th Annual Conference in Helsinki was focusing on the future this year.

”A wind of change is blowing over our societies and reshaping our political, social and cultural paradigms. Increased urbanization, uneven social redistribution, a digital shift and an array of new audiences accessible mainly with the use of new technological tools – these are motors of change which provide as many challenges as they do opportunities.”

In a mix of key note speakers such as Saara L. Tallas, IKEA Professor in Business Studies in School of Business and Design, Linnaeus University (Sweden); Katri Halonen, acting head of degree program in Cultural management at Metropolia University of Applied Sciences; and Lidia Varbanonva, consultant, researcher and lecturer was mixed with intense group discussions on different topics. Encatc thematic areas had workshops within their specific themes as well as room for young researchers and research presentations.

Although the financial crisis hovered above like an evil cloud, optimistic thoughts were exchanged on the future of culture and its possibilities.

Read more of the conference here.

On the second conference on the course Cultural Entrepreneurship Workshop (Knep) three guest lecturers with very different approach held seminars in the old barn, now a conference venue, restaurant and brewery of local beer.

Placed in the fields about two hours drive from Göteborg around twentyfive artists gathered this beautiful autumn day to listen to the perfect combo.

David Hansson and Thomas Hansy who form Gothenburg Combo and make a living on their acoustic guitars told their story from Music Academy to international touring.

Ulla-Lisa Thordén wrote the book Luspank och Idérik (Broke but full of ideas, my translation) and gave a talk on how to sell and communicate your art to others.

Claes Bohman, who, among many other things, have been part of the team starting Transit, the incubator that was connected to University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, was giving a speach on the process from idea to the audience or customer.

During this combination of lecturers and storytellers two thing were significant: The importance of quality, artistic quality, in the work; and working on different levels of understanding. David Hansson and Thomas Hansy want to reach both the ”amateur” audience as well as other professionals. To do that they need to work on different levels in their music.

Read more here.

Each year in the beginning of September everyone working at Nätverkstan gather to have a two-days meeting, drawing up the lines for the coming year. It can be to discuss future issues or particular questions we need more time to dig into. We have a look at the present situation, projects going on, and who is doing what, as well as just having time to talk and getting to know each other.

This year we went to Flatön, an island along the coast, to Handelsman Flink, a cute guest house just by the sea. We started of with a rattling exciting walking quiz competition and activities such as tandem-biking, crab-fishing, and knitting an art piece. Then into issues like Nätverkstan Gender Policy, present situation, and future projects 2012. Great fun with a fantastic group of people!

Tonights highlight. A warm summer-evening working with artists on the Art of living on Art in the small town of Uddebo.

Nätverkstan is running a European Social Fund project on art and entrepreneurship, Knep. The courses are run at four different places around the region of Västra Götaland, from large cities to small. Read also here.

On Saturday the 20:th of august Carl Forsberg and Olav Fumarola Unsgaard had a public talk at the city festival of Malmö. The topic was about digital publishing. Our analysis is that we are entering a more complex ecosystem of texts. The traditional printed media is going to be complemented by at least four different types of digital texts:

• The digital book (today usually an E-pug file read in an E-reader)

• The text as an pdf-file

• Texts on the internet (homepages and blogs at the www)

• Applications (small programs read on a smartphone or a tablet computer)

Nätverkstans aim is to help, guide and provide the Swedish journals with guidance and solutions for this complex ecosystem of texts. Our latest project is to develop an iPhone application for the journal Ord&Bild. It is now available for downloading at Apples iTune store: http://itunes.apple.com/se/app/tidskriften-ord-bild/id447773438?mt=8.

The aim of creating this application is that the journals need an application based on their needs and economical conditions. Programming an application is still quite costly and no single Swedish cultural journal has the budget doing it themselves. Our idea is that Nätverkstan can lower the cost for the journals by doing a great part of the development work (if you are interested, please contact: support@samladeskrifter.se). The event was visited by 40 persons with quite different knowledge of digital publishing. Some where publishers and some saw an iPad for the first time.

Nätverkstans other work at the festival was mainly concerned about promotion of the different journals. We where present at the café Cacaofoni and at St Petri.

Text: Olav Fumarola Unsgaard

Photo: Helena Persson

On Monday the project, Knep, a cultural entrepreneurship workshop for artists, started around the region of Västra Götaland.

The workshop is a series of six evening-meetings, of these two full-day conferences, the content covers everything from how to live on your art, visions, where you are now, to marketing, budget and other useful things. We will go from practical work to an overview of the discussion on cultural entrepreneurship in Europe. The aim is for each participant to develop their entrepreneurial thinking.

We are holding workshops at four places in the region of Västra Götaland at the same time. It’s important, we find, to go to where people live and work, not only, to stay in the large cities (which in this region is Göteborg). All participants from the four different corners of the region will meet at the conferences, a way to enlarge your network and meet others.

Even in a small region of 1,5 million people networking is difficult and often an obstacle. Yet so important in an artistic work which often means lonely work in your studio.

The project is run by Nätverkstan and funded by The European Social Fund.

Photos: Sara Vogel–Rödin.

Tom Fleming and Andrew Erskine at Tom Fleming Creative Consultancy has written three papers in a report for Arts Council in UK on what an approach could be for the council in supporting the growth in the arts economy.

The three papers are: The arts economy: Balancing sustainability, innovation and growth, Place, infrastructure and digital: an agenda combined and Towards an arts and creative economy development programme.

Download the report here: creative_economy_final210711.

Nätverkstan met with Tom Fleming in London, read more here.

In a prognosis of the expected development of Swedish labour market presented in the daily Dagens Nyheter on March 6, artistic education is in the red zone.

In the prognosis done by Högskoleverket, expected number of graduated students in about 3-5 years are put in a diagram in relation to expected recruitment needs. There is according to this no need for students educated within the artistic educations. Too many artists are expected to take their diploma than there is a need for in society. They are simply tagged with the post-it ”surplus”.

We have seen it before. Each year it’s the same gloomy reports. During the over ten years we have run Kulturverkstan, the two-year International Project Management Education within cultural field, the labour market for artists, project managers, cultural practitioners has in different prognosis reports been more than gloomy.

But reality looks different. The students taking their exams get jobs or create their own. Last years survey showed 78% of the students taking their exam in June 2010 had gotten jobs in the field they educated in after their education. And it has been the same since the start of Kulturverkstan. Between 65-85% are getting jobs after the education.

Another prognosis is the expected outcome and development of the creative industries. Here results of the need for artistic skilled people are the complete opposite. The EU-Commission report ”The Economy of Culture in Europe” (KEA European Affairs) from 2006 showed that the creative industries contributed 2,6% to European GDP, 3,1% of the total workforce in EU worked within this field and the sector’s growth between 1999-2003 was 12,3% higher than the growth of the general economy. Many reports after this, also in Sweden, have shown optimistic figures of the growing labour market within these fields.

This is where new jobs are created.

On one hand an over establishment of artists in the Swedish society. On the other a growing field where new jobs will see daylight. How are we to understand these opposing trends that exists along side each other at the same time? Are the forecasts reliable?

In a letter to the Observer, some of UK’s famous artists within film, TV and theatre send a warning of what the drastic cuts in UK funding to art will do. The main message being that less public money to the art field will have serious effects on British economy. Creative industries have contributed more than 7 billion pounds a year to the economy.

An article in BBC News report on the appeal where Dame Helen Mirren, the actress, are one of the artists stating that investment in the arts brings in (as they put it) ”staggering” return for the country. If cultural policy is dismantled, it will have effects on creative industries and the economy as a whole.

October 20th 2010 was named Axe Wednesday by British press due to the government announcement of massive cuts in the UK budget in all areas of society. Within arts it has meant cuts over all fields within culture, and just the Arts Council England, distributing money to a large amount of arts venues, theatres, and galleries, had its budget cut by around 30 percent.

Swedish Counsellor for Cultural Affairs in London, Carl Otto Werkelid, says in a short interview on the Swedish Government website, that UK is facing a huge tightening of public finances. The cultural field is still holding its breath in the wait of seeing what concrete effects the cuts will have for the arts. The appeal yesterday was perhaps a change in the waiting. Carl Otto Werkelid is talking about a paradigm shift that will have effects way beyond the boarders of UK.

Read the original letter to the Observer here.

Read the article in the BBC News about the appeal by British artists here.

Read the Guardian on the culture cuts here.

Read a short post on the changes in UK here.

And read the interview of Carl Otto Werkelid here (in Swedish).

Over a twenty-years period, the portion of permanent hired ensembles on the theaters in Sweden has declined drastically. Actresses and actors are to very high degree freelancers. In Sweden there are about 2300 actresses and actors, ninety percent are freelancers, ten percent has permanent positions.

On Stockhom Stadsteater (Stockholm City Theatre) the portion of people with permanent jobs have declined from 70 to 20 percent over the twenty-year period, at the same time as the number of plays performed has risen. Benny Fredriksson, the Director of Stockholm Stadsteater, has been seen as the leader of the modern theater in his efficiency, number of plays performed, and not the least, getting audience to come.

The crack in the glamour started yesterday, when the actor Ulf Friberg wrote in a big article in the daily Dagens-Nyheter about the conditions for actors and actresses at Stockholm Stadsteater. He means that the fact that so many are freelancers creates a quiet culture, critics are swallowed in fear you will not get the next job. Mr Fredriksson has drawn the efficiency too far, is his point.

The ones standing with the cap in their hands are the ones creating the content, of without every theater is only an empty shell: The actresses and actors.

We have seen it before. Some years ago a debate roared in Sweden due to the fact that one of the biggest museums in Sweden, Moderna Museet (Modern Museum), didn’t pay the visual artists for the time to put together a new exhibition for the museum. Everyone else was paid. The Director, administrators, guides, and the caretakers. But not the artist. They should be happy to be able to have an exhibition at all at such a prestigious museum. But you can’t pay rent with honour.

It’s interesting in times when the mantra from local authorities to the state, from business life and bureaucrats, even among ourselves within cultural life is: Artists have to know how to price themselves and their work!

For the theater it would be fine if the hourly payment for freelancers covered costs for development, reading and rehearsal. It doesn’t. Instead different competence-programs are started, all with the aim of teaching artists to become better at selling themselves.

When in fact, the present crisis of the theater has structural reasons. It can not be blamed on or solved by individuals. No matter how many entrepreneurial programs we set up.

Creative Industries Development Services (CIDS) in Manchester started in the end of the 1990s as a way to support the bubbling small-scale music life to become more sustainable businesses, build networks and be an intermediary between the city and its cultural scene.

The initiative was taken by Manchester City after a research-report 1997-1999 suggested to start an agency to be the intermediary between Manchester City’s infrastructure for support for businesses and the small-scale cultural life.

CIDS had four assignments when it started: 1) offer business support based on the acknowledgment that the cultural field needs specific competence and expertise, you need to know something of the field to be able to give the right support, 2) provide information and expertise of the cultural sector to the official structures, 3) build collaborations and partnerships with existing infrastructure to provide better and more coherent efforts to the creative field, and 4) to have a representative role and give voice for specific needs in the field into policy- and decision-making structures in the city.

In Professor Justin O’Connor’s report Developing a Creative Cluster in a Postindustrial City: CIDS and Manchester, he points at a few reasons why CIDS, in 2008 finally closed down its activities.

Two processes showed to be difficult. On one hand the notion of ”Creative Industries” which through the slight different connotation towards economic growth in the understanding of ”Creative Industries” compared to ”Cultural Industries” which in the beginning were understood as not only economic growth but also the non-commercial arts and culture. This change in the understanding slowly mirrored the policy and decisions in the city of Manchester, which in the long run made CIDS work with small-scale cultural businesses with specific conditions and in the middle of commercial and non-commercial difficult.

The other was the intermediary role, the balancing act between the city and policy becoming more and more instrumental and focused on economic growth, the other being the situation for artists and small cultural businesses and their specific needs which often didn’t fit in to the overall agenda of the city. The idea of building trust by sharing the same risk as the cultural field and taking a clear standing point for the artists, made the officials look upon CIDS as somewhat a maverick organisation.

It is interesting to see how the hopes for creative industries are growing, at the same time as the official support-structures, indicators and expectations still follow the traditional industry.

Read Justin O’Connor’s and Xin Gu’s report here: manchestercids.pdf.

All the paintings that were carried outside just a few minutes before, have to be taken inside again as the weather quickly changed from sun to rain.

Visual artist Tabitha Wa Thuku‘s home is not just a home for the family, it’s also an exhibition hall, a studio, and a storage space for many years of art works.

She rents the house, have been moving 18 times and now lives an hour from Nairobi in Banana Hills. Her drive  and capability of restart is impressive. She is an established and well-known visual artist in Kenya.

For two days we have together with GoDown Arts Center been tossing and turning the idea of a longer educational idea with in art and entrepreneurship and management. How can can an education be built, specifically designed for and meeting thechallenges in Kenyan and East African cultural field?

Nätverkstan is together with Academy of Music and Drama, University of Gothenburg, discussing a masterprogram on art and entrepreneurship and how this can be formed. This together with the experience of Sian Prime from Goldsmiths University in London and also starting the Creative Pioneer Program does become an interesting mix of possibilities.

The project is a cooperation between Nätverkstan and GoDown Arts Center in partnership with Sian Prime (UK), during 2010 funded by Swedish Inistute. Look under Kenya for more.

For two days visual artists, dancers, film-makers, and producers have gathered to together with Sian Prime and ourselves find ways to pursue the artistic career and meet challenges.

Things from finding who you need to talk to, what is the next step, who is the customer, audience or client has been discussed; as well as how do you make best use of your time, killing the worst ”truths” about marketing and adjust the marketing plans for the situation for the artistic practice; and things like budget, pricing and costing.

It is nothing like sharing experiences, asking challenging questions to each other, and create a room for structured reflection and ideas. The Indian notion of ”fearless listening” fits very well to describe the sharing which can make all the difference.

The project is a cooperation between Nätverkstan and GoDown Arts Center in partnership with Sian Prime (UK), during 2010 funded by Swedish Inistute. Look under Kenya for more.