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economical with creativity

by Ben Spencer 31 Dec 2008

My thoughts this month result from attending the Creative Clusters conference in Glasgow from 17th-21st November 2008 – www.creativeclusters.com. I suppose I thought this would be a break from writing about the projects under evaluation, but the majority of sessions at the conference addressed issues around regeneration and therefore, on reflection, my musings seem particularly relevant.

I attended the two ‘core’ days in the middle of the conference week and was a little naïve. On commenting that so few speakers even mentioned cultural activity in their presentations, it was pointed out to me that this was Creative Clusters’ 6th International Conference on the Creative Economy. I should have paid more attention when booking! So the event was frustrating from an arts’ perspective, but I also believe some of the references should be shared more widely.

To give you some idea of the scale of the event, some figures first:
450 delegates
256 page handbook
74 speakers
29 policy sessions / discussions
12 programme curators
7 tours and visits
5 days
5 session chairs
5 Lego serious play faclitators
4 rapporteurs
4 receptions

And five themes:
The Creative Economy in Smaller Nations
The Moving Image Goes Online
Policies for Festivity
Strategic Leadership in the Creative Economy
The Long Story of Glasgow’s Creative _Economy

The conference kicked off in Edinburgh with a day long ‘Policies for Festivals Master-class’ and then moved through to Glasgow for the rest of the week. Forgive me the lists, but it seems to be the only way to convey the scope of the event.
‘Creative Britain: The UK’s Creative Economy Programme’
‘Guerilla Movie Production: Film-making in Brazil and Nigeria’
‘Tuning In: Television, audio-visual production and regional economies’
‘Creative Government: what kind of leadership?’
‘Creative Industries in the Baltic: Lithuania, Estonia, Finland’
‘Globalised Creativity: Creative economies in developing countries’
‘Clicks not Bricks: The role of media centres in the age of clicks, not bricks’
‘Story-Telling and the Economy: … and they all lived creatively ever after’
‘Rethinking the City: Embedding creativity across city policy’
‘Building for creative Business: Building-led development for creative regions’
‘The Audience as Artist: New forms of participation in events and exhibitions’
‘Cluster Strategies: China, Ontario, Nordic region’
‘Out of the City: Creative industries in rural areas’
‘Culture-led City Transformation: Glasgow, Singapore, Gateshead’
‘Beyond the Festival Hype: How many festivals do we need?’
‘Design & Crafts: Developing capacity in traditional sectors’
‘Enabling Technologies: The impact of new technologies on the creative economy’
‘Creative Futures: New research on the future of the creative economy’

The handbook is a comprehensive reference to all the sessions with speakers’ biographies, abstracts of each session and, in many cases, copies of the presentations. This material is an incredibly useful record of the event – unfortunately not currently available online. Some of the case studies I found interesting include:
Shetland Arts
Klaipeda City, Lithuania
Creative Industries in Estonia
Crossing Boundaries
from cowtown to wowtown
Nordic Innovation Centre

The best session I attended was a ‘provocation’ by Gordon Torr, author of “Managing Creative People”, The Unfactory (Wiley UK, 2008). And I want to conclude with Torr’s thinking which is really what prompted me to write this piece in the first place. Forgive me for quoting at length.

The extraordinary growth of creative businesses has shifted the traditional focus of management from the organisation of skills and resources to the mysterious art of mining the imagination. Now the glacial predictability of corporate process has come up against the notorious unpredictability of the creative temperament, and business leaders are confronted with the challenging paradox of managing the unmanageable. The resulting clash between control and creativity is exacerbated by the myths and misunderstandings that continue to hamper our quest for innovation and originality.

Torr decries the curse of the brainstorm, the commoditisation of creative talent, the deskilling of the imagination and the startling inadequacies of management theory. Torr argues creative people are often regarded by their managers as alien species whose motivations are impossible to fathom and recognises the non-conformity of the creative temperament is particularly difficult to accommodate in structured organisations.

Torr cites research evidence into the psychology of creativity, the history of creative communities and the demographics of creativity in order to favour a reappraisal of government and corporate policy regarding the management, training and optimisation of creative talent. Torr argues that standing in the way of progress in corporate creativity are the flawed conceits of the so-called creativity trainers, such as de Bono, the entirely discredited yet universally accepted assumption that creativity can be taught and the ludicrous notion – no less ludicrous for being so avidly embraced by so many pundits – that “everyone is creative”.

Torr proposes a new approach, marrying contemporary corporate culture with the criteria for successful artistic patronage, as practiced in Medici Florence, which include: the clear demarcation of creative roles, the critical distinction between craft and creativity, the psychological and environmental circumstances that promote inspiration, a counter-intuitive system of reward, and the important notion of creative redundancy.

Through an entertaining presentation, with a total incomprehension of (and perhaps aversion to) the success of Leona Lewis, Torr elaborated on his arguments in more detail. While this is impossible to summarise, perhaps one of the most useful sections was on Torr’s description of the killers and aphrodisiacs of creativity:

killers of creativity
constraint
poor project management
evaluation
organisational disinterest
too much regard for the status quo
lack of resources
competition
time pressure
bribery
surveillance

aprhodisiacs of creativity
freedom
good project management
resources
encouragement
recognition
time
challenge
pressure

And finally I particularly liked Torr’s 10 year rule – that it takes around ten years from the inception of any idea to realising it. Sounds like a pretty accurate reflection of most capital arts projects I’ve been involved in.

Ben Spencer
December 2008

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'...big jobs?"

by Ben Spencer 17 Nov 2008

What is the difference between a project to produce an artwork for a clearly identified, single ‘client group’ and working on a project with multiple artworks for a large, disparate organisation?

In writing here, I’ve always said that the projects subject to evaluation will act as an inspiration for the blog rather than being referenced directly. In the back of mind, however, there is the niggling question of how an artist, project manager (or indeed external evaluator) can work within, or gain access to, a sprawling organisation and so I am likely to draw a little more directly on the projects under review to explore my musing.

Looking at the archive of projects on the PAR+RS web site, offers an insight into the whole range of commissioning bodies out there … arts initiatives, museums, galleries, schools, universities, hospitals, local community groups, voluntary organisations, housing associations, regeneration agencies, local authorities, commercial outlets and private companies. But such a list may indeed conceal who is actually commissioning the work. For example, the site of an artist’s activity may be a school, but is it the Head Teacher, the Parent Teacher Association, or the central education department at the local authority involved in drawing up the project brief and involved in selecting the artist? More likely it will be the project manager, leading the procurement of new schools under a ‘regional’ PPP/PFI contract.

On the one hand, I suppose this does not present a problem for the artist. A well structured project, with clear lines of communication and management structures, should support the work of an artist and make their role easy to fulfil – irrespective of the labyrinth of bureaucracy which requires to be negotiated by the project manager. But this is a sterile response to my query which takes no account of the artist’s need to understand their position within an organisation or the context in which they are working. This approach is also likely to be very isolating, to a certain extent side-lining the artist and therefore probably leading to the work being misunderstood and receiving negative responses.

The key issue seems to be the difficulty of finding that route through an organisation and gaining support for an art project and the artist’s work. A particular problem of working in a very large organisations is that there is little or no access to decision-making – a process which is likely to be driven forward through text and documentation. In some cases, an added difficulty is that the ‘client’ may span a number of organisations, pulled together for a particular purpose – a common situation in regeneration agencies – and so the people commissioning the project do not form a natural constituency. While the group may have a single objective in commissioning the work, such as the improvement of the physical environment, each contributor may measure the ‘success’ of the project through very different, maybe even conflicting, parameters. Or as already hinted at, the client may be fractured in delivering a project within a large organisation – commissioning work in a project which is being delivered by a capital procurement team – the involvement of artists may become an irritant: that precious pearl within the oyster.

This suggests the clearly identified single ‘client group’ does indeed have an advantage in managing an art project over the large disparate organisation as it is likely to develop direct lines of communication with the artist. When 63 people are listed as being involved, as with one of the projects under review, that brings added challenges and complications in pulling together the delivery of the work. Large agencies may have a single name, but most bodies are complex structures and multi-layered with Boards and advisory committees, departments of staff teams and external advisers etc. forms an entity in itself. So in reality the delivery of an artwork through a team of consultants, artists, designers, construction personnel etc. Questioned particularly on this idea, a manager involved in one of the projects under review noted however that “you have to keep pushing projects in a busy environment – really it is the busy environment which is the issue, not necessarily the scale of organisation.”

And this of course is the crux of any project development whether for a small community group or in a large agency – is the project the focus of their organisation? A community group may rely on volunteers who cannot work on a project consistently, day to day. In an organisation, how do you keep a project alive, alert and relevant when it is not central to a person’s work? How do you ensure any new project is accepted as a valuable activity and kept visible? What connections are required and how are they sustained?

There is an argument that actually a large scale organisation can benefit the delivery of an art project. Involving a large number of people, from a broad range of perspectives, and gaining their support gives the work more legitimacy. Engagement in a project also becomes a form of education and an opportunity to ‘skill up’ people – explaining the process of art making. Anecdotal feedback often notes how people enjoy being involved in working with artists and consider it a privilege, . As more people are involved learning happens – the journey demystifies the arts community and demonstrates the professionalism of artists. A further benefit of involving a large number of people in a project delivers a legacy of interested workers once the artists have moved on.

The artwork is often the catalyst to bring two cultures together, creating a space for dialogue and offering opportunities for ‘training’, irrespective of the scale of the project. There are particular benefits of a small, identified project but also significant advantages of working in a large scale organisation. Both, however, need significant energy and clear management keep the profile of the project alive, irrespective of size.

Ben Spencer
November 2008

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to confer and commit

by Ben Spencer 5 Oct 2008

In writing a second piece for the PAR+RS web site, my thoughts turn – naturally? consecutively? – to the commissioning process. Projects funded by the Scottish Arts Council (SAC) Artists Work in Public Places (AWiPP) scheme adopt a number of routes to commission project managers, curators, lead artists and artists (all subsequently collectively referred to as artists) which makes me conclude there is really only one way to commission artists work – i.e. the most appropriate way. That seems a little bit obvious perhaps, but please bear with me in reaching this conclusion.

LET’S go back to basics. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (Third Edition 1983) includes the following definitions of the word commission:

noun substantive Middle English
1. Authoritative charge to act in a prescribed manner. 2. Authority committed to any one 1480; spec. that of an officer in the army or navy 1672. 3. An instrument conferring such authority ME.; spec. the warrant by which an officer in the army or navy is appointed to the rank and command he holds 1642. 4. An office conferred by such a warrant 1708. 5. The condition of being authoritatively entrusted or given in charge 1573. 6. A body of persons charged with some specified function 1494. 7. The entrusting of (authority, etc., to) 1883. 8. A charge or matter entrusted to any on to perform 1570. 9. Authority given to act as agent for another in business1622. 10. A pro rata remuneration for work done as agent 1725. 11. The committing (of crime, etc.) 1597.

verb transitive 1661
1. To furnish with a commission or legal warrant. 2. To empower; to entrust with an office or duty 1683. 3. To send on a mission1697. 4. To give a commission or order to or for 1790.

• authority, charge, instrument, warrant, office, function, entrusting, agent, remuneration, committing,
• to furnish, to empower, to entrust, to send on a mission.

That seems clear then – a commission is a definitive instruction to carry out a specified piece of work, in a particular manner. But how do you actually go about commissioning artists’ work? There is no shortage of advice from public agencies and funding bodies – in print and online – about drawing up a commission, covering: a project’s conceptual framework, aims and objectives, developing a brief, artist selection, implementation, management, evaluation and budgeting. Some references may be instructive:
http://www.publicartonline.org.uk/practical/commissioning/index.html
http://www.commissionsnorth.org/commissioning/
http://www.artscouncil-ni.org/artforms/public_art.htm
http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/publications/information_detail.php?
http://www.happen.org.uk/resource.php?key=40

More specific advice is offered SAC towards applying to its own Public Art Fund, but the areas covered are applicable to all projects involving artists work in public places:
http://www.scottisharts.org.uk/1/information/publications/1005724.aspx

While such advisory documents are useful to outline strategic approaches in commissioning artists to deliver projects, I have been struck through talking to people involved in ‘live projects’ about how the actual appointment process varies and, in some circumstances, how this has evolved from the original plan. This reflection therefore concentrates on the selection process rather than the more prosaic aspects of project delivery. To quote publicartonline: “the selection of an artist or craftsperson for a public art commission should be an intriguing and exciting task”.

• open competition – advertising widely to invite artists to submit applications
• limited competition – compiling a short list from which a limited number of artists are invited to work up proposals
• direct invitation – selecting an artist to propose work for a site, participate in the design process, or act as lead artist

I hadn’t thought much further beyond this simple guidance, but these options highlight an important difference in approach – are you looking for a person (manager/curator/lead artist/artist) or a proposal? The nature of the project will also influence the option you follow – not the type of project being commissioned (stand alone artwork, participatory project, residency etc.), but the structure of the project. Where a commission is being implemented on behalf of a wide range of stakeholders and external agencies, an open process involving artists’ presentations is likely to be required. The scale of a project will also influence the manner of appointment – contract values may trigger a requirement to put the project out to tender and this will impact on the selection process.

These issues may also determine how artists are invited or selected to apply for a commission. Promoting artists opportunities is becoming increasingly easy, and more diverse, as online listings and networks complement print media as sites for advertising projects. Again the nature of the project will influence where advertisements are placed – an artwork forming an integral part of a building project is likely to benefit from being advertised in the architectural press. Personal networks should also be used to ensure the greatest exposure of a project and therefore attract the widest range, and variety, of submissions. Of course, artists can be contacted directly to apply, as part of any competitive process.

Of course, the process is simplified if it relates to a single, small scale project, but this might also limit the commissioning possibilities. A large scale project, made up of multiple opportunities for artists and comprising different commission strands, means the prospect may be available to share ideas and proposals. An artist applying for one particular commission may be unsuccessful, but then asked to submit for a different project.

As pointed out above, the selection itself should be an intriguing and exciting task and can be an excellent inspirational and educational process for people who don’t usually come into contact with artists or their work. Consultations, exhibitions, presentations and interviews can generate enthusiasm for a project – getting people involved and talking about art.

Returning to the OED’s definitions, I love the idea that commissioning artists work in public places is equivalent to the committing of crime, and I’m sure many people might agree with this sentiment, although of course I cannot condone, or suggest that SAC should support, criminal activity. I also relish the image that commissioning artists work in public places is equivalent to sending an artist on a mission, but my conclusion is that there is no straightforward answer to how to appoint an artist. You must chose the most appropriate route, in the context of your project, to commission artists work and this will vary from project to project.

Ben Spencer
September 2008

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*reporting measures*

by Ben Spencer 24 Aug 2008

My appointment by the Scottish Arts Council (SAC) as an external evaluator for the Artists Work in Public Places (AWiPP) scheme is focused on a number of projects being funded by SAC. It is difficult, however, to write contemporaneously about specific projects and so the work being undertaken will serve to inspire a monthly post to the PAR+RS blog.

SO, the first crucial question, at this early stage of my involvement with these projects, is: what is evaluation? Quite often I see confusion between monitoring and evaluation, and indeed the brief for my role identified two key tasks:
i. ongoing evaluation of the progress of projects;
ii. evaluation of the various processes involved, leading to written conclusions about best practice and points of learning.

• monitoring – a reporting structure to comment on the activities undertaken, resources used and systems in place to deliver a project;
• evaluation – how a project recognises whether it has been successful and how this will be measured.

• getting started – why evaluation is important, getting people on board, understanding what you want to achieve…
• collecting information – what to measure, how to measure and getting monitoring systems in place…
• anyalysing and reporting – analyse your findings to understand the difference you have made and write reports…
• learning from your findings – use your findings to improve your service and influence others…

What’s the problem then? A closer look at the ESS web site, however, only lists case studies, online training and toolkits for community development projects, in areas such as: addiction / dependency, befriending and mentoring, childcare, criminal justice and offending, employment, environment, health and health promotion, homelessness, housing, regeneration, social enterprise and volunteering. In these fields, evaluation activity is undertaken to produce evidence to support and justify policy development. The specific issue under consideration here, however, is the evaluation of artists work in public places. In this context: what is evaluation?

A search of the public art online web site for ‘evaluation’ results in 288 documents (of 1244 searched) being found. This only exacerbates the issue, as there is no consensus within the papers as to what evaluation is. There are obviously loads of people engaged in carrying out evaluation, but systematic, evidence-based studies of public art projects seem very thin on the ground. publicartonline

A key reference here is the OPENspace report, commissioned by ixia, titled: Reseach on Public Art: assessing impact and quality’. The first 50 pages, or so, of this comprehensive study outline many of the issues and practices involved in evaluation – in far more detail than I can do here. The issues referred to are pretty much the same as I have made already. In particular, the report refers to a reluctance for public art practitioners to evaluate their projects and practice.

• consider quality?
• measure impact?
• define success?
• count numbers?
• learn from the project?
• share best practice?

The ixia report and methodology places artistic and aesthetic values at the centre of the evaluation of any project, but there may be other reasons to conduct an evaluation. Exemplars within regeneration projects, for instance, which aim to make places more people friendly and better environments in which to live, work, shop and visit must also be useful references for artists working in the public realm.

A comparative study, carried out by Catherine Newbery for the Fondation Marcel Hicter European Diploma in Cultural Project Management (1999-2000), attempted to analyse the benefits of public art, especially on local communities, and what systems were used to provide evidence of those effects from projects in Germany, Norway and the UK. Only in Britain does culture have to justify its existence in social and economic terms and therefore projects have to be accountable and use a range of evaluation methods to demonstrate hard evidence of the benefits, as well as anecdotal evidence more commonly used. The report can be downloaded from the publicartonline archive

The Scottish Arts Council itself also has a history of publishing a number of evaluation frameworks and tools, particularly in the performing arts, but other evaluation work has been done in the field of arts and health and around audience development. In addition and particularly relevant, partners ,a National Lottery-funded initiative giving communities with little experience of the arts opportunities to engage with professional artists, included evaluation pro-formas, to be completed by the participating artist and partner organisation/s. The information gathered was rather subjective, commenting on the processes involved in any project, not the wider outcomes or impacts. Partners Toolkit

Of more use, I think, is a generic, wide-ranging evaluation tool published by the Scottish Executive Cultural Policy Unit in February 2007 to evaluate the Cultural Pathfinder programme. This framework appears particularly useful, as it has a cultural focus, but looks at project objectives, inputs, outputs, performance indicators and outcomes. Indicators refer to activities, participation, satisfaction, impact and value for money. And a process requiring baseline information, interim and final reporting is outlined, concluding with sections on outcomes, progress and learning points. Surely a systematic, evidence-based evaluation process which public art practictioners seem reluctant to adopt. Evaluation Toolkit

It seems the issue is that the evaluation of Artists Work in Public Places has historically relied heavily on the empirical and anecdotal, rather than the measurable and factual. It can be argued there is room for both, but anyone embarking on a project must be clear from the outset which route they wish to follow.

Ben Spencer
August 2008

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