I don’t know. Is freedom just another word for nothing left to lose?
From one meeting with a CNZ representative at the Auckland offices and a cursory reading of the Creative New Zealand, Arts Council of New Zealand’s Strategic Development Plan and Statement of Intent 2007-2010, I know that the rhetoric has changed. Whether this entails an intrinsic change to the thinking behind the profligate image-making which seems to be CNZ’s primary occupation remains to be seen; or, not seen, but experienced. Because it is the CNZ experience in which putative change is being promoted. And, as usual, The Arts Council of New Zealand is first commending and promoting itself to the New Zealand Government, the true target of its boosterism, since its role of advocacy for the arts largely involves self-advocacy by way of the arts.
From February 2009, Creative New Zealand will be adopting a new model, on the basis of the SDP (Strategic Development Plan). CNZ’s Auckland rep, Claire Richardson, invoked the image of strategic social investment to describe in one broad stroke what this means: longer-term funding than previously; the setting of ‘milestones’ for those funded to achieve; the setting of ‘benchmarks’ for success. To the latter, I should add, and beg to be corrected, that a particularly innovative category has been added to the analysis of success in the sphere of the arts, quality, and not just any quality, high quality.
I tried to upload a diagramme showing the ‘vision’ and ‘purpose’ of the SDP but this is all I got; somewhat appropriate given its situation. Here, then, again, and as they have fortuitously been cut and pasted, are the four goals, outcomes or purposes, (two and three have, interestingly been Burroughs-ed) in order that you may note the emphasis on quality:
New ZeAlANDerS
HAve ACCeSS
To HiGH-qUAliTy
ArTS
experieNCeS
New ZeAlAND
HiGH-qUAliTy
ArTS GAiN
New ZeAlAND
iNTerNATioNAl
ArT iS
SUCCeSS
DevelopeD
New ZeAlANDerS
Are eNGAGeD iN
THe ArTS
Claire indicated that the SDP would be entering a pilot phase in 2009, at the end of which, presumably, its meeting of its own benchmarks will be assessed. As to what they might be, qualitatively, is anyone’s guess. Or no one’s. CNZ’s stated goals, under the SDP, make a qualitative assessment if not impossible than improbable. Where I believe it has always failed is in high-quality advocacy to government on behalf of the arts, making the following a strategic interpretation:
It is difficult to assess the impact of our work when many of the outcomes are diffuse and because Creative New Zealand is often just one of a number of investors that contribute to outcomes.
– SDP, Statement of Intent [www.creativenz.govt.nz/files/stratplan-07.pdf], p. 42
Where Claire sees CNZ adopting a model of strategic social investment, in line with the practice of the IMF and its support of micro-loans for the achievement of desirable outcomes over the long term, or with the UN’s policy as regards the alleviation of world poverty, again long term, I read ‘strategic investment’ without the qualifier, ‘social.’ It’s not simply that the words ‘strategic’ and ‘investment’ recur with surprising frequency throughout the SDP, it’s more that both notions, investment and strategy, are contingent on the ideologically inflected metaphor of industry.
Industry is no bad thing. Idle hands do the devil’s work. But this particularly moral reading of industry is where the actuality of artistic creation parts company with the ruling metaphor: art is the devil’s work; it is idleness and not industry. Why is there still popular outcry over money going to lazy artists if this is not the case? Why is there such emphasis on the consequentiality of artistic creation if this is not still the case? To which can be added CNZ’s apologism, as against advocacy, in view of the arts; and the SDP’s declaration that it is outcome-based.
CNZ’s vision consists in strategic investment in the arts for these purposes,
New ZeAlANDerS
HAve ACCeSS
To HiGH-qUAliTy
ArTS
experieNCeS
New ZeAlAND
HiGH-qUAliTy
ArTS GAiN
New ZeAlAND
iNTerNATioNAl
ArT iS
SUCCeSS
DevelopeD
New ZeAlANDerS
Are eNGAGeD iN
THe ArTS
The industrial reading of arts practices is, to my mind, the skeleton rattling in CNZ’s closet who, if he hasn’t done so already, will bone its Strategic Development Plan and Statement of Intent. It is especially the desired outcome of high quality that is destined for abuse, especially if it is considered an outcome only achievable over the long term.
I encourage the idea that CNZ funding ought to allow artists and groups and companies to plan ahead. That it ought not to be project by project. However, planning ahead need not involve projects at all. In sharing Wilde’s aestheticist programme that all art is quite useless (a great song by A House), I reject the idea of uses, outcomes and purposes for art, even to rejecting the elementary building-blocks of CNZ’s policy-making, projects. (That said, I will be applying to CNZ for project funding; saying which, in turn, is not to show or show off my own contrariety, but, exactly, to demonstrate the ill fit between government policy re the arts and the desire to create and the creation itself: the lust to tell, the urge to love, etc.)
