François Matarasso

Curtain call of ‘La Gate Perduda’, a community opera I helped with at the Liceu Opera House, Barcelona, October 2022

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One starting point for A Selfless Art is my recognition of how much participatory art and co-creation practice now imagines the world as being divided between us and them. Us, the people who know, who understand, who plan, those who organise, do, create and lead, whose work is important, valuable and, naturally, always for the greater good. Them, the people who don’t know or understand, those who struggle and need help, who are supposed to benefit from how things are organised, whose choices and actions are to be judged, whose work is valued only for the effort they demonstrate, those of whom there are few expectations (though sometimes considerable fears).

On one side, those who make decisions: on the other, those whose lives are affected by those decisions. Here, those who set the type and extent of public services; there, those who depend on those services daily. Artists involved in co-creation live in the borderlands between Us and Them. They understand both sides (more or less) and they can speak both languages. Where they really belong is a question each one knows the answer to. And I know that I’ve found myself on the wrong side—the side I stand against—too many times, hence A Selfless Art.

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Yesterday, Nicholas Hytner published his ‘plan to save the arts in Britain’ in The Guardian, a plan that essentially involves dividing the arts world permanently into Us and Them.

He laments the funding cuts imposed on the arts by Conservative ministers since 2010, saying that he doesn’t know ‘a single subsidised arts organisation in the country that feels financially secure.’ He contrasts this with the doubling of arts funding under Labour between 1997 and 2007, which saw ‘a renaissance in regional theatre’ while ‘dance, opera and classical music all flourished’. His priorities (and tastes) are clear. An obvious solution to the crisis is a big increase in funding, which he does call for. Perhaps the next government, widely assumed to be Labour, will deliver it. 

But Nicholas Hytner has a bigger ambition. He says that the Arts Council, which distributes public funding for the arts in England, is pulled in too many directions, especially in supporting the work of great artists and community access to the arts. (Actually, the dual mission of supporting art and access to it has been in the Arts Council’s Charter since it was founded in 1946.) Hytner is attracted to the model of English sport, where UK Sport supports the elite ‘with no direct involvement in community or school sport’ while Sport England works to increase everyday participation.

He proposes that a Labour government should create a new body ‘with its own funding stream, to which new community-based initiatives as well as established education and outreach programmes can apply.’ Then the Arts Council can concentrate on financing the work of great professional artists, though how they might be identified or selected is not considered. Perhaps they all know each other already.

In practice, many cultural institutions already operate like this, with no meaningful contact between artistic direction and education and outreach departments.

None of this thinking is new. Indeed, it’s tiresomely familiar and predictable, as anyone with a bit of history or old enough to remember will know:

• During the Second World War, when the British government first invested in the arts, its response was class-based. It created the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA) and the Entertainments National Service Association.After the war, ENSA was closed; no need for ‘entertainment’ now. CEMA became the new Arts Council of Great Britain.
• In the 1950s, when the phrase austerity was first used to explain cuts, the newly-established Arts Council made the historic decision not to fund amateur art, under the principle of ‘Few, but roses’, the first of many horticultural (and Classical) metaphors that would define its future policy.
• In the 1970s, the Arts Council first resisted community art, then briefly accepted that it had to support it, though many of its staff and panel members remained bitterly opposed. The problem was solved by ‘devolving’ responsibility to the independent Regional Arts Associations so that it could concentrate, just as Nicholas Hytner wants, on elite and traditional forms. 
• In 1990, the Regional Arts Associations were formally linked to the Arts Council as Regional Arts Boards before being abolished in 2002: each step brought community and participatory art back to the centre where it still is—and where it still bothers some.

At the heart of this problem is the unshakeable belief held by many people in the arts that community work cannot really be artistically good, let alone aspire to the elite standards and transcendent experiences they believe professional artists achieve. They see a world divided between Us and Them—and everyone who thinks like that knows on which side of that line they belong.

Nicholas Hytner’s proposal is wrong politically, morally and artistically. It would be a backward step to the world of the 1950s and it would fail because we live in the 2020s.

Art is not binary, with good work produced by professionals and everything else second rate. It’s not even a spectrum. It’s a vast network, as large as humanity, of extraordinarily different and diverse creative expression and we are enriched by being able to explore it all as and how we wish. Art is one, humanity is one. Drawing borders in that interdependent network of life is simply to create sources of conflict.

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And if you want an example of how artistic innovation can combine with community participation to co-create new and in many people’s view artistically exciting art, look at the three operas (including La Gate Perduda) presented at http://www.co-art.eu