Per Cent for Art Irish Context

Threads leading to a personal perspective

Sarah Searson

14 October 2011

Please open the hyper-link to see a number of video interviews relevant to this

presentation

http://prezi.com/oaoim69jby-r/copy-of-/

I never know why everything gets broken down into categories (eg.public) ...art is art!

Dorothy Cross

Much wider understanding of Art Practices within the public

realm

Openness to the potential of the scheme

Clarity about understanding Public Art

and Per Cent of Art

Contexts and Processes for commissioning are reflecting changing environments.

Overall developmental approach which is leading to opportunities.

Through pooling practice there have been some really exemplary project achieved

Failure to pool has resulted in ad hoc and poorer work.

Festivals and Events Institutional Commissioning Creative Cities and the “re-

imagining” city spaces Self directed Artist driven

Cultures As a direct challenge to systems

of organisation - the Dock project Galway.

Pedagogically practices and reflecting cultures of change within 3rd and 4th level Institutions

Short-term Concerns ₋ County Based Structures*

Review of county based structures .

₋ Organisational Advocacy₋ General diminishing, pressure on

structure within organisations.₋ Loss of skilled specialist expertise

energy and focus.₋ Budgets – failure to pursue small

clusters also failure to release budgets.

₋ Guidelines and Policy limbo₋ Per Cent for Index liked – Slower

processes.

From a Commissioners and Artists Perspective

Interesting contexts – valuesSmaller budgets can allow for opportunity.More evolved critical landscape in terms of critical analysisStrongly ambitious and professionalised graduates .

More competitive arena – in totality Greater commissioner confidence and potential for curatorial strength Time

Changes in the commissioning mix Very Strong in our understanding of the potentials of public practices Weakness commissioning permanent works of ambition.Public Interest strong in engaging with processes

Greater stratification occurring within the arts in general

Eg.₋ Arts and health₋ Arts and education ₋ Arts and Inclusion

This reflecting context rather than practice.Arts managers and policy makers mediating role of art back into institutions.

• 1997 – 2008 – Golden Window.

• Rural and Urban interests – Work that has been emerging out of a very grounded and detailed understanding of place and context, but also big investments into arts practices, needing very detailed and comprehensive structures to successfully realise them.

• South Dublin – In Context Programme • Breaking Ground–Ballymun • Sligo – also having a number of

programmatic phases to the approach.

• Commissions broken down into their constituent areas – reflecting electoral regions

₋ Dun Laoghaire – Place and Identity Programme ₋ Wicklow – Public Art Commissions

Pragmatism Fulcrum

“Do people want it”

“What the public wants the arts council will deliver”

Mary Cloake

Making the Public Case for the Arts Mary Cloake, Theatre Forum Ireland 2009 Annual Conference in Wexford

Opera House, Thursday 11 June. More information: url.ie/ 1vre

Discourses of the value of the arts

• Make the arts pivotal in the national crisis

• High on the National Agenda• Jobs• National Pride – Reputation of the

State• Drive an innovation economy

Clarity and maturity about creative and commercial impetus within “re-imagining”.

If you consider art as a function of either truth telling or mythmaking both have the potential to rattle and challenge to disrupt and disturb / please, to surprise and offer moments of consolation – pause for thought. A strong sensibility here is the key function of those driving the realisation of public art.

Wider Cultural Context

The Arts Council’s “arm’s length” policy may be severely strained

Local Authorities have never been at arms-length – but dependent of the strength of direct management and the vision of a supportive County Manager or Director of Services.

• Public-ness of Public Art “The rhetoric of an “age of austerity”

is being used as a cloak for the privatization of all public services and a reinstatement of class privilege:

a sad retreat from the most civilized Keynesian initiatives of the post-war period, in which education, healthcare, and culture were understood to be a democratic right freely available to all.”

Claire Bishop

Arts Managers confidently and seriously work within the realm of their engagement.

– within the often rigid systems that produce opportunity for art making,

– there is huge opportunity for excellence in thought and action.

The Social Turn: Collaboration and Its Discontents

Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics

Con-Demmed to the Bleakest of Futures: Report from the UK

Claire Bishop

Critical and Practice Examples www.publicart.ie

Strong leadership and vision is integral to each work as is a particular set of values. (Value and the performance of values.)

These values need to be negotiated as part of the commissioning process

Ambition in curatorial practices and support can bring the sensitivity to navigate context – but also needed is a nuanced understand the processes of artmaking.

If work is to be of any worth is rarely directly sited in the interests of organisational rationale.

Tension is a necessary component of creative or making processes this is to be taken on – and worked with.

The general management of local authorities, state and semi state organisations tends to lean towards systematisation as methodology of transparency.

Pushing projects through procurement processes which reflects organisational cultures but going to yield a project akin to those cultures – is this what we want from art project?Engagement must allow for curatorial direction and ambition.

Artist and Commissioner Relationships;

₋ Supporting greater criticality ₋ Research processes₋ “Fear of the artist” managed.₋ “Fear of the institution” is

navigated.₋ Time - five or six year processes.₋ Great focus on team and inter-arts

practices ₋ Being along-side

₋ Good focus on mutual professional needs at an early stage of relationship

₋ Bringing a range of expertise within the sphere of production at an early stage

₋ Being clear with each other about the function of the work and how it is to be articulated, mediated.

http://prezi.com/oaoim69jby-r/copy-of-/