How can the Arts change the System? Man Kei Ng, 25 January 2014 How can the Arts change the System? The flow of the discussion went like this: Why is the Arts not on the street? It could be a means to reimagine the society Arts has 2 notion: a) everyone can do; b) good artists can do. But new forms like flashmob may not require the professionally trained artists, but it can effectively disrupt the usual space, in a good way The change that we are looking for are in 2 ways: a) personal micro-scale => individuals being inspired to envisage what change should be; b) system-wise macro-scale => a billion small things to impact fundamental changes These 2 will work symbiotically because a change in thought pattern will change the behaviour The method to make the work can somehow imply the influence of the work e.g. Emily Davidson who painted women portraits in order to raise their salary So she as an artist, her work has always been purposefully political/social, i.e. a gesture of life style politics A metaphor for donating to the arts/getting corporate support: Coffee shop giving chance for customers to donate for homeless people to have a coffee Is this ethical? Why are we donating on top of our expenses, while the coffee shop looked like they made the whole charity action? And how much more profit they have made by attracting people to come? And people who donated - are they consuming the idea of donating? Why don't we think about how to get rid of homelessness for all people? This re-distribution of resources in the system should be better argued indeed! Afterall the care for people's housing, or rights to accessing the arts, are supposedly paid for when we pay taxes! Currently we have no financial democracy and media control, once we agreed to be in the “society” of the countries Social media on the internet could be too dilute as anyone could post whatever for however much they want. Alternative narratives exist, e.g. Global voices, which is a grassroot participation platform where people who are in the field directly report what is happening. Comedy and game theory could come in place - how to play around the environments. How? We're sick of power bases, which made local/community theatre invisible ACE's current direction “Great Art for Everyone”. What is “Great”? What is “Everyone”? For example NPOs are doing great art (some are even great in practice, e.g. Theatre Unlimited who gives the same pay for everyone). But for those outside the NPO pool, are they not great art? If we bypass ACE, could a lot more great idea be actualised? E.g. In the Occupy movement (which may not be the most successful macroscopically), a community took over an empty library and put so many books in it and they ran it really well, probably in the way that they want. Could we take reference from that? In France, if artists worked enough number of months, they would be paid at their normal rate even they do not work for the rest of the year, which is a support for them to create and get personal improvement like taking workshops/trainings. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jul/30/review-threatens-french-creatives-benefits This is because they regard the Arts and creativity, like health and justice, as part of being human being. What does the Arts mean to other countries? And what are the functions of the Arts? - beauty - joy - telling stories - and? So if we think about actions - what we should start doing? - developing the communication network, like this group and D&D - changing mentality: we should stop fighting against each other for the limited funding decided by someone else - putting effort in influencing the indifferent/“self-portrayed as powerless” people - changing ourselves before the system - forming a core group to make a strong document of arguments A good read is “Power of Just Doing Stuff” which demonstrate how transition culture, which could be despair and optimistic, works: http://www.transitionnetwork.org/ Some good stuff: http://funpalaces.co.uk/ - 4, 5 October where participants go out and ask everyone what they want to see in arts and science - could be a model for grassroot participation in finding what we need. And I strongly recommended this: http://www.whatnextculture.co.uk/ - the regular meetings of significant cultural workers and people from other sectors to think about the appropriate actions. We may not all agree that change can happen just from these forums, but it would be a good network to get in touch with to meet the like-minded. Tags: change, donation, politics, funding, system, NPO, Network, Funding, democracy, society, social, network, whatnext