Performance and the Critique of Resilience in Culture (England, 2004–2020)

Abstract

In the wake of Brexit and COVID-19, this article looks back at resilience-building agendas in English publicly funded cultural production. The analysis examines the history of ‘resilience’ in arts policy debates prior to 2012 before analysing Arts Council England (ACE)’s resilience-building programmes called Catalyst and discussing a performance-based Catalyst case. With Catalyst, ACE and collaborating agencies sought to incentivise private investment and entrepreneurialism in culture to minimise risks linked to potential financial loss in the wake of the 2007–2008 financial crash and subsequent budgetary cuts. The argument of this article is that, in this context, resilience discourses and practices, which aimed to rationalise, legitimise, and effect a further move away from older funding practices, reproduced a distinctly cultural ideological form. Through the performance-based case, this critique also examines how certain styles of discourse and practice were more critical and made space for figuring alternatives to the politics of resilience.

Keywords:

• Arts policy
• cultural value
• Live Art Development Agency
• private investment
• fundraising

Acknowledgements

I thank the reviewers and editors for their generous comments and close attention to the various drafts. I also thank Paul Rollier for taking the time to comment on an early draft.

Notes on Contributor

Dr John Yves Pinder has recently completed his Ph.D. from the University of Leeds. His thesis was entitled A Theatrical Critique of Resilience. His articles and reviews have been published in New Theatre Quarterly, Research in Drama Education, and Theatre Research International.

Notes

1. Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales have separate arts councils, so the analysis is limited to England.

2. Jen Harvie, Fair Play(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 62-107.

3. Baz Kershaw, ‘Discouraging Democracy: British Theatres and Economics, 1979-1999’, Theatre Journal 51, no. 3 (1999): 267-83.

4. Stephen Greer, ‘Funding Resilience: Market Rationalism and the UK’s “Mixed Economy” for the Arts’, Cultural Trends 30, no. 3 (2020): 222-40; Jack Newsinger and Paola Serafini, ‘Performative Resilience: How the Arts and Culture Support Austerity in Post-Crisis Capitalism’, European Journal of Cultural Studies 24, no. 2 (2021): 589-605.

5. Anna Upchurch, The Origins of the Arts Council Movement (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

6. Jaswinder Blackwell-Pal et al., ‘Marxist Keywords for Performance’, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 31, no. 1 (2021): 25-53; see also, Nicos Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism (London: Verso, 2013).

7. George Yúdice, The Expediency of Culture (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).

8. Brandon Woolf, ‘Putting Policy into Performance Studies?’, Performance Research 20, no. 4 (2014): 104-111 (104).

9. Ibid., 106.

10. Suman Gupta and Ayan-Yue Gupta, ‘“Resilience” as a Policy Keyword: Arts Council England and Austerity’, Policy Studies 43, no. 2 (2022): 279-295.

11. David Hesmondhalgh et al., ‘Were New Labour’s Cultural Policies Neo-liberal?’, International Journal of Cultural Policy 21, no. 1 (2014): 97-114.

12. Thimothy Bewes and Jeremy Gilbert, eds., Cultural Capitalism: Politics after New Labour (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2001).

13. Robert Hewison, Cultural Capital (London: Verso, 2014).

14. Yúdice, The Expediency, 39.

15. John Holden, Capturing Cultural Value (London: Demos, 2004), 38.

16. Yúdice, The Expediency, 32.

17. Holden, Capturing, 22.

18. John Maynard Keynes, The Collected Writings: Volume 28 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 368.

19. David Lee et al., ‘“The Public Gets what the Public Wants”? The Uses and Abuses of “Public Value” in Contemporary British Cultural Policy’ International Journal of Cultural Policy 17, no. 3 (2011): 289-300.

20. Clive Bell, Civilization (London: Pelican Books, 1928), 45.

21. Valuing Culture co-organisers, email message to author, October 16 and 19, 2015.

22. Local Government Chronicle, ‘£12m for Arts, Culture and Energy Efficiency Projects’, LGC, March 23, 2006, https://www.lgcplus.com/archive/12m-for-arts-culture-and-energy-efficiency-projects-23-03-2006/ (accessed March 15, 2022).

23. Margaret Bolton et al., Capital Matters: How to Build Financial Resilience in the UK’s Arts and Cultural sector (London: MMM, 2010), 9.

24. Margaret Bolton et al.,Capital Matters, 17-8.

25. George Yúdice, ‘The Privatization of Culture’, Social Text 59 (summer, 1999): 17-35 (32).

26. Karl Marx, Capital Volume I (London: Penguin, 1979), 1019-38.

27. Karl Marx, Capital Volume III (London: Penguin, 1981), 953.

28. Woolf, ‘Putting Policy’, 109

29. Yúdice, The Expediency, 335

30. Margaret Bolton et al., Capital Matters; beinspiredfilms, ‘Powerful Idea No. 6 Clare Cooper Part 1’, YouTube, July 24, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPzMxU7Hm04&t=205s (accessed March 15, 2022).

31. Brad Evans and Julien Reid, Resilient Life (Bristol: Polity, 2014).

32. Jeremy Walker and Melinda Cooper, ‘Genealogies of Resilience: From Systems Ecology to the Political Economy of Crisis Adaptation’, Security Dialogue 42, no. 2 (2011): 143–160.

33. John Maynard Keynes, The Collected Writings: Volume 10 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 447.

34. Geoff Mann, In the Long Run We Are All Dead (London: Verso, 2015).

35. Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, trans. Graham Burchell (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

36. Chin-Tao Wu, Privatising Culture (London: Verso, 2002), 47-82.

37. Lucie Elven, ‘Every Time You Play the UK Wins’, Le Monde Diplomatique, February 2022, https://mondediplo.com/2022/02/11uk-lottery (accessed March 15, 2022).

38. BBC, ‘Arts Council’s Budget Cut by 30%’, BBC, October 20, 2010, https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-11582070 (accessed March 15, 2022).

39. BBC, ‘Spending Review: Arts Council Protected Despite DCMS cuts’ BBC, 25 November, 2015, https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-34923955 (accessed March 15, 2022); Jen Harvie, ‘Funding, Philanthropy, Structural Inequality and Decline in England’s Theatre Ecology’, Cultural Trends 24, no. 1 (2015): 56-61.

40. Yúdice, The Expediency, 338-39.

41. ACE, Great Art and Culture for Everyone (London: Arts Council England, 2013), 31.

42. Harvie, Fair Play, 159-61.

43. ACE, Arts Council England Catalyst: Evolve Year 1 (London: Arts Council England, 2018).

44. Robert Hewison, Cultural Capital.

45. Harvie, Fair Play, 157; Arts & Business, Private Investment in Culture Survey Report 2010–2011 (London: Arts & Business, 2011).

46. ACE, Private Investment in Culture Survey 2019, (London: Arts Council England, 2019); ACE, Private Investment in Culture Survey 2012/2013, 2013/2014, 2014/2015 (London: Arts Council England, 2016).

47. Frances Richens, ‘Mixed Success for Catalyst as Scheme is Scaled Back’, Arts Professional, October 30, 2015. https://www.artsprofessional.co.uk/news/mixed-success-catalyst-scheme-scaled-back (accessed March 15, 2022).

48. Ibid.

49. ACE, Arts Council England Evaluation of Catalyst year 3 (London: Arts Council England, 2017), 42.

50. ACE, Arts Council England Catalyst: Evolve Final Evaluation (London: Arts Council England, 2020), 30.

51. CidaCo, Evaluation of the Developing Cultural Sector Resilience Programme (London: BOP Consulting, 2015), 26.

52. Ibid.; Evaluator A, in discussion with author, March 14, 2016.

53. Mark Robinson, Making Adaptive Resilience Real (London: Arts Council England, 2010).

54. Mark Robinson, in discussion with author, November 23, 2015.

55. Evaluator B, in discussion with author, June 20, 2016; ACE, Private Investment in Culture Survey 2019.

56. ACE, ‘Local Government and the Arts: The Future’, YouTube, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHtfGaV_oPk (accessed March 15, 2022).

57. ACE, Private Investment in Culture Survey 2019.

58. ACE, Arts Council England Evaluation, 30.

59. ACE, Arts Council England Catalyst: Evolve, 37.

60. Andy C. Pratt, ‘Beyond Resilience: Learning from the Cultural Economy’, European Planning Studies 25, no 1 (2017): 127-39 (136).

61. Woolf, ‘Putting Policy’, 110.

62. LADA members, in discussion with author, January 21, 2016.

63. LADA, ‘The Arthole Cockle Medal for Art Philanthropy, by Joshua Sofaer’, 2016, https://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/projects/the-arthole-cockle-medal-for-live-art-philanthropy-by-joshua-sofaer/ (accessed March 15, 2022).

64. Blackwell-Pal et al., ‘Marxist Keywords’, 37.

65. ArtsAdminUK, ‘Take the Money and Run? (40 minutes)’, YouTube, January 29, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKy2O6FpyZI&t=1144s (accessed on March 15, 2022).

66. Arts Council England, ‘Arts Council England – Our Funding Ecology’, YouTube, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFD6SHkh1_g (accessed on March 15, 2022); Friedrich Engels on ‘merry England’ in The Condition of the Working Class in England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 298.

67. HLA member, in conversation with author, March 10, 2016.

68. Mel Evans, Art Wash (London: Pluto Press), 76.

69. Chin-Tao Wu, Privatizing Culture, 126-129; Michael McKinnie ‘Performing Like a City: London’s South Bank and the Cultural Politics of Urban Governance’, in Performance and the Politics of Space: Theatre and Topology, eds. Erika Fischer-Lichte and Benjamin Wihstutz (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), 66-80.

70. Emma Hughes and James Marriott, All That Glitters (London: Platform, 2015).

71. Yúdice, The Expediency, 1.

72. Marco D’Eramo, ‘21^st Century Gossip’, Side Car NLR, August 24, 2021, https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/130 (accessed March 15, 2022).

73. Woolf, ‘Putting Policy’, 110.

74. Dave Beech, Art and Value (Leiden: Brill, 2015).

75. Christopher John Mitchell, ‘LADA Jan 29, 2015 Presentation’ (presentation, Arts Admin, London, January 29, 2015), 2.

76. Yúdice, The Expediency, 38.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the University of Leeds [University of Leeds 110 Anniversary Research Scholarship].