no_dollar_sign-290x290The relationship between artists and arts funders seems ever more complicated. It seems to me that most funders (trusts, public sector funders, private sponsors) lack the energy, time or knowledge to vet funding applications in the arts on the basis of merit or quality. The problem is compounded in music as few people making decisions about musical projects can read a score well enough to judge its merits. Instead, these days funders decide in advance who or what they want to fund, and artists have to somehow find a way to thread their artistic vision through the hole in someone else’s needle.

Take for instance a new and worthy scheme for supporting repeat performances of new musical work- it’s a wonderful idea, but the scheme has already decided which pieces by which composers they will fund. What if one wants to support one of the composers in the scheme, but the selected works are not programmable for that organization but others would be? What if a performing organization or artist thinks there are, dare I say it, better or more deserving composers not on the list? A project whose laudable goal is expanding the repertoire becomes self-limiting both in terms of the composers and works which could benefit from its support, but also limits which organization’s skills, talents and networks the funding organization can benefit from.

Has it always been thus? Why do some artists and composers become “fundable” and others, equally deserving, not? I fear it has far too much to do with the clique-ish and tribal nature of the arts. If you’re in the club, you’re in the club. If you’re not, you’re not, and you’re probably not going to be. There are many great, great artists in the club, but also plenty whose last ten projects were stinkers, but they’re still fundable because of something they did (or someone they knew) in 1974.

In an industry that seems to be crying out for innovation, an industry that oozes group-think on an industrial scale, why is it so hard make the case that something genuinely new is a good idea worth funding? Rather than subsidize the 1 percent of artists who have already made it, why not invest more in identifying extraordinary talents who have not yet had their time in the sun? It seems that we’ve reached the point where there is almost no mechanism by which a credible artist or organization can make the case from scratch that a given project is worth funding solely on merit. When you’ve reached the point at which one can only fund projects  and people who are already funded, or duplicate work already being done, or commission composers/authors/artists who are already being supported, the phrase “creative industries” starts to sound ever more oxymoronic. Industry is about mass production, about churning out consumer-ready content, whether it’s cars or ten minute concert openers with catchy titles. What is creative about that? It seems our funding paradigm has actually forced us into a consumerist, semi-oligarchical business model in the arts.

Where there is money, there will always be politics, but surely there ought to be some scope for more transparency and more peer review of funding applications?

Meanwhile, I know that the best way to look after my own orchestra and the artists I want to support is to focus on making me and the orchestra fit the “who we want to fund” box. We’re very lucky that some of what we want to do is what people want to fund, and some people want to fund us because of who we are. Bless everyone of our supporters for everything they do to help make the music possible. But how do we develop new ideas, how to we find new audiences, how do we support new voices if they’re not already on the who/what lists?

What do you think?