Its on your plate

 

Ive been thinking about counting...well to be precise whose counting what, no actually what are we counting.....in fact now i think of it I think I mean - what counts?  The value of everything seems to be everywhere - ive been to a day in London led by A New Direction, I've talked to Nichola Pemberton about the Social Return on Investment report thing she's going to do for our new ACE project, Ive started to read a book by this man that looks at Happiness and then i saw a antiques program where the expert said  "I value this thing at £20" and the woman replied - "but that's not its worth."  

Of course i get we are being subsidised like the farmers. But they are feeding the world and we are...... growing culture.... And here in lies the problem, feeding the world looks like an easy win. But essentially they have the same complex arguments about world markets and the environment and consumers etc. If thats so how then do we demonstrate the necessity for culture for arts in the way farmers do with food... Perhaps this is too simplistic, to ridiculous and too binary.. However farming doesnt need to keep demonstrating its value - its there because its whats on your plate. And this is what i think ive been missing when i was thinking about proving value.

 Francois Matarrasso on his blog here talks at great length about measuring cultural value says

The problem of value - Each word of the phrase ‘measuring cultural value’ is problematic, not just the familiar difficulty of defining culture, about which I shall say nothing here. Value is tricky because it treats the term ‘value’ as equivalent to ‘good’ without recognizing that human beings do not agree on what is good. Before we can ask whether the value – the good – produced by culture (however defined) can be measured, we must define that good. But no one does................................................. Therefore nothing about art – or culture – can be proven. Very little about it can be measured. If we stopped digging that particular hole we would be better placed to consider how to develop better knowledge about the operation and effects of culture in society today.

This then made me think that when i am thinking about the project and what might come to be and who and what we might find out and what all that will mean and how we will learn and who wants to know and what it might affect and how all this valuing was part of a larger need by ACE/government to justify spending money on the arts and on and on and on I realised like Francois that it all seems the wrong way round or daft and barking up the wrong tree. It was in part confirmed when i went to a meeting where i was asked about evaluating the project ive been invited to do. They talked of questionnaires and all the other stuff they wanted to ask of people and the activity and then i got cross. I said i was fed up of asking people if they were having a good time, we were doing so much asking about having a good time we couldnt have a good time or they were creating spaces where people put down the default answer for ease or 'no' because we keep fucking asking if they are having a good time!

I came home and thought of this.....If you cant say what quality is how do you know what it is, or how do you know that it exists at all......Obviously some things are better than others...but whats the 'betterness'? So round you go , spinning mental wheels and nowhere finding any place to get traction. What the hell is Quality? What is it? Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcylce maintenance, an inquiry into values.

Then i read a review of a book - Robert Hewison Cultural Capital: the rise and fall of creative Britian. Which draws attention to New Labour's condescending attitude towards the public arts and how it managed to produce amongst other things an obsession with collecting evidence to meet policy targets. Then i read a review of the Show at the Hayward where Waldemar J talks of a Simon Fujiwaras section as being good because he made the arguments visually. Then this morning David Gilbert sent the Gavin Wade doc - Economics is Meaningless  And these 3 things brought back me to farming, of what i said to Amanda in Leeds once and to the title of our ace bid.  We must take the lead and make things. Risky, important amazing things that will through their sheer power of being demonstrate their worth and through the engagement people have with them we will know that they have worked.