Last week ArtsHub examined the need for organisational change as part of review of Arts Victoria, awarded to Lord Mayor Robert Doyle’s Nous Group.
Organisational change is a pre-requisite for a more effective arts body in Victoria but it is not sufficient. If it is introduced, it should open up the way to a different type of organisation which is focused on making things work better than they do at present.
Better means not necessarily more money coming to more people, but more effectively managed arts organisations which are, in turn, more sustainable.
If we are to make better use of funding of arts organisations, it is imperative to find ways of developing and attracting better-qualified managers. Arts Victoria could be the vehicle through which ambitious managers can upgrade their skills either through education or special-purpose funding.
To date, Arts Victoria’s primary approach has been to shell out fish rather than to teach emerging organisations how to fish. At the same time, it has introduced a new organisations-funding model which mandates, according to my research, that 50-60% of newly-funded small organisations in 2014 could be compulsorily defunded in 2017. To invest all of this money in arts organisations and doom most of them to purgatory after just three years is ideology, not policy.
In the performance arts, in particular, organisation and competitive strategy are required in order to succeed and survive. It’s there that State funding should aim not just for excellence in artistic endeavour but excellence in management too so as to maximise the value of the arts dollar; make it go as far as possible.
Funding Structure
Is there a better funding model which could deliver efficiency, attract better managers and improve competition at management level? Could a new model allow new entrants but not at the expense of existing ones?
This article can put forward some possibilities. These are not Big Ideas. They are incremental, implementable ideas that could quickly make a difference without the need for wholesale restructuring: the sort of ideas that one would hope that an organisation like Arts Victoria, might have floated itself.
At present, the structure of Arts Victoria funding is vertically separated. By this I mean arts companies may receive either organisational funding or project funding, not both. Companies are on either side of a fence – they can receive funding to operate their organisation with its defined artistic program or, on the other side, go into the pool to compete with myriad artists and amateur companies to fund a one-off project. The projects funding is typically less than $20,000 in any year.
Instead, funding could be split horizontally into core (base) and supplementary components. The core or base tier would be for organisations and provide for a fixed term of, say, four years subject to satisfactory performance. This would be very little different from the organisations funding that currently exists.
The supplementary tier would be annually competitive but designed to promote co-operation between core-funded and independent artists and groups perhaps through an internal mentoring process. Keep some of it for independent artists for sure – there is still a need for individual development. By encouraging joint ventures, however, Arts Victoria can exploit the management expertise of established groups, bring fresh artistic ideas into the larger groups and provide more fragile groups with the opportunity to exhibit their art form in association with a larger group using its organisational and marketing expertise.
Such a structure should result in fewer arts companies but stronger ones supporting artistic initiatives and drawn inevitably into collaboration with independent artists.
Umbrella Management Companies
The concept of sharing of administrative resources among arts organisations could be valuable. Where is the sense in every new arts initiative having to have its own arts organisation to support it? Or each existing arts group for that matter?
In the former multi-year organisations bracket, there were 11 small-to-medium-sized theatre groups accounting for just $1.8 million in total of recurrent funding. Each has a distinctive artistic rationale but could conceivably share one or more umbrella administration structures undertaking accounting, box office, venue bookings, payroll and reporting while competitive functions like programming, marketing and fund-raising could be in or outside the net.
Nowhere is the potential for a clustering structure more obvious than with the myriad fragmented chamber music groups whose survival is vital for the artistic development of our greater music sector but who rely typically on the efforts of one of their number for late-night, unpaid administration services.
Umbrella administration companies could provide contract management services to multiple arts organisations. It would be crucial, however, for the artistic side to be able to choose its own management. This could be achieved by, for instance, Arts Victoria issuing funding vouchers which can be redeemed at the performer’s choice with one of the several such organisations which could be established over time.
Mother-ships
We might even think about some of the larger, heavily-subsidised, companies providing mother-ship administration services to up-and-coming satellite companies. Governance and administration can be separate functions and some creative but solid thinking can make this happen. Think Opera Australia in joint venture with Victorian Opera; MCO as a satellite subsidiary of MSO; MTC providing management services to the myriad theatre groups.
Pooling administration resources could both provide the potential for economies of scale, specialisation and efficiencies that is off the agenda today and create a way for arts companies to afford more qualified and experienced managers. It should even create wider horizons for our smaller companies than could possibly be accomplished on their own.
Conclusion
Arts Victoria makes much of the cultural supremacy of Victoria and possibly rightly so. The implication by association is that this is because of its stewardship of the funding role. Yet most arts organisations have hewn their own success out of the fabric of their communities with their own boards and staff who have charted the success in their own right. Where Arts Victoria has had the lead role in policy formulation and implementation, it has come up short.
These ideas are put forward as discussion-prompters and, I hope, presage some of the thinking that will be put forward in the Nous Group’s review of Arts Victoria’s strategic directions. Let’s hope that the consultant’s report lives up to its name. It should be a public conversation but will we ever see what it has to say?
