Here’s what happened when artsdepot and Farnham Maltings got together to undertake one of our Creative Dialogues:

artsdepot and Farnham Maltings paired up to undertake an international visit aimed at understanding how others place the arts in a wider context. We were drawn to conversations around cultural democracy, how you might work with universities, and the language that is used to shift the way people think about what the arts are. We agreed we wanted to work in the English language – neither of us speaks another language well – and we wanted to grapple with complicated ideas without risking things being lost in translation. We also wanted there to be some ‘equity’ in the relationship (different but equivalent) we wanted it to be new to us both and for it not to be based on an existing strong trade root. All of this led us to Texas and to working with the Fusebox festival – having met Ron Berry, their artistic director at caravan and the PuSh festival.

Fusebox is a festival heavily engaged in its community. It has become involved in city planning and has developed radical solutions to familiar questions – how do you build an appetite for new work and reach new audiences. Ron’s response has been to make the entire festival free. Which has significantly increased the number of patrons, corporate sponsorship and audiences who have bought into the idea. They also let people donate on exit. You do have to book a ticket and, if you don’t attend, you get an email the next day acknowledging this and letting the user know that if they don’t attend another time they wont be able to book tickets again. (actually no-shows are very small and there are contingencies in place for sickness etc.)

We decided to stay in one place for a week and try and get to know that place better – partly in the hope it might lead to collaborative conversations and partly to see if we could understand the ecology of a place. We were also helped by Americans for the Arts and Arts place America to find places to start those conversations. We agreed that the two partner leads should go –as they might be best placed to follow up on opportunity and that we should take two other people. This led to a conversation about perhaps inviting an artist. So Victoria Melody, produced by FM, came too. Victoria ended up doing two guest stand up comedy turns as research for her next show in fairly down at heel comedy clubs – one on the evening of the mid term elections. A very surreal experience.

We asked Fusebox to organise an artists lunch on the first day. This proved particularly useful, both to meet people and to get a sense of the context and scale of the arts community. 3 people we met on the first day translated into second conversations later in the week. Obvious, but people are much more relaxed and happy to talk over lunch and pleasing that people were very keen to connect.

The next four days were a mixture of arranged visits, two trips out of town to the hill towns and Lost Pines and, serendipitously, visiting loads of artist’s studios as we happened to be there when the open studio event was on.

We came away with a much better understanding of how the case is made for the arts in a country with little central funding. Unsurprisingly it relies heavily on patronage and not many people can make a sustainable living from making art. But there were surprises.

We had a conversation with a philanthropist and when asked ‘do you only put money into artists you like’ she said ‘oh no, I often invest in things I can’t stand. Because it is expected. If you don’t you are excluded from invites to things.’ So there you have it.

We visited a mainly visual arts centre in rural Texas called Lost Pine arts centre. It is volunteer run headed up by two indefatigable older, very middle calls women. And yet we found enthusiasm, an absolute commitment to democratising the place of art in people’s lives and a desire to connect. We reflected that it is often better to go speak to those working in the margins. They were much more engaged that, say, South by South West – who are very used to having visitors.

Talking of which SBSW is a 200 strong commercial organisation who, yes have shifted the perception of Austin as a hip town, are completely focused on the bottom line. When we went to their offices we had to sign in on an iPad and supply an email address. When we left and got back to base we both received an email that explained the contract we had signed when we entered their offices. Basically all the intellectual property rights for any idea that was discussed in the meeting was now the property of SBSW, we are not allowed to share any information that we have had access to – with a very clear set of costs that will be recovered – and we have to report any breaches to them straight away. (we are taking a risk with this blog) America huh!

Austin isn’t as hip or weird as they would have you believe – indeed, outside an extraordinary cowboy boot shop the best shopping was to be had in the Mexican market. It is also a town that is very quickly losing its black and Hispanic population because of gentrification – driven by the arts.

Gavin Stride
Director, Farnham Maltings