From gala to grassroots - arts funding Salon at Media Centre, Huddersfield

Last Tuesday I went along to the Salon (trendy name for debate) about arts funding, and whether gala performances or grass roots community arts should be given priority for funding. The speakers were Franco Bianchini, cultural planning expert from Leeds Met, and Andrew McGill head of arts and events at Leeds City Council.

Franco talked about the opportunities presented by the 'triple crunch' that might favour a swing towards grass roots, in that the collapse of commerce in our city centre might make spaces available to alternative activities, that public funding might increase (in the UK) as a government tactic to deal with the crisis, that the focus may shift to production and skills rather than consumption and cash, that the property crash might make real cultural quarters viable as artists will be able to afford to live there.

Andrew presented 7 reasons why gala performances are good. these were: sustainability (economic, not environmental), enabling/outreach - they do community work as part of their conditions for funding (and not because they are well placed to do it!!), adventurousness and being creatively challenging, surveillance and accountability (yes he really used the word surveillance), joint gala and community performance (eg community choirs in the town hall, football on millenium square, light night), it brings money in, and it supports home grown talent. he said that LCC is an 'arms length' organisation, that they let people who know get on with it whilst they deal with the paperwork. He listed the gala organisations in leeds - opera north, WYP, northern ballet, leeds museum etc., and the grassroots included red ladder, east street arts, patrick studios etc.

two things struck me - one was that McGills description of 'grass roots' only included very well established regularly funded organisations, and seemed to miss an enormous sector of what i would call real grass roots organisations and individuals that would fall below that benchmark. Also, it seemed to be that grass roots and gala performances were being put at either end of an artificial spectrum. Should the two be in competition for funds at all? Whilst undoubtedly connected, it was clear from the debate that neither would exist without the other, yet both require different skills and resources. In Leeds I have been familiar with the sense that for years the gala venues such as the playhouse, grand theatre and so on have been prioritised for public moneys and that other art forms miss out. It seems that Kirklees has the opposite problem. Why aren't the two areas recognised as separate and worthy disciplines, rather than community arts being cast as the gala arts poor relation?

McGill mentioned the DIY scene in Leeds, and that it might be a response to the credit crunch. I know that the DIY scene has been growing for years, nothing to do with the current climate, but probably to do with a different policy focus in Leeds. I have to say that if the DIY scene is the result of a conflict between gala and grassroots, then it doesn't seem like a bad thing. Loads of great stuff is coming out of Leeds because of the DIY scene and the lack of alternatives for up and coming artists/musicians/performers etc.

How does this relate to what i'm doing? i see the boundaries between art, design and craft as being blurry, and becoming increasingly so in the kind of public sector work that is emerging. some of the projects that i came across at the salon are what i would call emerging design projects. in essence the debate about gala vs grassroots is the same debate as appointing an ego architect or going to a participatory approach. do we have creative 'experts' showing us how its done, or do we get people involved in doing it for themselves?