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Management Information: Defining the Visual Arts for Managers and Policymakers
Chief Executive of the University Vocational Awards Council
Research Professor in cultural industries, University of Greenwich Simon Roodhouse is the Chief Executive of the University Vocational Awards Council, research Professor in cultural industries to The Cultural Management Applied Research Group, University of Greenwich and adjunct Professor Creative Industries Research and Applications Group, Queensland University of technology, Australia. He is also Director of Safe Hands (Management) Ltd a strategic cultural and education consultancy.
Abstract
There are international assumptions by managers and policymakers the visual arts are definable, understandable and, a shared commodity. These assumptions are brought into sharp focus when consideration is given to the increasing global interest in creative industries as an economic policy driver and management tool for funding, advocacy and social development.
This paper sets out to draw attention to the confusion over the visual arts definitional framework, a contorted and contested history, (Roodhouse, 2003) at regional national and international levels and the implications for cultural managers of such a fundamental fault line which is scarcely recognised in their day to day operations. Simply, at best the data collected and used to inform management at micro and macro levels and provide evidence for policymaking is inaccurate and seriously unreliable at worst.
It also illustrates a fundamental structural failure of the creative industries concept as defined generally by DCMS and others; in that the visual arts are not represented, but, instead demoted and primarily located in the arts and antiques trade as products. In other words, this “industrial activity” is referred to and classified as out puts, such as sculpture, painting, prints and ceramics, that is product, but not as a creative activity or business, the creative process. This runs counter to the “creative individual” argument enshrined in the DCMS definition which the Government through the Creative Industries Taskforce set about defining as it developed and commenced the implementation of the creative industries policy in the UK. The concept was derived from an interest in the knowledge economy, and the definition employed largely pragmatic;
“Those activities which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent, and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property”.
(Creative Industries Task Force 1998)
The sectors, which have been identified within this definitional framework, are:
“advertising, architecture, the art and antiques market, crafts, design, designer fashion, film, interactive leisure software, music, the performing arts, publishing, software, television and radio”.
(Creative Industries Task Force 1998)
It is hard to conceive of the creative industries without individual artists clearly identified as creative businesses, the content makers, but this is the case when detailed examination of the sub sectors and how they are defined is undertaken.
The activity can however be found subsumed in the arts and antiques trade referred to earlier and also to some extent in the crafts sub sector. The paper illustrates the confused conceptual analysis of the visual arts found in the DCMS creative industries mapping document definition. It is at best a description of outcomes from a creative process which may or may not be recognised by the producers.
Consequently this paper not only provides an analysis of these problems but an alternative approach based on defining the visual arts as an occupation and what collecting data on this basis implies. An advantage in adopting this classificatory attitude is that there is no need to define activity such as sculpture because this is captured by producer and purchaser interactions that is the public and private market. An approach of this kind enables accurate data to be collected based on a definitional framework which is consistent and can be applied universally. More significantly however it recognises the importance of the individual creative business rather than the product which after all is and should be the heartland of the creative industries concept...
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