Why Arts Funding Needs The Viagra Approach

There’s a lot of talk in Ireland at the moment about state support for the arts, or lack of. This is because we’ve had a bloom of homely politicians taking photo opportunities with various literary prize-winners, Oscar nominees and theatrical trailblazers, whilst simultaneously, members of both current and past governments have been systematically reducing arts funding to almost every sector (except historical anniversary celebrations).

For most people, investment in the arts comes somewhere lower in the hierarchy of needs than botox injections. It’s nice to have them, says the taxpayer. Indeed, we probably look better when we have them. But do we really need them, when hospitals resemble mental institutions in 1873, and small children can’t get a school place?

Yet much like other political and public discourse, it all depends on where you’re starting from. And as the fella says, I wouldn’t start from there.

Whose Pocket Is It Anyway?

When we think of funding for cultural activity, we’re tempted to think of that particular government minister who got the Arts portfolio because they wanted something else, but were never going to get within an ass’s roar of it since they were overheard calling the party leader a poo in a suit. Or the guy in local government who has responsibility for allocating bursaries to everyone from writers to sculptors, and whose idea of a good play is a young man’s foot connecting with a ball.

The way much of current funding is allocated makes about as much sense as a bank does when it’s justifying a mortgage rate hike. The logic is questionable, the apathy is palpable, and the self-interest is clear as a bell.

But let’s make a little parallel here, and try a different approach. Instead, let’s try to think of an artist like a chemist in a big pharmaceutical company.

Discovery 101

Let’s say this chemist makes a little discovery. In the middle of a trial for a drug which is supposed to treat angina by affecting blood flow, she discovers that male test patients are reporting a very different side-effect to the drug. An excitable result, let’s say. An effect which makes wearing tight trousers at work a problem for everyone except actors in the adult entertainment industry.

She develops these findings, and the end result (following one hell of a cash injection into the project) is a blockbuster drug for erectile dysfunction which makes an absolute killing for the company.

Incidentally, the drug doesn’t work for angina. But absolutely no-one cares.

For every scientist who finds a blockbuster drug, or even a less exciting drug which simply earns its keep with a tidy profit, there are hundreds of other drugs which never make it through chemical trials. Some cost billions before they end up being shelved, never to earn one teeny tiny little cent for their makers. But the risk is incorporated into an R&D budget which is understood to produce both winners and losers. Because you can’t find winners without also developing the also-rans.

For every Oscar-nominated director, there are thousands of filmmakers who are willing to work, often for very little money, in the hopes that they will get to stand on a stage some day in a tux. For every poet who wins an international prize, there are hundreds who find that poetry collections are unlikely to ever earn them a penny.

But a more important argument for public administrators is that for every commercially produced piece of art, there are supporting artists, working in production; logistics; hospitality; marketing; distribution; sales; tourism, and a hundred other related professions, whose net contribution to the economy is more than all the local and national politicians and their families put together, times a thousand (million).

Have These People Never Heard Of Double-Entry Accounting?

Commercial cultural ventures are a double win for a government, because workers pay tax, but also don’t seek unemployment benefit (even if they were entitled to it, which many aren’t). Not only that, but the vast majority of workers in the arts get paid little and have relatively poor working conditions: yet they accept this and still choose to do it. What other industry would get away with this?

For any art to be commercially produced, it must first be developed. Nobody wants to fund stuff that is clearly bonkers. But there’s a big difference between allocating funding to get infant projects off the ground, and stepping in at the last minute when something is already fully-formed, seeing it’s got the potential to go large, and proudly announcing that you’ve been behind it all along. (Which happens a lot in Ireland – in film especially.)

Not all art can be successful. Not all art can be great. As with every industry, we need some also-rans, pedants, piggy-backers, stick-in-the-muds, grunt workers and followers in order to produce an eventual blockbuster. (I work in the financial sector, and I can confidently say that I’ve never worked with anyone or anything which could be even vaguely described in genius or blockbuster terms. And yet government support is legion.)

It’s time to stop thinking about the arts as something we need or don’t need; or something successful or unsuccessful. In this – the centenary of Ireland’s Rising – let’s think about the arts as Viagra. Because just like Viagra, cultural pursuits are:

1. Not anticipated, until actually there
2. Considered essential by some, but not all people
3. In the end, directly responsible for a torrential flow of employment, tax revenue, and well-being.

Plus, it’s a growth industry. I’ll stop now.