Tiffany Jenkins’s piece (Yes, We Are Obsessed with New Audiences) criticises arts funding policy and arts man-agement in the UK over the last decade and she wants to warn other European countries not to follow our example.

Tiffany makes one claim after another about the poor state of the arts in the UK, but offers no evidence of any kind. So we have to ask: is anything she says actually true? Having worked in arts management in various roles in the UK and in other European countries for the last 20 years, I would say that there is not a word of truth in what she claims. The quality of arts produced and presented in the UK has improved dramatically in the last 20 years precisely because we now consider our audiences properly. We have realised that the arts are part of our lives in many different ways and not some sort of religion to be mediated by a caste of high-priests.  

Her view of the arts world is distorted because she has not understood the difference between ‘arts’ and an ‘arts organization.’ This distinction is profound in practical, philosophical and political terms. Generally speaking, arts organisations do not produce art – artists do! Arts organisations mostly exist to present art, which means that they exist to bring the art to audiences. If they consider only the art they are only doing half their job! True, some artists do gather people around them to help them make their art (producing theatres, for example) but even in these cases they also present either in their own venues or in others. True, a few organisations exist to preserve and document historic art works (museums) but a large part of their work is also to present and explain.

So, the role of the artist is to make art and the role of almost all arts organisations is to present art. In other words, the central purpose of most arts organisation is to create and develop audiences. I encourage arts professionals (not artists!) to consider the full implications of this definition.

But arts organisations can only find new audiences and develop existing audiences if they have inspirational art to present! The idea that a focus on audiences must inevitably lead to a reduction in the quality of art is simply wrong, and I challenge anyone who says the opposite to produce evidence. Our audiences are intelligent people who know rubbish when they see it and all good arts managers know that the most risky policy of all is artistic conservatism. The old funding system, whereby a small arts elite is given lots of money each year by the politicians, is entirely conservative and leads to unjustifiable amounts of taxpayers’ money going to ‘heritage’ arts (Beethoven, Shakespeare, Verdi, Rembrandt) and very little going to actual creation. 

This elitism and conservatism, financed by the taxpayer, is often accompanied by the idea that the subjective tastes of the people in this elite actually define ‘great art.’ If the elite doesn’t like something then it must be bad art; If a work is popular beyond the elite then it cannot be great art.  All of this is arrogant, philosophically unjustifiable and profoundly anti-democratic. Thank goodness that all of the main political parties in the UK have moved away from this old-boys network and now insist that arts organisations justify the public money they are given in a variety of terms (including artistic). Arts managers can no longer get away with just tossing their hair like the woman in the shampoo advert and say “because we are worth it.” In a democracy, if you want lots of money from the taxpayer you will have to do better than that!

Arts funding must include the continuation and renewal of our cultural heritage and it must include support for creativity. But it must also acknowledge that most art is not great art but nonetheless valuable and transformative for the people involved – theatre for children, amateur choirs, touring opera for rural areas, dance groups involving people with disabilities and so on.

David Dixon's company, DDA was founded in Oxford, UK in 1993. Since then the company has worked with scores of cultural and heritage organisations to help them raise money for capital projects and to increase long-term income.

In 1997, DDA spun off a new company, The Phone Room which is now the UK’s leading telephone fundraising and marketing agency for cultural and heritage organisations.

For several years David Dixon Associates has extended its work to cultural and heritage organisations in other European countries, and DDA’s consultants have spoken at conferences throughout Europe.