Brrr! And a Happy New Year – ‘tis the season of greyness and unpredictable boilers but notwithstanding all of that, we’re gearing up for another year of sensory and other story-making in unlikely places. I’ve just spent the most gratifying morning hearing from two of our newest facilitators about their experiences finding their feet in our sensory arts practice: 

I’m too fatigued* to dress this up as a humble brag today, but I did further interrogate why the facilitator said that – rather than just accepting it at face value and patting myself on the back. 

The answer goes something like this: 

They enjoyed the work so much because it requires their full presence. You have to show up with integrity, authenticity and with all your creative instincts on call. It also offers something back – there is a both a simplicity and a depth to what we are doing, total immersion for a day in the many worlds of dementia, being alongside the participants and their carers, listening and responding, a long-form exercise in accept and build. There is no fixed outcome, so there is fluidity and flex in our approach, with everyone involved as much as they want to be, all the artist-facilitators working in a trio, listening to each other, supporting each other, developing a synergy over the 6 weeks that they collaborated. They also mentioned the support received from the Spare Tyre team and the paid time given to prepare and reflect on the practice as it evolved.

This kind of experience is what I want for everyone in Spare Tyre and it’s in working like this that we fulfil our agreement with the much-maligned ACE strategy Let’s Create. Like many people reading this blog (I’m guessing),  Let’s Create’s principles weren’t news to us. We’d been doing it for decades. And like many people, I found the full version of the Let’s Create when it was first published a bit brutal and sledge-hammer in its language, mind-bogglingly frustrating in its reductive bureaucratic presentation. But for us at Spare Tyre, it represented a welcome sea-change in what is understood to be art and creativity. We were recognised for what we do and more importantly so were the communities of interest that constitute our participants. 

It was for us and many others an idea whose time had finally come. I remember during the era of Cultural Recovery Funding when the talk was all of saving the Jewels in the Crown, saying to our Arts Council Relationship Manager that we are Diamonds in the Rough, with just as much value as your Crown Jewels if you have the vision to spot the potential. You don’t get the jewels if you can’t identify the uncut gems. 

The arguments that some institutions have made against Let’s Create have deeply saddened me and they have infuriated me. They have enraged me because they’re only being made because we’re in a time of scarcity and the powerful people who have made them should and could have been taking aim at the scarcity rather than problematising those of us who make great art without massive resources and in non-traditional ways. We are not the problem for big institutions. Arts cuts are. Pure and simple. They have saddened me because despite the (too slow) progress I’ve pushed for and seen, working in this world for nearly 30 years now, the blurting of these loud voices and their determination to bring down Let’s Create and scapegoating it, puts at risk the democratisation of arts, the diversity and innovation that has been happening in recent times. 

Yes, I welcome the recommendation from Dame Margaret Hodge’s ACE review to rethink the way we give account of ourselves for the public money we receive–but I will not accept that Let’s Create was a bad idea and should be abandoned altogether

I will never accept that the organisations and individuals who benefit from Let’s Create do so to the detriment of people wanting to make great art. We’re all part of the same world.  It’s not–or shouldn’t be–a zero-sum game. Pretending that it is, plays into the hands of people who want the culture of scarcity to persist, who want world class arts, democratised arts and all the soft power they bring – but on the cheap. Art is part of life, Art is a human right for everyone, everywhere.

A lot of arts participation whether as audience member at an opera or a sensory arts performance in a care home requires subsidy. It’s all great art. 

Last week I attended a meeting of producers and I made this plea to my fellows to search in their hearts for the positives from Let’s Create and to keep them in our practice whatever the next strategy or the ACE Review yields. It was on Zoom, people were nodding. How could they not? In good faith I believe it of them. I also believed when some responded that not all producing houses around the country would say the same. So, we will have to be proactive in keeping the hope burning through our work and our lobbying of ACE, of funders, and of each other. We who are lucky enough to be custodians or founders of funded arts organisations have an important role in ensuring that Let’s Create’s legacy isn’t dismissed or sneered at. The systemic disadvantages it seeks to redress are still there and still require our attention, and that doesn’t have to be at the expense of making and presenting great work. 

So let’s keep doing it.