Artists get the applause, awards and attention but anyone who works in the arts knows the steadiest job in an arts organisation is the person who balances the books.
It’s a relationship fraught with potential tension. Artists whose incomes are erratic see managers who enjoy permanent positions, superannuation and, sometimes, perks such as paid travel to arts conferences and free professional development training. Administrators who hold a successful artist’s career together are paid peanuts by successful artists who expect the glory of association to be enough. Artists resent funding meant for the creation of work being absorbed by the nuts and bolts workers who are writing the next grant application. Managers trying to keep the doors open are frustrated by artists with big ideas and a sense of entitlement.
Both know they can’t live without the other. Arts administrators go into the job because they love the arts. If they are decent managers they could almost certainly be paid more managing in another sector. Artists need administrators’ practical skills, knowing the work they absorb leaves some headspace for the fluid creative process.
But has balance swung to far towards running arts rather than creating it? Perth-based new media artist Cameron Ironside is one of many artists concerned about the proceeds of funds allocated to the arts. ‘For every dollar spent in administration, that is one less dollar that gets through to the artist, so while administration is needed and you just can’t hand out money freely without checks and balances, you have to ask how effective administrators are allocating that money. It is a legitimate question.’
Ironside believes administrators often get in the way of artistic creativity. ‘Administrators railroad creativity into stale outcomes by categorising a ranking within mundane criteria. The government’s concept of art is probably quite different to what artists would like to put forward. We often have this line of people making artistic decisions and it’s just a recipe for failure. That is why there is a lot of bad public art in Perth.’
Adelaide-based poet, writer, essayist, screenwriter and South Australia’s coordinator for Aussietheatre Mick Searles says arts administrators sometimes impose their own taste and politics. He remembers a ‘detrimental’ artistic encounter with a senior arts administrator over Burn, which won third prize at Tropfest in 2001. The administrator thought the film was too anti-feminist.
‘A senior arts administrator, and it couldn’t get any more senior,” said Searles, “that film will never see the light of day”. They didn’t want it made, they didn’t want it shown and they interfered so it wouldn’t be shown at the local cinema. It went on to be full prize winning art, if it had been left up to the administrator, it would have never been released.Personally, I don’t think there was a political statement in the film, it’s an instance where arts administrators absolutely got in the way, they aren’t always known for their objective views.’
But Searles also remembers plenty of positive encounters with administrators through the years, with praises for Arts SA Penelope Curtain, the innovative administration of Ron Radford (now at the National Gallery) and former state minister for the Arts Diana Laidlaw. ‘I don’t think that is any great accident that since leaving politics Laidlaw has become an artist herself, which is quite unusual for politicians.’
He appreciates the value of administrators in opening up space for creativity. ‘I prefer to deal with art rather than all aspects of arts administration; my psyche suits that better. I’m built for that more than I’m built for bureaucracy.’
Fiona Menzies, chief executive of Creative Partnerships Australia and former arts policy adviser to Howard government ministers Richard Alston and Peter McGauran, says the tension is natural. ‘I’m sure it happens in other sectors too. I’m sure footballers sometimes wonder what their administrators are doing. Anyone who has worked in an arts company knows that the ultimate goal is to keep the admin costs to a minimum in order to put the maximum amount into the art. I also understand that for some artists there may be a different perception, I think that they can rest assured that arts administrators are doing their very best.’ Menzies believes artists would feel more confident in dealing with arts administrators if the dialogue was more open and goals more clearly articulated. ‘The onus is on both parties, and that is an ongoing process too because we all know that things change as projects get under way and you need to have that kind of good relationship so that things can be managed, communicated, etc. It’s a two-way street.’‘The sector needs to work together. Together we have so much more power than we do if we are divided and I think just keeping that dialogue open – and I hope that is what we can do overtime too – to really make artists feel as though we are adding value and that they can have that kind of open dialogue with us.’
‘We’re all very aware that you’ve got to keep your eye on the prize, which is the creation of the art.’
If so much of art is about personalities, skills and collaborative nature. Why should the relationship between artists and arts administrators be perceived any differently from other collaborative relationships in the creative industries? Karen Bryant, chief executive of Adelaide Festival, says arts administrators can be important facilitators for collaborative projects.
‘I’ve seen so many of the best artists who, individually, are fabulous but they can’t work together, they don’t have a shared vision. So why is it any different between an arts administrator or an arts facilitator and a producer or an artist and a director? They’re either going to have a shared vision or they’re not and to do good work they have to have a shared vision.
‘It’s not about artistic vision versus money structure and I know that sometimes on that simplistic basis, that is where the tension has been, where artists would say, “well, more money should go to us, not to bureaucrats.” As far as my work has been I’ve always seen myself as an artistic collaborator, never a bureaucrat,’ she says.‘It’s about creating the most exciting dynamic art. So I’ve always felt that in the roles that I’ve taken it’s been about making a positive difference to delivering that. It’s about being a collaborator and the leader of a team that is all focused upon delivering all aspects you must to realise a vision, even if that vision is not my own,’ she adds.
Australia Council’s arts organisations executive director and arts funding acting executive director, Tony Grybowski is convinced administration is not eating up dollars that could be spent on creating art. ‘We’re required by the government to be incredibly accountable for every dollar that goes out the door… We have to follow very strict guidelines, we also pride ourselves on the greatest efficiency in distributing those funds and we have a very high standard. It is our primary concern to ensure that artists receive the greatest amount of funding, that is why we exist, to fund arts practices and to fund artists,’ he says. ‘The best artists seat on our peer assessment panels making decisions on what should be funded, and that arm’s length nature from government assessing the grants by artists for artists is part of our process and transparency.’
Many artists do the work of administrators because they have no choice and appreciate the value of arts management as a result. Newcastle-based theatremaker Tamara Gazzard has been working on her new play, The Past is a Foreign Country, with local group Paper Cut Collective for the past 12 months.
‘Our production model is collaborative so we’re all involved in many aspects of producing the show. I’ll admit it’s quite difficult. It is often the case that I’m so busy doing all the administrative things that there is not a lot of headspace left to actually making the art. If we had money in our budget to pay someone to do this work then we would certainly do that because it would allow us artists to put our efforts into the creative work we’re making.’
