In November 2005, VAGA The Visual Arts and Galleries Association launched their groundbreaking long-term campaign for the REALISE your right to art project.
The project is aimed specifically at placing visual culture at the centre of people’s lives, public policy and the political debate. Thereby creating a society where everyone is empowered to interpret and make choices about the visual world. VAGA believes that everyone has a fundamental right to art: The opportunity to enjoy, engage with and participate in art and in particular in the art of today, as well as the creative, collective and moral values expressed by such a philosophy.
At its heart the REALISE campaign insists that everyone has the right to participate in culture and to enjoy the arts, as enshrined in the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. REALISE proposes that action must be taken to realise this right in all its fullness. And as a signatory to the Declaration the British Government has a duty to make this ambitious aspiration a reality.
Sir Nicholas Serota, Director of the Tate, speaking at the London Launch of REALISE your right to art in late 2005 said that , “This campaign is about changing hearts and minds…the visual is a vital component of life in this country, and is a crucial component of the future of this country, and not just in terms of a knowledge economy or the creative economy, but in terms of our intellectual and spiritual welfare as we move forward into the 21st century.”
Serota and others across the UK are arguing that our galleries, museums and arts organisations promote the best contemporary and modern art: That art captures the imagination and touches lives in individual and diverse ways. Through exhibitions, collections, temporary projects, education and outreach programmes, biennials and artist interventions, the visual arts offer enjoyment and opportunities for learning, inspiration, enquiry and reflection. And therefore art holds a special and indeed vital place in people’s lives everywhere.
The REALISE your right to art Statement invites everyone to imagine a new cultural and a new social landscape. The REALISE campaign aims to place art at the centre of people’s lives, influencing the political debate to create a society where everyone can be a creative citizen within our ever-changing, diverse and globally connected world.
Acknowledging that all UK citizens have a right to housing, education and health. the REALISE statement goes much further: “Shouldn’t all of us also have the right to a share in the rich visual culture of the nation? Shouldn’t we all have the opportunity to flourish as visually literate and creative citizens throughout our lives?” These are big questions and therefore give rise to all sorts of other questions about how we might go about addressing such potent and complex issues. How we might go about implementing such an idea in practical terms. Especially in the current global climate.
Also speaking at the London Launch, in 2005, David Adjaye, Architect, told the audience; “I wanted to lend my support for this incredible campaign. For me architecture is really at a very interesting crossroads. We all live in communities where …we are seeing modern architecture touch our lives almost everywhere. I think we are all starting to see the power that architecture can have…in transforming the perception of communities. If you look at the work that was done in Peckham to regenerate the sense of that place; that place that we used to see as a place “down there by the river” but which now has now got an incredible buzz and energy…All over the country, up and down nationally it’s clear that architecture has become something which is incredibly important in dealing with the social differences and scales of poverty, education etc. that are rampant in our society. Doing workshops with people and working on projects – especially public projects – with communities and talking to people about the idea of making buildings for them- really, really requires the public not just to be passive but to be very much implicated in the whole scenario…”
As an organisation VAGA and its members seek to:
VAGA believes that art is a mirror for the self and for the society we live in. Art contributes to the unfolding of individual, social and cultural histories and deepens understanding of a complex and rapidly changing world. Artists and the organisations that show and support their work also make a significant, dynamic and imaginative contribution to economic prosperity, to education and learning, to furthering social equity and to fostering a workforce that is creative in orientation.
VAGA is a membership body open to individuals and organisations concerned with the exhibition, interpretation and development of modern and contemporary visual art on behalf of the public. The Association sees itself as a catalyst; sharing expertise and knowledge and campaigning for a healthy visual arts sector: Fit to meet the needs of audiences, creative practitioners and the broader public agenda.
Having commissioned a paper from Demos, one of the UK’s leading cultural think-tanks, VAGA’s The Right to Art: Making aspirations reality articulates the importance and vital necessity for community participation in art within policy-sanctioned public life.
Hilary Gresty, Director of VAGA explains, “We’re moving on quite rapidly in our thinking from the Right To Art paper…The whole concept of access to a creative and imaginative cultural world, which is what The Right To Art is about, is still there, but it’s about how you begin to express it.” Gresty believes that concepts need to be couched in a language that everyone can own.
“It’s time to finally identify what we mean by public value. Public value, in the end, has to be how art changes individual lives. That becomes even more the case as society changes.” Gresty is pointing to the radical shifts in the individual’s experience of art – more often than not, in isolation in front of a TV or a computer screen. The implication here may be that an individual is now capable of becoming sufficiently savvy about their cultural entitlement to say: “Yes, I care about my gallery as much as I do about the hospital in my town, and I will vote to have my taxes spent on the gallery as well.” Gresty notes that this shift from public to individual values has been detectable in political debate for many years now and needs to be actively taken into account. “We live in a compelling, complex and dynamic visual world. Art lies at the core of culture, yet, despite its power to ignite our senses and provoke our thoughts, it remains wastefully detached from the lives of too many of us.”
Sir Nicholas Serota talking about the rise and rise of the Artist Class in the UK said; “If you look back over 50 years, the achievement of British artists…is really second to almost none across the world, and it is really a quite remarkable and astonishing achievement. This campaign is about making those achievements more visible; persuading politicians that the National Curriculum ought not to be limited to those things which have always been there – namely reading, writing and arithmetic – but also ought to include art. That one shouldn’t have to make a choice at the age of 11 or 12 as to whether or not you are going to be a “serious person” and do the “proper subjects” or whether you’re going to do art or music. These are choices which we all thought had disappeared in the 1960’s and 70’s but I’m afraid are still very much part of education today.”
Independent consultant Peter Jenkinson, working with VAGA to explore the next steps agrees with Serota’s assessment. Together with VAGA’s Director Hilary Gresty, Jenkinson has his sights set on moving the arts and culture squarely into the mainstream.
“Our artists are internationally renowned. The public interest in art, and particularly contemporary art, is unprecedented especially amongst young people. Our museums and galleries – many of them world-class facilities – are increasingly popular amongst diversifying audiences.
In schools the visual arts drive creative learning, in communities they give aspiration and imagination to regeneration. Hospitals report the positive impact of art on patients’ well-being, the same is witnessed in the criminal justice system, in work with homeless people and other social contexts.
…Yet the visual arts are regarded by many as peripheral to national priorities. If we can now forge a new social compact with our diverse and demanding population around this common wealth and establish the principle of a right to art as the basis for new thinking and doing, everyone will ultimately benefit, individually and collectively.”
“We will work on a policy and political level in the longer term,” Jenkinson adds. “VAGA can’t do this on its own, so it’s going to be working in partnership with other organisations, and particularly with campaigning organisations such as the National Campaign for the Arts.” As an example of where this initiative may lead he cites the Music Manifesto, a Government-backed document which is planning to highlight and advance the cause of music education over the next five years in the UK.
In 2006 VAGA will be bringing together a new steering group to work on the campaign, and welcomes approaches from people within the arts community, including artists, galleries and the broader sweep of visual culture including architecture, design, theatre and fashion. Jenkinson says, “We’re incredibly optimistic because the cultural and creative wealth of the UK is astonishing – that will be the engine for the campaign.”
VAGA is also seeking examples or models of “Right To Art” thinking-in-action. Artists or organisations currently planning or implementing similar projects in the UK and beyond, are invited to send their ideas to VAGA. REALISE is led and managed by Peter Jenkinson Cultural Broker for VAGA and Hilary Gresty VAGA Director They also actively encourage interested artists and organisations to enter into a dialogue with them.
Jenkinson feels that two recent events have brought this Right To Art impulse right into focus. The first being the successful 2012 Olympics bid. “This is a rich situation within which to rehearse, with sophistication and optimism, a future cultural environment… and represents an opportunity to renegotiate the place of culture in national thinking. In 2012 the world will focus momentarily on the UK… What will it see?”
The second event is quite different; the July 2005 underground bombings. “Acres of newsprint and hours of broadcast have attempted to analyse and come to terms with these events, concluding only in the confusing complexity of the issues. It is clear that over years to come, the answers to this terrible moment will be as much cultural as they are political or economic. The cultural and creative sector, through radical practices and new understanding, has an urgent and profound role to play… “ states Jenkinson.
For change to be change many comfortable assumptions need to be questioned and shifted. But for artists, organisations and the wider community, many, many unanswered and indeed, as yet unasked questions hover above our heads:
How is this proposed artistic revolution to gain a permanent foothold in our culture? What are the wider implications of such an agenda, both politically and culturally?
Who will be in control, who will make the decisions and who will benefit ?
What changes in attitudes, assumptions and privileges will need to take place ?
In asking these few questions it becomes clear that the last word must go to Baroness Lola Young of Hornsey, OBE. In her speech at the London Launch of REALISE, the Baroness raised many such questions: Including the spectral complication of terrorism and the “The Problem of How to Proceed.” How are we actually to manifest a project so ambitious? And she did so by looking deeply into the mirror of what such changes will mean in a nitty gritty reality. Here follows an excerpt from her speech:
Realise your right to art is a… “Powerful notion with an ambitious agenda-setting vision… What does it mean to take on a rights agenda in the context of what is happening around us today? …There are no easy answers – I pose the question because we need to ask ourselves just how we aim to achieve support for the project from the general public, the media and politicians … and I hope what we are doing is something quite radical in all its implications.
For those people who do not at the moment feel admitted into the mystical, opaque world of contemporary art, how do we convince them that they have a right to art, that they should exercise it, and if necessary argue for it?
We also need to acknowledge that some of our colleagues may support REALISE on one level but find it difficult to subscribe to what it really means.
If we make a promise to fight for the right to art, we had better deliver on it. In my view that does not simply mean more of what we have been doing for the past decade or so. What language we deploy is important – both literally and metaphorically. How are we to speak to – enter into dialogue with – those whose very presence here is seen as an encumbrance, a disruptive alien presence? Those disenfranchised members of society who do not enjoy the basic rights which human beings should enjoy?
If we want people to exercise fully their rights – if it really works and it really means something – it should mean that we will need to re-evaluate a lot of what we do and the way we do it. It should mean that we listen more, that we learn to go out into communities as well as inviting them in. It should mean sharing some of the power in the struggles over meaning, interpretation and representation that the visual arts provoke. It may mean the visual arts equivalent of Bhezti or Jerry Springer.
Arguably, we are still operating in a paradigm predicated on the assumption that we have specific knowledge, expertise and authority, and we know what’s best for “them” to know, what will enlighten “them” and enhance their understanding of the world around them.
Having the right to art isn’t a passive exercise but something active and dynamic. The challenge before us is to make that activity and dynamism a real goal that attracts broad support not just from the people we know but from those that some of us might not be able to imagine.”
To endorse the Realise your right to art statement email: signup@righttoart.com
If you wish to contact VAGA with a view to contributing to their new process, you can email them: admin@vaga.co.uk, or info@vaga.co.uk
VAGA Director: Hilary Grestyhilary@vaga.co.uk
Cultural Broker: Peter Jenkinson peter@righttoart.com
To find out more about the work of VAGA, its members, and information on contemporary art currently showing in the UK and abroad visit www.vaga.co.uk
For further information go to:
www.demos.co.uk
www.righttoart.org
www.newaudiences.org.uk
www.newexhibitions.com
www.thegallerychannel.com
www.e-flux.com
