“Artists need to see themselves as a business and act as a business”
Following her talk at our Leeds Continue event Suzie Cross, 2016 Leeds Light Night producer, gives her view on Brexit and arts funding in the UK. Heed her advice…
Can you tell us about your role at Light Night Leeds?
I was the producer for the 2016 Leeds Light Night festival and it was a short contract — it was a hectic time as we didn’t know whether we had the funding until just before I started. My very first day in post was selecting applications from the open call. One of the programmes from this open call was the Shine Programme, which is for emerging artists. It provides additional support for artists and the opportunity to exhibit their work at Quays Culture, who do the Light Waves Festival in Salford. A really interesting programme.
You’re now freelance but you worked for a city council before, what’s been your experience with doing both?
I was originally the Senior Arts Officer for Leeds City Council for around 5 years, straight after graduation. I managed huge programmes of activity, and one of the programmes we devised was called Art at Leeds: Celebrating Creative Communities. It was a 3 year programme working with 20 partner organisations, delivering arts engagement activities. It was funded with European funding at the time — the European Social Fund and European Regional Development Fund. I was spoiled — there were huge numbers of European Funds around at the time, the council was in a much better position. It ran huge programmes open to everyone, free opportunities. There was Opera in the Park, Party in the Park, Classical Fantasia — so much good stuff. There was money around after the Leeds to the Millennium project. It was a really interesting time. When I arrived there were 4 of us, by the time I left there were 13 of us — for an arts department in a council, that’s pretty much unheard of. It was a great time.
I left to take up a new position elsewhere, and in 2008 — with the crash — I was made redundant from that organisation. Everything changed, the whole landscape of the arts changed. Everything the council was doing dramatically changed as they lost huge numbers of staff and projects. The nature of contracts changed, becoming much shorter.
By 2011 I became so disconnected from what I was doing originally as a creative professional devising projects. I had barely any level of creativity myself. I was desperate to get back into something where I could be creative. I applied on a whim for some funding to do some professional development. I got it and did a Project Management Practitioners course. I then got onto the Government’s self-employment programme, so I had a year where the government paid me a small amount, which allowed me to refocus what I wanted to do. I went to every networking opportunity and cultural event I could.
You’ve spoken about applying for funding many times yourself — do you think there are any areas which are lacking funding?
The assumption when you’re applying for funding is that you’ve come so far with your proposal, and you’ve developed it to a certain level. In that respect, there’s a real lack of funding available for research and development — for exploring ideas adequately. Because of that, when you get the actual funding you might find that ideas you thought would work, now won’t work.
Historically that’s been the case — however, recently there’s been a real move towards supporting research and development. Arts Council have reframed their grants for the arts and it’s now called ‘Project Funding’. They’ve released a second scheme which is based on developing your creative practice — it’s much more geared around you, as a creative individual, developing some of your ideas to a point where you can then apply for Project Funding. That’s the same for Wellcome Trust — there’s now more flexibility around doing research and development projects, if you can show the benefits of doing so.
Funding is much more competitive than 20 years ago, you’re applying at the same time as many other people. That means the market is diluted for funding. Funders might be presented with 5 different theatre projects, but they can only support one. Funders also need to show a variety of activities going on, at different scales and within different disciplines. That makes it challenging. The support from funders is perhaps not as good as it could be — purely down to the lack of investment there is in the arts across the country. It’s no reflection of the agencies that are administering the grants.
Do you have any advice for those applying for funding?
My advice to people applying to funders would be to do as much research as you can, develop your project and partnerships as thoroughly as you can. I always start from a budget point of view these days — can I achieve the project I want to achieve in the budget that is available within that funding stream. The main difference from 20 years ago is that you now need to develop the project first. Previously you could shoehorn projects into funding streams, whereas now that doesn’t work. You need a strong concept of what you want to deliver and then find the most appropriate funding stream to meet you aims. Your timescales need to be realistic and you need to have a backup plan too — what can you deliver if you don’t get the funding that you’re applying for. Have a contingency.
The Continue Network is looking to bring people from commissioning and funding bodies together with artists from arts, culture and gaming industries. Do you have any advice for us on bringing those people together?
The games industry is something I’ve found quite challenging to tap into. Thinking about the work we do with Richard England and Dave Lynch, that’s about the interactivity with audiences. There are loads of crossovers between the industries — we’re using an EEG (Electroencephalogram) to measure brainwaves which in turn controls the visuals in these multimedia installations. Something really exciting happens when you bring creatives and technological people together. Everyone’s got their own perspectives of things. It’s easy to become funnelled into what you know.
You work with many creatives and have found being creative yourself is hugely important in your work — what advice would you give artists who are trying to make a living from their craft?
It’s really challenging. I spoke to Alex Chisholm at the Continue Event last month and we said how challenging it is as a freelancer. The issue is that you are working on the previous project, you’re working on the current project and you’re simultaneously pitching for the next project. You have so many projects on at the same time. Because of the funding uncertainties, it’s so difficult. You just have to stick at it, believe in yourself and what you’re doing.
I try to challenge how people see artists and how artists view themselves, by redefining that relationship between business and art. Artists need to think about themselves in business terms. They need to see themselves as a business and act as a business. You don’t want to think about doing your accounts, or pitching for work, but you have to. What I do is allow artists focus on their creativity by taking the business element away. The funding bids, the evaluation, the marketing, PR, logistics.
You spoke briefly about European funding — Leeds, amongst others, had to withdraw their bid for European Capital of Culture. How do you see Brexit affecting your work and artists funding?
That’s a really interesting question. I think there’s lots of presumptions about what will and won’t happen. We will still be in a position to applying for certain funding, such as Creative Europe, as anyone else in Europe will — that’s a positive. I have no doubt there will be funding stream we will no longer be able to apply for.
What happened with the European Capital of Culture situation is pretty abysmal. They allowed everybody — and the other cities — to spend huge amounts of money, do huge amounts of work, submit their bids and then disallowed their bid. They should have told us earlier. It’s really sad and really disappointing, but the country has come together and looked to resolve these potential funding problems. We can still lead the way, because we’re Britain and we’re good at that.
We are going to grind to a halt in terms of our policy. There’s going to be a big void where there won’t be any new policies written for a while. When we get to do that they will be very UK focused though. We exist on European policy, but we’re usually the one leading the way and people don’t realise that. How we export art and mobilise our artists is going to change, but it will still be possible. We’ve got a blank canvas, we can write our own narrative now to navigate through the post-Brexit environment.
To get involved in the Continue Network, get tickets for our events and give us your opinion on past or upcoming events, get in touch with Alice or Chris at the National Videogame Foundation: alice@thenvf.org ; chris@thenvf.org
