FUNDING THE AFRICAN ART Africa is famous for her rich cultural art traditions, well endowed motifs and subjects and has rare compatibility with nature. Yet, the sincere benefits accruable to these effects of art Africa are not being achieved. Although in recent years, Senegal, through her biannual art program, Dark Art Festival, has brought to the fore the possibilities of benefit. As an art consultant, I advocate a re-strategized effort at laundering African arts because it is a possible big earner for the African continent. Africa possesses natural art which is still at its cradle. I stand to be corrected! Right or wrong, I can confidently say that our nervous attitude to roasting our hunted meat is responsible for this continued un-impressive performance of our art. Irrespective of what achievements so far, I can argue that our achievements in question are not enviable because they do not correspond with our potentials. I will only agree to the criticisms of this thought if a proper analysis can guarantee that our effort minus potential equal great achievement, otherwise Africa has no glory to glory in, in terms of achievement in the Arts. Africa no doubt is blessed with unimaginable bunch of talents. From Benin to Ngwa, Ife to Ashente, all the way down to Senegal, abounds great talents. For me, this is something to cheer because it makes the pedestal for creativity large. But this does not in itself guarantee a furthering success. In this case, what measures needed to be taken should be the major concern for all stake holders, from the traditional institutions, to the religious institutions, the political institutions to the sociological. Distinct members of the mundane Africa must share the burden of how to properly evoke the African arts to the fore. In fact, this responsibility should be borne by members who exist beyond the African geographical space. Its thematic podium for discuss must in effect include other Africans who share breed cultures of the west by virtue of location not because of consent. Haitians, African Americans, Jamaicans and other segments of black people located every where in the world must share from this onerous task of re-strategizing African art. The convergence of this embodiment in one whole will irresistibly oblige an accurate framework to up our cultural art values. The critical state must be plainly stated, local national and international authorities must somehow be mobilized for quick action yet it must not in any way despair, conventionalized or be exacerbated by superficial coverage. Only effective action is especially necessary. Especially, Africa must evolve commercial expressions to present sterling bold values that our cultural art possess. On this we can borrow from the strategies that have empowered western art especially the great America. Particularly, I will like us to borrow from the achievement of Dana Giona the former Chairman of National Endowment for the Arts; this is the agency in charge of prospering the American arts. The Role of a Federal Arts Agency According to Dana Giona, the ingenious diversity and endless creativity of ways in which the arts are funded in the United States is the key. His insight will be useful to provide – for the African audience – a concise overview of how America’s unique system of arts philanthropy works. In order to understand how the National Endowment for the Arts – and arts funding in the United States – operate, it is helpful to have some basis for comparison. By looking at other powerful societies, we can see how other nations manage similar cultural institutions. In countries like France, Germany, Mexico, or China, most arts funding comes from the government – either at a federal or local level. For the most part, these systems tend to be centralized, often located in a large ministry of culture. These organizations are also typically political, as arts personnel are usually either members of civil service or political appointees from the ruling party. The same way it is in Nigeria and other countries of Africa. These systems provide smooth and stable planning for arts organizations, but they run insiders and outsiders. The insider institutions tend to be well subsidized with large annual grants while the outsides survive on the margins of the culture if they survive at all. The subsidies awarded by ministries of culture are enormous by American standards. For example, the government subvention for Italy’s major opera houses way back was nearly ten times larger than the annual Arts Endowment working budget for America. This support allowed major Italian companies to present opera at the highest artistic standards. And yet, some of these lavishly supported houses did not stage a single production in some years because of organizational problems, labour issues, or reconstruction. Government support, therefore, does not solve all artistic and organizational problems, or guarantee that an institution serves its local community. In contrast to the European models, the U.S. system of arts support is complex, decentralized, diverse, and dynamic. It combines federal, state, and local government support with private subvention from individuals, corporations, and foundations, as well as box office receipts. The financial statistics differ by art from and change from year to year, but in 2004 about 44 percent of the income generated by American arts organizations came from sales or the box office. The rest was donated – overwhelmingly from the private sector. Only about 13 percent of arts support in the U.S. during this time came from the government, and only about 9 percent from the federal government, of which less than I percent came from the National Endowment for the Arts. (The figures on government support exclude the enormous indirect subsidy the federal government provides by making cultural contributions tax-deductible.) This amount of federal government support is miniscule by European standards. Yet the American system works. How can this be? Decentralization and Diversity Like most free market or mixed market systems, American arts philanthropy is complex precisely because it is decentralized and dynamic. Similar institutions often have wildly differing results because of their locations, artistic talent, cultural philosophies, and management. Likewise, the dynamic nature of the system means that one decade’s high-flying leader can suffer huge reversals in the next – just as in corporate America. While no one relishes the ups and downs of the cultural economy, it does have the healthy effect of keeping artists and institutions realistically focused on their goals and communities. The best institutions make themselves irreplaceable in their chosen fields. This cultural dynamism also provided new groups the chance to grow. Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater was 35 year by this time. Now it is one of America’s leading theater companies. Jazz at Lincoln Center is was more recent. Just 20 years old then, it had become the world’s largest nonprofit jazz organization. It was worth noting that the NEA played an important role in fostering the growth of both organizations. Some of these new institutions at that time were quite amazing. Rimrock Opera of Billings, Montana, for example, was the only opera company on the 750-mile route between Bozeman, Montana, and Fargo, North Dakota. Only 8 years old then, Rimrock now not only brings opera to its own community but also tours rural Montana and Wyoming from Glendive and Miles city to Cody and Casper, the sparsely populated high plains and mountain territories where the deer and the buffalo still roam. These are places where Verdi, Puccini, and Donizetti have never before been performed at the time. If the American arts system is remarkably complex, decentralized, and dynamic, it is also uniquely effective – producing a cultural landscape of enormous size and unmatched diversity. No one-not even the NEA – had exact statistics on American cultural institutions because they change so rapidly, but an expert estimate of different fields leads us to some astonishing numbers. There were then more than 1,500 professional theaters, large and small, operating in the U.S. There were also more than 1,200 symphony orchestras, plus another 600 youth orchestras, as well as roughly 120 opera companies. Meanwhile, there were approximately 500 writers conferences then offered around the nation. Nonprofit organizations such as the Poetry Society of America in New York or the Writers Place in Kansas City presented public readings of authors on a regular basis. These groups displayed enormous variety. Among the 1,200 symphony orchestras, some were huge professional organizations like the Boston Symphony that was offering year-round concerts and international tours. Others were small amateur groups like the Cotati Philharmonic (in California) that gathered to produce a few local performances each year. Some orchestras focused exclusively on modern and contemporary music. Others covered the entire symphonic repertory. Smaller groups specialized in Baroque and Renaissance music. That diversity, size, and scope was confusing to anyone trying to summarize the field, but they reflected the vitality of American classical music. In such a rich and dynamic artistic culture, what meaningful role could the National Endowment for the Arts play? The NEA’s 2006 appropriated budget, excluding private donations and federal partnerships, was only $124 million – of which slightly more than $100 million was taken into account. In order words, what role could be played by an institution that provided less than I percent of total arts funding? This situation was further complicated by the NEA’s public mandate to support all of the arts, as well as arts education, in all 50 states and the six U.S. territories. MULTIPLY IN EFFECTS From a European perspective, the NEA would seem doomed to perpetual marginality. The institution was surely too small and too stretched to have made a difference. As reasonable as that verdict sounds, Dana Gioia would maintain that this defeatist perspective is wrong. “It misunderstands both the nature of the U.S. arts world and the Arts Endowment. It also ignores the remarkably productive history of the NEA and it’s well-documented, if not equally well-known, record of transforming American culture”. Finally, this perspective reckons NEA effectiveness purely in terms of dollars without any recognition of how that money was spent. America’s National Endowment for the Arts has a proven ability to initiate and sustain powerful trends. During the 1970s and 1980s, under the leadership of Nancy Hanks, Livingston Biddle, and Frank Hodsoll, the NEA slowly transformed American cultural life. It consciously created the vast system of regional theaters, opera and dance companies, and orchestras that America now enjoys. During this time, certain laws of what we might call American cultural microeconomics emerged. In case after case, the NEA learned that its grants had a powerful multiplying effect. Every dollar that the NEA gave in grants typically generated seven to eight times more money in terms of matching grants, further donations, and earned revenue. A $100,000 grant, therefore, delivered $800,000 in eventual funds to an organization. The reason for this multiplying effect is obvious: NEA funding has the power to legitimize a new organization and further validate an existing one. Such endorsements attract further support. As the old saying goes, “Nothing succeeds like success.” In this way, early NEA support helped create major ongoing arts organizations as diverse as the American Film institute, the Spoleto Festival USA, and the PBS series Great Performances. Although the Arts Endowment represents less than I percent of total arts philanthropy in the U.S., it nonetheless remains the largest annual funder of the arts nationwide. This fact demonstrates that radical decentralization – and therefore diversity – of the system is key. Just because a system is decentralized, however, does not mean that it lacks leadership, trends, or direction. In the case of Africa, it is either that everything is generalized or offices under such important instructions are given to illiterates who are either relations of people in power or political associates who have no business in such areas. Worst still outsiders are hardly supported and the very insiders are none performing. Which is why Nigeria for example with her rich cultural heritage has hardly made the required impact necessary to influence greater glory for the entire Africa? Every aspect including political leadership is infested with greed and corruption. Again the struggle by the ruling ethnic groups or party tries to keep everything centralized in order to determine everything. This obviously kills creativity and also destroys the opportunity for dynamic growth. This is the greatest problem Africa faces in all facets of statehood. An astonishing amount of the media discussion of the NEA overlooks an obvious fact about its past, current, and presumably future situations – namely that the Arts Endowment cannot and has never operated like a centralized ministry of culture. It has never possessed the resources to impose its will on the American arts world. It cannot command or control the policies of individual institutions. This is the direct opposite what obtains in Nigeria and many countries of Africa. Leadership Through Collaboration Rather than being disappointed about the lack of central control, Dana Gioia considered this realization of his organization limits in purely neutral terms. He believes that “objective self-assessment is the proper and inevitable basis on which any truthful vision of any institutions future must be built”. He therefore, absolutely had no disappointment in the fact that the Arts Endowment could not dictate the terms of American culture. That putative weakness was actually one of the agency’s basic strengths at the time. To build on the implied metaphor of, “dictate”, to offer a more democratic verbal formulation of the Arts Endowment’s role in American culture. The NEA does not dictate arts policy to the United States; instead, it enters into an ongoing series of conversations about culture, out of which emerge thousands of collaborations, large and small, national, regional, and local. NEA’s leadership does not work by fostering and sustaining partnership. A decentralized and constantly evolving system of private and public support for the arts is more than just a political practice. It goes to the heart of artistic freedom, experimentation, and diversity. With resources and funding spread across a variety of agencies, foundations, and other institutions with different values and goals, no single power sets the cultural agenda and no single creed or outlook dominates. The result is an energetic mix of traditional and experimental approaches, Western and non-Western inspirations, populist and elitist perspectives, folk and fine arts. This is a comprehensive overview of how art has being funded in the United States. It also addresses the role of the National Endowment for the Arts and other public agencies in this decentralized and protean process. American arts funding is complex, with many direct and indirect sources, both private and public, playing a part. Although the American model may be difficult to understand, the extraordinary vitality of their artistic culture demonstrates that it works remarkably well. This can serve as a true strategy for African countries, if indeed the political leadership will have the good conscience to implement any good strategy. Great Imo C. Jonathan is the president of NIGERIA FUTURE LEADERS FORUM and the CEO of SUNSET STREAMS, a business and personal development consulting firm based in Lagos. E-mail greatimosoundmind@yahoo Blog; sunsetstreams.blogspot Web Page; sunsetstreams.gnbo.ng Tel: 08083474856
Posted on: Fri, 07 Jun 2013 08:32:56 +0000
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