The Arts Debate
Arts Debate
I am coining this phrase for my write up on ‘form a view’ or ‘get political’ as I have been a involved in the Arts Council England’s ‘Arts Debate’ as a normal participant, although at a recent meeting there does now appear to be ideas to start a ‘Youth Arts Debate’ and is as such an opportunity I am going to be using even beyond my artsaward now that I have been introduced to the political side of the arts, sometimes impeding on the quality and creativity of the artswork. Although this is probably an argument for another time as my debate rests on the phrase: ‘Is there enough opportunity for young people to get involved in the arts?’ Within this definition arts is all encapsulating to include street arts, theatre & technical theatre. I researched the sort of provision there was out there for young people to get involved in the arts and turned up some interesting things that showed there isn’t a great variety for young people. Using ACE mapping reports, google search, TheatreIs…, artsaward regional websites, UKYP and other sources I managed to discover such as ENYAN, Suffolk Young InfoLink & the Norfolk Arts Forum I was able to build a picture for myself of what the state of youth arts was, on a wider scale across England & more locally. As an example, a search on the county wide database of Suffolk Young InfoLink for the category ‘Arts/Film/Music’ in the west Suffolk locality turned up the results in the screen shot below:
Now I know through other research that there is some actual provision to young people in the area that is much more than displayed, but this is part of the problem, you often have to search around quite a lot to find the information you need. Even an internet search for ‘Youth Theatres Bury St Edmunds’ turned up just one youth theatre, the Theatre Royal’s, in a couple of records. The reason I have chosen this particular debate question & view is that it relates directly to my interests in arts management as without a wide ranging variety of young emerging artists there would be little to work with in the future and to promote and inspire further cultural development work. I realise that at the heart of the argument is the issue of funding, which has actually got stronger with late ACE win to ensure the spending budget is not cut by quite so much in favour of sports. But I am going to avoid blaming this in the first instance with the interest more to spark consideration of the issue facing the arts sector.
As such the argument I have been putting forward is:
I personally believe that there isn’t enough of a chance to get involved in the wide area of the arts that there is. Where I live for example there is a number of youth theatres/stage schools all of which cost a varying amount from say £40 to £300 a term. However these are based on drama mostly, and then a few do offer regular dance & singing sessions too, through to the best being LMA, a local independent theatre school that costs a bomb but has musical theatre sessions, dancing, jazz bands, drama and singing sessions. However, still completely missing from the local arena is Circus Theatre and other street arts related to this new generation of arts that actually have been astounding audiences for centuries but aren't made available for people to learn so readily. My research shows that there are a number of companies in the country that offer circus and street arts training to young people but there isn’t much in a geographical spread, and the closest to me is about an hours drive away, and so if you live any further north in East Anglia you can spend a considerable time getting to Cambridge where the closest sessions are held. And yet I see all over the place people getting circus acts in, even at last years sixth form sports relief festival they brought in a circus company to teach the odd tick piece, but 2 things were wrong here. Firstly it was a very narrow 'traditional' circus spectrum, and secondly the circus leader / facilitator / trainer was from the north midlands!! I think this really identifies a problem within the arts sector for young people engaging in the arts and what appeals to them. There are many more examples I could quote, but they all boil down to the fact that there is not enough provision for young people to get into theatre, even less for 'alternative arts' and technical theatre.
I then normally follow it in online boards with ‘ What do people think could be done to address this issue?’ so as to spark thoughts and debates over the issue. The following screen shots show me posting this out onto relevant FaceBook groups & the YPPT forum.
I have also however been putting forward my argument about not having a good enough provision for youth arts in a number of other ways too. I have used platforms of general youth advocacy to talk to other young people from across the country about the lack of facilities provision for young people. I have conducted this through physical meetings with people through organisations like Carnegie UK Trust, the National Children’s Bureau, and the Bury St Edmunds Youth Council along with the St Edmundsbury Youth Forum. These have provided me with local and national stages for my argument and almost always I have been met with agreement, as the evidence I put forward and my argumentative skills seem to become unperturbed with other young people. I enjoy this way of discussing the issue in this way as it is much less formal and allows for instantaneous response and a variety of views to be taken into account which may spark a further idea or discussion at the time. Which is better than using online methods as I find that people can’t be bothered to respond more so, or a debate dries up quicker as the passion can’t be expressed so easily when typing on a keyboard. Having said it is normally informal, sometimes the issue is minuted and documented as having been discussed but even this doesn’t seem to affect young people’s want for a good debate on the issue. I further use the UK Youth Parliament’s e-group and online network to discuss the issue. When I mentioned about the cut to funding of the sector to a Norfolk based member of Youth Parliament (MYP) I was met with, ‘so what?’, she was more involved in what she had thought of as sports despite the fact that she was a dancer, and as such what she hadn’t realised was that dance was still predominantly funded through creative means. Whilst I had said I wasn’t going to approach the issue of funding too much in this case it is what it came down to, and became the catalyst for the debate. The other 2 platforms for debate of note has been the ACE YPPT residential meetings where we have covered the topic a number of times, looking at the arguments, the provision people involved are aware of and trying to come up with ideas to improve the provision of facilities for young people to get involved in the arts industry. And the second was the Arts Council England (ACE) Press Leaders Conference I attended where I also made the case about the need for more and improved access to the arts for young people. At this particular meeting was the directors and heads of departments for media relations and advocacy & communication at the 9 regional and national offices, so people that held power for taking the arguments further and actually looking at presenting the argument further. Again as normal I was met with positive responses and the adults around agreed that something needed to be done and that hopefully the projects emerging as a result of the work on such projects as YPPT will help to address the issues I have highlighted and identified.