Leading Cultural Learning part one: six stories, no ending

I was asked to speak to this year’s cohort of Clore Fellows. Ten minutes as an interlocutor (I had to look it up) on ‘leading cultural learning’. I thought I’d risk a new riff, moving far from my standard creative learning patter to reveal my inner confusion. I started with six stories, told in chronological order.

Story One: 1997

As a teacher, I had no real affinity with the arts. To my shame, I didn’t teach one dance lesson in five years, and the visual art I attempted was too rare and too shoddy. I did however play around with drama, especially for assemblies. I remember creating a lavish assembly for an OFSTED inspection. Oblivious to those men with clipboards at the back of the hall, my Year Five Class performed a rousing history of the Jarrow crusade, complete with a couple of historically misplaced Woodie Guthrie songs. OFSTED failed the assembly, as it did not include an act of collective worship.

Story Two: 2002

As a parent, I remember visiting Tate Britain with my two toddlers to see Michael Landy’s childhood home, rebuilt in painstaking detail in the centre of the main hall. It was a powerful experience, provoking emotions around identity, memory, and family. Whilst recovering from this art thunderbolt, I wondered what my children were making of this. Before I had the chance to find out, I had been dragged into a nearby room, and forced to make cardboard box homes with my kids. The Tate’s family learning programme had destroyed any chance of engagement with its art.

Story Three: 2009

On my Clore placement to the Theatre Royal Stratford East, I met one of their young Associate Directors. A few years before, as part of the youth theatre, he had, with friends, devised a dance piece based on the Pied Piper of Hamlyn. It had rapidly moved onto the theatre’s main stage, and two years on was now the Barbican’s Christmas show. He was now CEO of his own company, Blue Boy Entertainment.

Story Four: 2010

At a think tank seminar, the artistic director of a large venue talked about how education was now at the centre of his organisation. He claimed that his own programming decisions were now more informed by the education department’s views than by anybody else. I thought ‘you’re lying, and I don’t know why you’re lying.’

Story Five : 2011

In one of my final visits to a Creative Partnerships school, I visited a secondary school which had done some wonderful programmes over five years, most recently working with a visual artist on ‘museum of love’ to explore concepts of love in Shakespeare’s plays and poems. The creative agent at the school, who was managing the programme, talked about how she had tried to ban the word art and artist from discussions with pupils and teachers.

Story Six: 2011 again

Last month, I was talking to someone in the arts education world. I was telling her about some schools which were thinking of starting ‘look clubs’, after school clubs where pupils would visit museums, galleries, buildings and landscapes, with an emphasis on looking and contemplation, rather than drawing or doing. She scoffed at me: ‘that’s not very participatory!’

Conclusions to be drawn… in next blog.

The Tyranny of Success

I once knew a brilliant headteacher in Leeds who suggested that the national curriculum should be designed by those who failed at school. Or, at the very least, the content of each subject should be decided by those who hated that subject, or found it very difficult. Getting a roomful of geographers to determine the geography curriculum just created overload from people who may love the subject, but were too precious and knowledgeable to make good choices.

I was reminded of this at last week's Clore Leadership conference ' Its the Arts, Stupid'. A panel of four artists spoke passionately about how the arts infrastructure, and we leaders, could better support artists. Kwane Kwei-Armah asked us what we were going to do to create environments for artists to fulfil their potential across different artforms. Siobhan Davies argued that Dance needed a formal 'warts and all' history to take the form forward. Grayson Perry railed against the cult of 'originality', the quest for which can devalue the search for quality. Louise Wilson talked about how collaboration can be nurtured.

Thoughtful stuff; one problem. Similar to most 'panels', these were four highly successful artists, whom the arts infrastructure has clearly worked for, in various ways. From the joy of arts school to public funding of buildings to the Turner Prize to close relationships with theatre directors, the usual cocktail or talent, effort and serendipity had brought them success.

But maybe our starting point needs to consider those for whom the infrastructure has failed. Those with unrecognised talent, whose creativity was never nurtured. We all know them. Some of you are them. It is easy to fault the education system, and wider societal barriers, and the concept of a meritocracy in the arts is as outlandish as in any other sphere. But what could the cultural sector do itself to make sure that success came more to those who deserved it?

Creativity, IQ and cultural bias

Last week's New Scientist featured research on the existence of a 'creativity chemical'.

The University of New Mexico's Rex Jung (with a name like that, don't you already believe everything he is going to say?) explored whether the chemical N-acetyl-aspartate, which is already associated with neural health, metabolism and intelligence, could also play a role in human creativity.

Jung measured the NAA levels, IQ and 'capacity for divergent thinking' in 56 adult volunteers. His findings:

Overall, volunteers' creativity scores correlated with levels of NAA in a brain region called the anterior cingulate gyrus (ACG), which regulates the activity of the frontal cortex - implicated in higher mental functions. But while low levels of NAA in the ACG correlated with high creativity in people of average intelligence, in people with IQs of above 120, the reverse was true (The Journal of Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.0588-09.2009).

Jung speculates that if there is less NAA to regulate frontal cortex activity in "average" brains, they are freer to roam and find new ideas. In highly intelligent people, however, tighter control over the frontal cortex seems to enhance creativity. Perhaps this is because they are more likely to come up with new ideas anyway, and the tighter control allows them to "fine-tune" that ability.

"People say you have to let your mind wonder freely to be creative," says Jung. "For people of average intelligence, perhaps it's true that you need to utilise more areas of your [frontal cortex] for something truly novel and creative to emerge, but in more intelligent folks, there's something different going on."

If this is true, it would imply a completely different approach to the development of people's creativity, depending on their IQ. With a two decade old O level in Chemistry, I am not going to challenge Jung's lab work. However, the problem may lie in the testing. The history and critique of IQ testing is well known; many believe that cultural and class biases are inherent. How about testing for 'divergent thinking'? Compared to the huge IQ industry, testing for divergent thinking has less profile, status and research. But if given similar scrutiny, would we also discover that these tests are equally flawed, if not more so?

The other problem is that divergent thinking is just a part of what makes us creative. Convergent thinking can help too, amongst other attributes.

Meanwhile, expect Holland and Barrett to soon stock a creativity supplement, somewhere near the fish oil.

Last word to Mr Jung: 'I would have loved to see what Einstein's ACG looked like'.

An Artistic Theory of Everything?

In our island's troubled, introverted times, it pays to look any direction but down. The US has always provided fertile terrain for innovative writing about politics and policy, but the recent stimulation of a new president and an economy in crisis is generating some brilliant thinking, even on cultural policy, an area the US mainstream often ignores.

Whatever your views on physics, you should check out Eric Booth's essay on An Artistic Theory of Everything. Applying Einstein's 'unified field theory' to the arts world, his conclusions include:

"Practitioners of different art forms just don’t think of themselves as part of a larger functional entity. Even though multidisciplinary performances and presentations are increasingly common, the various artistic tribes compete more often than they cooperate, believing that the concerns they share are less significant than the ones they face on their own..."

"This fundamental act of art occurs when we find the right word in a poem or the dance move that captures what we know and cannot say. We spark the arts connection when we enter a "world" made by someone else (a work of art, a spoken image, a story, an eloquent gesture) and find a personally relevant connection inside it. We fire the art connection when we pick just the right song to play for a suffering friend and when we listen deeply to a friend's story and connect to its unspoken core. We slip into the physics of art when we resonate inside with the note just played, when we experience a sense of eternity under a night sky...

"What can we do, as believers in the power of the fundamental act of creation, to align our actions, our creations, our organizations, our intentions and interactions with everyone inside and outside the arts to maximize that power? How can we create environments that effectively, irresistibly support and nurture that power? What events can we devise that are dedicated to that power, not merely to the presentation of artworks that we hope will contain it for those few who pay to attend?"

I laid a similar challenge for the arts education sector in my 'culture change' article about the Find Your Talent programme. But, like Eric, I was better on the diagnosis than the prognosis. I have no other answers as yet, but in seeking them I will also remember another Einstein theory - "you can't count everything that counts".

Why Arms Length?

Personal and political. After 15 years with various institutions, I finally have a whole year when I am at arms length from all of them - on nobody's payroll. I have been very lucky in that none of these institutions have been particularly constraining. At school, as long as the kids were relatively quiet, you could close the door and get on with it - the national curriculum, ofsted and the rest of the paraphanelia were often just smokescreens for neglect and autonomy. At ippr, my team was always solvent and relatively productive, though only sporadically influential. Cue for more autonomy. And even at Creative Partnerships, managing huge budgets, I certainly received more autonomy than attention.

But the arms length feeling is with me anyway, as I deinstitutionalise my brain and body.

Arms length is also supposed to define the relationship between the UK state and the arts. My fellowship, in cultural policy, will explore this relationship, hopefully ask some new and relevant questions about whether 'arms length' is still a useful and meaningful concept, and maybe even recommend a new paradigm to shape the state-citizen-art trinity for the next sixty years.

Now if that isn't an arrogant aspiration, my next one certainly is.

Cultural policy in the UK over the past 60 years has not been without its failings and difficulties, but overall has contributed significantly to the success of the UK’s cultural sector. Through a combination of accident and design, we may have stumbled upon a set of policies, processes and relationships that go with the grain of wider societal changes, and could therefore have wider application. Through a critical analysis of how the UK state’s ‘arms length relationship’ with culture has worked and is working, cultural policy could provide a model that could influence all other policy areas, and inform new thinking about the state-citizen relationship and the role of the state. Anyone for an arms-length state?

The Arts in a Post-Bureaucratic age

Although dealing with the downturn is important, the arts sector should probably be spending as much time preparing for a Conservative government.

David Cameron, despite his dislike and careful avoidance of jargon, is using the phrase 'post-bureaucratic age' to summarise his approach to government and public services.

What does the phrase mean, and what might it mean for the arts?

Thoughts from YSP #2: Cultural Service Stations?

YSP is two hours from London by train – not as far away from London or expensive as Germaine Greer claims. Wherever you wander in the park and nature reserve, you hear the roars of the M1. Junction 38 is five minutes away.

Four years ago, halfway to a campsite in North Wales, we found ourselves on the M6, needing a pee and petrol. 15 minutes later, we were at New Art Gallery Walsall, emptier than your average service station, with better coffee, views, and toilets. The petrol would have to wait.

Could we market a network of cultural service stations? Venues within a 15 minute drive from any Motorway junction, and happy to welcome tired travellers for short bursts? Could this be a way to attract new audiences, those the arts council's 'segmentation study' calls 'time-poor dreamers' or 'a quiet pint with the match'?

It would be an amusing step too far to ask these venues to provide petrol, but, given the tat in most venues' gift shops, how about branded travel sweets, tissues and maybe even the odd bit of chammy leather?

So, please give your ideas for for cultural service stations here – if enough emerge, I may be forced to do something with them…

I know nothing about arts marketing, but I know what I like. My favourite ever is Devon's Barometer World Museum - 'the hobby that got out of hand'. And the worst: 'Bradford: A surprising place'. Surprisingly what?