Towards a healthy ecology of arts and culture

Mission Models Money Catalysing a more sustainable arts & cultural sector

May 2007

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“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must

rise to the occasion”

Abraham Lincoln

Context In the last fifty years, the UK not-for-profit arts and cultural sector has rightly been

regarded as one of the world’s leading producers of high quality, popular and challenging

work. In 2007, as the Mission Models Money programme comes to an end, many believe

that the last 10 years has been a golden age for arts and culture in the UK, helped in part

by the doubling of cultural funding by the Labour government.1

However, in common with other parts of the world such as the USA2 and Australia where

not-for-profit organisations are a primary delivery vehicle for cultural experience, our

sector in the UK is facing major structural changes brought on by technological advances,

global interconnectedness and shifting consumer behaviour. A watershed has been reached

where we must adapt to evolving technologies and the different ways the public are

engaging and participating with arts and culture or risk finding ourselves marginalised.

Navigating this change is no easy matter. Hundreds of not-for-profit organisations critical to

both our historical and contemporary cultural canon, the creators and producers of this

‘golden age’, are over-extended and under-capitalised. Often with high fixed costs and

inflexible business models many are highly dependent on annual public sector grants to

survive as patterns in attendance and earned and fundraised income from the private sector

change. This scenario, whilst allowing survival, offers very little scope for fundamental

transformation into more responsive, adaptive, sustainable mission-led businesses delivering

cultural excellence to an even wider general public. Yet this ability to evolve has never

been so essential.

The challenges posed by our contemporary operating environment are a threat not only to

the aspirations and health of the sector as a whole but also to the individual missions of the

thousands of museums, galleries, performing arts centres and dance, theatre, music and

literature organisations who together form its ecology. The government’s ongoing economic

ambitions for the UK to be the world’s creative hub can no longer be guaranteed nor indeed

developed without significant evolution of this critical group of organisations, the individuals

who work in them and the funding and other structures that support them. The Creative

Economy Programme Green Paper accepts that artists and not-for-profit arts and cultural

organisations are core to the rapidly growing knowledge economy.3 They form one of the

foundations of the creative industries, are originators of artistic content that fuels this

profit-led end of the spectrum of creativity and a key source of a range of talent and

industry skills. If there is to be growing recognition of this crucial interface and an

understanding of its importance in creating economic multipliers, then the challenges and

opportunities faced by the not-for-profit sector must be taken more fully into account by

government.

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Three key challenges MMM’s work during the period from 2004 to 2007 has found that the challenges faced by

our sector fall into three broad categories: responding to rapidly accelerating changes in

the wider environment, building the skills and knowledge base and re-aligning existing

financing, funding and organisational development structures.

Responding to changes in the external environment. Many of our arts and cultural

organisations are not in a position to respond fast enough to the rapidly changing external

environment, especially the shifts in the way the wider public are creating, producing and

consuming cultural experiences and the threats and opportunities of new technology. Most

organisations are not financially or organisationally structured to enable rapid response to

these broader trends. With the majority being small scale in nature, they are often not

able to invest sufficient financial and human resources to develop and implement

effective technology platforms or rapidly step change their public engagement strategies.

Skills and capacity gaps. There are significant knowledge and skills gaps in the key

competency areas that would help achieve greater sustainability. These include basic

financial management, alternative methods of financing beyond the mainstays of grants,

fundraising and ticket sales, the potential of alternative legal structures and business

models which may offer a better environment for the delivery of mission and the role new

technology can play in improving back office functions and expanding public engagement

opportunities. As in the wider voluntary and community sector, some core competencies

such as governance of the traditional charity model need to be seriously improved.

Moreover it is not just existing competencies that need improving. As Graham Leicester

has pointed out in his MMM provocation paper Rising to the Occasion: Cultural Leadership

in Powerful Times, we need to develop new competencies to manage the increasing

complexity and rapidly accelerating change of our world.4

Realignment of existing financing, funding and organisational development structures.

It is by no means only arts and cultural organisations that need to respond to change faster

and drive up performance. Serious levels of misalignment are evident in funding mindsets

and mechanisms and there are knowledge and skills gaps which also exist in the current

capacity building infrastructure. There are concerns that the original mission and existing

roles and structures of the dominant public funding agencies and some intermediary

organisations are not best suited to the cultural and political realities of our time and the

plethora of publicly funded organisational and business development support on offer

largely focuses on sole trader, start up or commercial creative industries and less on the

business development needs of mature non-profit arts and cultural organisations. Issues

about the quality of organisational development support that is on offer and the confusion

around the different agencies responsible are being widely raised. Public and private

funders are helping to drive the under-capitalisation of the sector through working

practices that drive mission creep and perpetuate the organisational fragility of those they

fund. Winston Churchill spoke of how “we shape our buildings, and afterwards our

buildings shape us”. Our financial structures influence our behaviour, so do our

organisational structures and our mindsets. Cultural policy itself defines structures that

discourage or encourage certain behaviours and funding practice has a profound effect on

the ecology of the arts.

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Opportunity for rapid evolution Despite these challenges, the MMM programme has found a great appetite for change

across the sector and many examples of new methods of operation and new business

models are already emerging as demonstrated by the growth of freelancers, facilitators,

networkers and producers. The ubiquitous charity legal structure which most non-profit

arts and cultural organisations operate under is being recognised by many as inherently

too conservative and risk averse. New legal structures which enable different kinds of

funding and financing flows such as Community Interest Companies are being actively

explored whilst as much interest is being shown in expanding the spectrum of income

sources available to include other forms of financing beyond grants and donations.

Momentum is also growing behind developing more strategic alliances, shared services and

joint procurement activities where organisations which have a number of complimentary

activities can work together to develop greater organisational and financial sustainability.

Major initiatives such as the Clore Leadership Programme and the Cultural Leadership

Programme have been created in recognition that there can be no sustainable sector

without sustainable people - people who are equipped, motivated and supported to guide

the development of the new models and new ways of operating that our environment

demands.

If we really do believe that “we are an animal whose life-breath is that of spoken,

painted, sculptured, sung dreams. There is, there can be, no community on earth,

however rudimentary its material means, without music, without some mode of graphic

art, without those narratives of imagined remembrance which we call myth and poetry”5,

then the responsibility for developing new responses and enabling continuous adaptation

to our ever changing environment lies with all those who make up our ecology. With arts

and cultural organisations, with the agencies, organisations and individuals charged with

building their capacity and those responsible for devising the frameworks of public and

private funding which supports them. Our collective challenge is to accelerate this still

fledgling cultural evolution. This pamphlet and all the material produced by the MMM

programme over the last three years is our contribution to responding to that challenge.

The following terms are used in this document: A&CO: arts & cultural organisation Not-for-profit sector: sector which comprises organisations whose primary objective is something other than the generation of profit who are mission-led and often legally structured as a charity. MMM target group of not for profit organisations have been Arts Council Regularly Funded Organisations and constituents of the Museums Libraries and Archives partnership. Funder communities: the four categories are defined as being public sector, private corporations, trusts & foundations and individual givers. Ecology: the interactions between all parties involved in the not-for-profit arts and cultural sector and the environment they operate in.

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“Providing an independent platform for open and honest debate, the MMM process struck a balance between challenge and support, advocating and providing much-needed legitimacy for organisational change in an increasingly restrictive environment.”

Dick Penny, General Manager, Watershed one of the MMM exemplar organisations

A brief history of MMM. Taking its name from the three interdependent elements which

non-profit arts and cultural organisations need to keep in balance to ensure sustainability,

Mission Models Money started as a conversation between Roanne Dods, Director of the

Jerwood Charitable Foundation and Clare Cooper. Asking the central question: what can be

done to deepen understanding of the challenges facing our mission-led arts & cultural

organisations and how can we best ensure that artistic and cultural endeavour thrives in the

UK in the 21st Century?, the three year programme began with a ground-breaking

conference in 2004 which brought together over 250 leaders of all disciplines and

backgrounds from the not for profit arts and cultural sector. Conference delegates identified

key issues critical to the development of greater organisational and financial sustainability

which were investigated further at a second conference in 2005. This pamphlet and its

related documentation marks the completion of MMM’s third and most extensive phase, a

two year action research programme and campaign for change which ran from 2005 to 2007.

Independent, sector-led, open source. Funded by HM Treasury and a diverse range of

public sector agencies, leading corporations and innovative foundations, two approaches

have been crucial to MMM’s success. First, it has been independent and sector-led, second

has been its highly collaborative open-source approach, which recognises that knowledge

can be created and shared in ways that emphasise its character as a common good, rather

than as something to be owned. Acknowledging that peer to peer support and mutual sector-

led problem solving is key to addressing common challenges has been a new way of working

in the sector. This highly empowering process involved 2,000 individuals and organisations as

direct participants and partners, a very small core team and an action group made up of

some of the sector’s senior leaders.

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Key achievements of MMM’s third phase:

• the support, investigation and evaluation of seven diverse exemplar projects both as

individual organisations undergoing radical change and together as a learning community

• publication of seven high-profile provocation papers commissioned to debate key issues

• delivery of twelve nationwide road shows on governance and developing financial

capacity

• engagement of public and private funding communities and arts and cultural

organisations (A&COs) in an investigation into the financing and funding issues facing

the sector and how new and alternative financial instruments could be better used

• collation of nearly thirty case studies which show how A&COs could develop their

organisational and financial sustainability

• over twenty advocacy and dissemination events, including workshops on the topics of

new technologies, intelligent funding, corporate social responsibility and the ecology of

the arts

• a series of major features over twelve months in the leading industry journal Arts

Professional and other media

• a popular and extensive website openly sharing all documentation

Through delivery of this programme MMM has gathered a broad evidence base that illustrates

the challenges, opportunities and business development needs of the sector at this time;

developed tools and information to help arts and cultural organisations develop mission-led

financially and organisationally sustainable businesses; promoted new solutions and approaches

to those challenges and proposed how the current system needs to change offering the

following recommendations for the development of a healthier arts and cultural ecology. A

detailed bibliography of materials produced can be found at the MMM website:

www.missionmodelsmoney.org.uk

This is a time of great opportunity for the arts

and cultural sector. It is MMM’s aspiration that

leaders and decision makers, be they in A&COs,

funding communities or infrastructure support

bodies, artists or producers must work together

to ensure that the UK continues to enjoy the

many and varied benefits that arts and culture

provide us at an individual level, in our

communities and as a nation. The following

recommendations are offered in support of the

realisation of this aspiration:

1 Nurture our people by encouraging personal

development, improving existing core

competencies and understanding the

necessity to develop new competencies

2 Foster a culture of continuous questioning,

experimentation and innovation

3 Refresh practice in funding & finance to

reduce over-extension and under-

capitalisation

4 Grow the financial capacities of our

organisations and expand their financial

vocabularies

5 Develop our organisational capacities and

forms to respond to tomorrow’s challenges

1. Nurture our people by encouraging

personal development, improving existing

core competencies and understanding the

necessity to develop new competencies

A recent major study on the challenges facing

the not-for-profit arts sector in the California

states that “the skills needed for effective arts

leadership today are complex and numerous.

They include board development and

management, programme design and

administration, strategic planning and financial

modelling, public relations and advocacy,

marketing and branding, education, property

development, commercial licensing, capital

formation and fundraising, as well as a talent

for diplomatically balancing the interests of

diverse constituencies and responding to the

changing regulatory environment.’6 This

intimidating picture is equally accurate for arts

managers and leaders in the UK today.

The fragmented nature of the sector and the

predominance of small organisations mean that

training budgets are generally low, if they exist

at all. Hard data for the sector is difficult to

come by. However, figures from the latest pay

survey conducted by the Association of Chief

Executives of Voluntary Organisations can be

taken as broadly indicative. Large national

voluntary organisations spend only 2% of salary

costs on training. Average spend in the

voluntary sector overall is £255 per person per

annum. Amongst chief executives, average

training budgets range from £500 per annum for

smaller organisations to £2,500 for large ones.

The most common number of days of chief

executive training is reported as 5 days. Most

chief executives fail to use their training

budget: the median amount spent across the

sector is £1000. The main barriers to

undertaking training and professional

development are reported as lack of time

(52.4%), lack of money (20.5%) and lack of

suitable courses (11.1%).7

The development of our people is an absolute

priority for enabling healthy evolution of the

sector. Whilst recent cultural leadership

training initiatives such as the Clore Leadership

Programme and the Cultural Leadership

Programme are highly valued, ring-fencing

bigger internal budgets to support people

development would help A&COs offer more

opportunities for the personal development

of current incumbents.

Additionally, efforts need to be made to make

pay more competitive with other sectors. Arts

Professional’s recent survey found that the

average salary of graduates in their 30s is

£25,669 a year; well over half of people

employed earn less than £25,000; one-third

earn less than £20,000. These are not

sustainable pay rates for a thriving sector

offering fulfilling careers. By the time people

reach their 30s they will either be looking for

higher paid work elsewhere (most likely outside

the sector) or shifting into consultancy or

freelancing in order to regain control over their

work/life balance and to earn more money.

Two-thirds of people working full time in the

arts are under 40. In a sector increasingly

dominated by women, the affluent middle

classes, and the young it concluded: ‘Pay is the

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elephant in the room which no one discusses….

We work in a creative sector: we now need

creative solutions to help break out of the

financial straitjacket that constrains it’.8

As the MMM programme and other initiatives

such as Arts Council England’s 21st Century

Programme has evidenced, there has been a

growing movement away from traditional

institutional settings towards more flexible

forms of operation with a resulting increased

number of freelancers, facilitators, producers

and networkers as a result. However, much

professional development support continues to

be focused on management of traditional non-

profit organisations. Developing greater

understanding of the professional

development needs of individuals choosing to

work in more networked, fragile, fluid

environments and channeling greater

resources into this group would help develop

these creative ‘adhocracies’.9

Whilst these may seem a formidable array of

challenges not easily surmountable, A&COs are

well placed to develop new competencies to

manage flux and fundamental transformation

and develop a higher tolerance for complexity,

uncertainty and not knowing. “The arts and

cultural sector starts at a distinct advantage in

helping to grow our culture to support the

development of these higher order capacities,

given the (potentially) profound nature of its

material. Surveys of leadership in the

voluntary sector suggest that the levels of

personal commitment, passion and mission in

the sector, coupled with the complexity of the

stakeholder environment, make this a good

proving ground for modern management and

leadership skills. The same applies to the arts

and cultural sector – with the added element

that at its best this sector works in a medium

that thrives on uncertainty and complexity, and

is not afraid to acknowledge and engage with

the void of not knowing.”10

Identifying and supporting the habits of mind

and habits of heart that will characterise 'the

persons of tomorrow' is not only relevant in the

world of arts and culture but across all

contemporary society. The opportunity should

be seized for these competencies to be

understood, valued and developed. They are

qualities that are learned from experience:

courage, vision, decisiveness, humility,

tenacity, compassion; and characteristics such

as the ability to hold multiple truths lightly, to

tolerate ambiguity, to be innovative and

conservative, to believe in the right action over

fixed principles, to have the ability to learn

from darkness and uncertainty, as well as

clarity and experience, to collaborate and

compete in the service of the whole. All of

these place the arts and cultural sector at a

distinct advantage. This is the stuff we exist on

and all of which are necessary to thrive in a

complex 21st century.11

2. Foster a culture of continuous

questioning, experimentation and innovation

Arts, culture and creativity play a central role

in our contemporary lives. Consuming culture is

no longer a pastime confined to an elite.

Working creatively is no longer the preserve of

artists. We live in an economy in which

imagination and innovation are increasingly

critical, across many walks of life. The

centrality of creativity and culture to our

experience of life should mean that arts and

cultural organisations play a central role. Yet

that role is seldom realised.12 As Ruth

Mackenzie, member of the MMM Action Group

has stated, “perhaps we have been more

radical in searching for new art forms and new

art than we have in finding new ways of

managing the arts. If so, we need now to learn

from the best art and the best arts

management and change arts management as

radically as we have changed art itself.”13

Arts and cultural organisations need to be at

the leading edge of managing creativity by

experimenting with different working practices

and different business models which promote

creativity in different ways. As the developing

‘prosumer’ environment is showing, technology

will become more central to the producing and

curating of arts and culture as devices and

connectivity becomes more pervasive and the

world increasingly ‘flat’.14,15 To ensure

continued relevance in this environment A&COs

need to make ICT and digital content

capability more central to the operation of

their organisations, moving it from being not

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only a back office tool but also a driver of

artistic product.

In association to developments in technological

capacity, the strategic positioning of education

and learning can also have great impact on an

organisation’s ability to question, experiment

and innovate. In recognition of this, A&COs

need to ensure that education and learning

are part of their core mission. Conventional

wisdom of the last century placed institutions

and organisations as the gatekeepers to arts

and culture. Technology and the growth of

amateurs with near professional skills is

changing this dynamic to such an extent that if

education is ghetto-ised in bolt-on

departments, many A&COs may lose their

relevance and engagement with the people

they are there to serve. Recognising how

education programmes (and other audience

development activities) could introduce more

of a two-way process where organisations take

the bold step of asking for opinions, listening to

what people have to say and responding

accordingly would enable greater receptiveness

to new ideas and contribute to internal

learning.

There would be many benefits to this approach:

trustees and executives would have to regularly

revisit their mission and artistic policy to

ensure relevance, programmes could be

understood as a single entity, existing tensions

between budgets would be relieved and

audiences who wish to, would be able to

participate actively in the arts as much as

consume them.16

3. Refresh practice in funding and financing

to reduce over-extension and under-

capitalisation

“The non-profit arts and cultural sector is over

extended and undercapitalised with too many

organisations trying to do more things than they

can possibly do well, with both human and

financial resources too thinly spread. Lacking

liquidity or reserves, cash strapped and thinly

spread between ever more diverse, fragmented

pools of funding arts organisations find it easier

to secure the marginal costs of marginal

activities than the core costs of core activities.

The result is a hyperactive sector that responds

with Pavlovian urgency and enormous ingenuity

to the imperatives of funders but that has a

decreasing capacity to hear, or at any rate

listen to, the voice of mission”17. Further

under-funded expansion of the sector could

be prevented by A&COs and their funders and

those agencies charged with organisational

development working together more

effectively.

In turn, public and private funders need to

encourage the deepening of organisational

and financial capacity in those they fund and

encourage organisational autonomy rather

than penalise it. This could be achieved quite

swiftly by accepting full cost recovery

budgeting, recognising and even incentivising

the necessity to build up working capital,

reserves and endowments, and lowering the

transaction costs of their funding and financing

agreements. Mission coherence and long term

viability in the sector can also be assisted by

funders ensuring a close fit between their

mission and core values and those of the

organisations they fund and judging success

on delivery of mission rather than on other

secondary criteria.

Greater investment in the sector could be

encouraged by enabling a broader range of

finance and greater access to appropriate

private sector funds. Grants, donations and

ticket sales are the most common income

streams for A&COs. However, Government and

other funders have recognised the need to

diversify the range of finance and investment

available to organisations in the wider

voluntary and community sector (VCS) with a

range of initiatives which have introduced new

funding beyond in the form of loans and equity

with the objective of recycling capital and

increasing financial acumen. Stronger links with

the wider VCS and similar initiatives need to be

introduced into the arts and cultural sector in

order to develop for example those outlined by

MMM’s report of New and Alternative Financial

Instruments which include pilot projects and

the establishment of an underwriting and

property fund.18

Greater recognition is needed that diversity is

integral to the development of a healthy and

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sustainable arts and cultural ecology. It has

long been known that there exists a premier

league of A&COs who have enjoyed a large

amount of public and private funding and

attention over the last 50 years. Policy makers,

funders and premier league A&COs themselves

need to ensure that sufficient opportunities,

frameworks of support and funding are being

directed toward the talent pools of individuals

and smaller organisations.

Finally, MMM believes that a greater community

of interest between public and private funders

of the arts and cultural sector would have

major long-term positive impact on the health

of the arts and cultural ecology. In order to

realise a more synchronised funding

community, MMM advocates exploring the

development of a Cultural Funding Compact

which would aim to prioritise the health of the

whole ecology and maximise the value and

contribution of all the funding groups. An

agreement of this nature would provide a

collaborative platform that is currently lacking.

As The Art of Living, MMM’s landmark

provocation on funding of the arts notes,

‘despite their common ground, and that by

working together more closely all of their

support could be better leveraged across the

sector, the main funding groups operate in

silos. As a consequence there is a massively

underdeveloped market for ideas, expertise,

and collaboration across the funding landscape.

A funding community that actually operates

more like a community would create a much

richer funding marketplace – not homogenised

but more interdependent, driven by much

better information and expertise, and in turn

reducing the transaction costs for funder and

funded alike.’19

4. Grow the financial capacities of our

organisations and expand their financial

vocabularies

Basic financial literacy throughout

organisations has to be improved to ensure

sector-wide financial robustness. Trustees and

their executive colleagues could achieve this by

ensuring the design and implementation of

effective business processes which develop

longer term planning horizons and include goals

for capital structure and investment. Full

consideration of the impact of physical and

programme expansion on balance sheets and

operation of full cost apportionment in all

budgeting needs to become common practice

and ensuring that funding that distorts core

mission is not accepted would help reduce

under-capitalisation.

A better understanding of the rules of money

and finance that govern the not-for-profit

sector needs to be developed. As Clara Miller

of the Nonprofit Finance Fund has argued “not

only are nonprofit rules that govern money –

and therefore business dynamics – different

from those in the for profit sector, they are

largely unknown, even among nonprofits and

their funders. Or at the very least they remain

unacknowledged and unspoken …Even when

revealed to for profit cognoscenti, they are so

at odds with the listeners’ familiar world as to

prompt confusion, disbelief, and related

feelings of cognitive dissonance.”20

Where possible, and mindful of lifecycle and

business planning realities and the necessity for

appropriate levels of financial expertise,

A&COs should explore the possibilities of

expanding their income spectrum in order

broaden the number of income streams

available to them. In addition to the most

common income streams of grants, donations

and ticket sales this could involve developing

further trading activity, attracting different

kinds of investment through hybrid business

models using new and alternative financial

instruments such as loans and quasi equity.21

Thirdly, a shift in mindset within A&COs

would encourage a different understanding of

asset development. Much effort is focussed on

funding shortfalls and how to resolve them. An

approach less obsessed with cost streams that

have to be subsidised and more focused on

nurturing and measuring the financial results of

continual investment in tangible and less

tangible assets (such as reputation, brand and

technological infrastructure) would provide a

more dynamic view of the financial structure of

the organisation.

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5. Develop our organisational capacities and

forms to respond to tomorrow’s challenges

Increasing levels of expertise at operational

and strategic levels in finance, public

engagement strategies and governance of

not-for-profit businesses would help

traditional legal structures and business models

offer higher performance in service of

organisational mission. With regard to

governance, a major national advocacy

programme to drive up recognition of the

necessity to improve this critical function needs

to be implemented and backed up by better

promotion of existing governance resources in

the wider VCS. MMM’s proposal that self

regulation should be encouraged by the

development of a cultural annex to the

existing NCVO Code for Good Governance has

met with wide interest and could be usefully

developed.22,23

By helping bridge the communication and

research & development divide between non-

profit A&COs and the technology sectors,

funders and organisational development

agencies could enable A&COs drive, develop

and exploit the potential of new

technologies. Recent studies and anecdotal

experience of the arts sector’s IT and digital

content capability reveal below average

results. Interviews with artistic directors

painted an overall picture of thwarted

aspiration: ideas in place are not limited by

imagination or lack of ambition, but by a lack

of inclusion in formal strategic documentation;

budgets and capacity planning; and

organisational development thinking. Funders

and organisational development agencies can

play a key role in creating low cost access

opportunities for A&COs to test new platforms,

helping A&COs understand the impact of

changing technology on their business models

and enabling knowledge transfer networks for

A&COs to draw on each other’s experiences.

There is significant unrealised potential for arts

and cultural organisations to leverage their own

talents and those of other organisations by

working together. The challenges and

opportunities of developing mergers, back

office consolidations and joint ventures needs

to be further investigated. While this is

already happening, it should be encourage

further. There are opportunities and significant

interest by A&COs in the development of these

practices especially around second tier or back

office functions and in programme areas such

as education and learning but there is very

little experience or shared learning of current

practice in this area. Since this kind of

approach is still rare in the arts and cultural

sector delivering a group of carefully chosen

pilots will enable additional research to analyse

factors that influence success or failure,

develop best practice guideline and compile

and disseminate information for executive and

non executive leaders.

Looser more flexible and adaptive

organisational forms which can better

respond to the complex operating

environment need to be more widely

explored. Despite the plethora of possible

models, including the recently introduced

Community Investment Company model – and

the wide range of scale and the variety of

activities undertaken in this sector - the

majority of not-for-profit arts and cultural

organisations have historically tended to be

registered charities, limited by guarantee. The

desirability of this one-size-fits-all model which

is inherently conservative and risk averse is now

being questioned by many. More advocacy and

advice is needed on the different legal

structures available to A&COs and as a

corollary of this, funders have to become

more flexible in the nature of the

organisational forms they support and those

agencies charged with organisational

development need to ensure that they are

capable of offering the right expertise in

these times of transition.

In order to support diversity in the arts and

cultural ecosystem and ensure their own

constant renewal, existing A&COs could

benefit from re-alignment of their internal

learning processes and organisational

structures and decision-making processes in

ways that allow more rapid responses to change

and more exposure to disruptive innovation

from outside.

More consideration needs to be given about

how A&COs might develop effective ‘horizon

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scanning’ both individually and

collaboratively with which to inform their

long term strategic planning. Changing

demographics, increasingly diverse communities

in some parts of the country and changes in

what the general public value about arts and

culture are affecting levels of public

engagement with different art forms, most

particularly the western classical art forms.

Recent findings by the Arts Council England

inquiry into Public Value show that amongst the

general public there is a credible concept of

the public value of the arts and a clear and

coherent set of criteria for arts and cultural

funding which gives greater weight to

widespread participation and positive

community outcomes.24 This however is often

at odds with the preferences of the arts

community. Additionally, the implications of

major global issues such as climate change are

only just beginning to be grasped by most

A&COs. It will become increasingly necessary to

developing strategic futures disciplines either

within organisations or collaboratively across

regions or artforms in order to understand how

the world is likely to change over at least a 5-

10 year timeframe and how such changes will

affect all aspects of each organisation. For all

organisations this will involve interpretation of

current conditions into their particular

contexts, greater understanding of the drivers

and directions of change, and the extrapolation

of trends and relationships into the future.

There are many reasons to care about the long-term health and vibrancy of our arts and cultural

sector. We are all living in powerful times, in a world that is requiring us to develop a higher tolerance for

complexity, uncertainty and not knowing. We believe that some of the most promising settings for us to

gain more experience in these new competencies lie with the individuals and organisations who make up

our arts and cultural ecology who, given the right conditions, thrive in this kind of environment and

produce of their best. The arts are all about perception and re-perception, about narrative and sense

making, about human relationships and emotion, and about questioning and playing with the rules rather

than blithely following them. These are precisely the qualities we need to enrich if we are to navigate the

transition to a more sustainable, effective and fulfilling global culture.25 Supporting the creation and

experience of great art in today’s world more effectively will help us propagate the development of these

competencies elsewhere in our society so that we can all thrive and respond to the many uncertainties and

challenges that lie ahead.

“Without men, no culture; but equally, and more significantly, without culture, no men. We are in sum, incomplete or unfinished animals who complete or finish ourselves through culture – and not through culture in general but through highly particular forms of it.”

Clifford Geertz26

13

Mission Models Money would especially like to thank its funders and in-kind partners for their generous support:

Accenture | Arts Council England | Arts Professional

Bates Wells & Braithwaite | The Clore Leadership Programme

Cultural Leadership Programme | Deustche Bank | Four Communications

Governance Hub | HM Treasury | Jerwood Foundation

Jerwood Charitable Foundation | The Paul Hamyln Foundation

The Rayne Foundation

NOTES & REFERENCES 1 Tony Blair speech on culture at Tate Modern, March 6th 2007 2 Critical Issues Facing the Arts in California, AEA Consulting for the James Irvine Foundation, 2006 3 See www.cep.culture.gov.uk 4 Rising to the Occasion: cultural leadership in powerful times, Graham Leicester, MMM, 2007 5 Grammars of Creation, George Steiner, 2001 6 AEA Consulting, op. cit. 7 The Acevo Pay Survey, Acevo, 2006 8 2006 Salary Survey, Arts Professional Issue 132, October 2006 9 The ‘adhocracy’ is an organisational form popularised by management theorist Henry Mintzberg. As the name implies, it is loose, highly organic and flexible, often bringing individuals together in a temporary structure in order to progress a specific project

10 Leicester, op. cit. 11 ibid 12 Arts organisations in the 21st century: ten challenges, Charles Leadbeater, 2005 13 For more on the Action Group see www.missionmodelsmoney.org.uk 14 We-think, Charles Leadbeater, 2007 (online draft) 15 The World is Flat, Thomas L Friedman, 2005 16 Mission Unaccomplshed, Sara Robinson & Teo Greenstreet, MMM, 2006 17 New Approaches to Sustaining the Arts in the UK, Adrian Ellis, MMM, 2004 18 New & Alternative Financial Instruments, Margaret Bolton & David Carrington, MMM, 2007 19 The Art of Living, John Knell, MMM, 2007 20 The Looking Glass World of Non Profit Money: managing in for profit’s shadow universe, Clara Miller, 2005 21 Income Spectrum Tool, MMM, 2006 22 MMM Governance Roadshow Report, Sara Robinson, MMM, 2007 23 Good Governance: a code for the voluntary and community sector, NCVO, 2005 24 www.artscouncil.org.uk/artsdebate 25

Leicester, op. cit 26 From the Interpretation of Cultures, Geertz, 1973