I sat at the National Theatre's press conference yesterday as artistic director Nicholas Hytner said that the Arts Council currently lacks authority. The chairman should be an artist, he said. Its major funding decisions should be subject to peer review - by artists. That would give the Arts Council's decisions authority, he said.
And in that room, assenting to the proposition that authority in the arts derives from artistic experience, a dozen theatre critics nodded their heads.
Is Hytner right? Perhaps so. The current oppositional, us-and-them relationship between artists and Arts Council isn't doing anyone any favours. The Arts Council, as currently configured, may have forfeited any vestige of authority with its mishandling of the current funding cuts.
But the claim that authority derives directly from experience is a curious one. I've spent 10 years working as both critic and theatre practitioner. In that time, it's been suggested to me that the two roles are incompatible, contradictory even, and that I (alongside a small handful of other critic-artists) am parti pris, my neutrality compromised. On the other hand it has seldom been suggested that my reviews possess more authority because I also work as an artist. Quite rightly most critics would (with respect to their own profession at least) vehemently oppose the suggestion that authority derives only or mainly from artistic experience.
But there are plenty of actors, playwrights, directors and producers whose number one gripe against both critics and the Arts Council is this: They know not whereof they speak.
I shouldn't milk this slightly spurious parallel between critics and funders. They're different jobs, with different outcomes. A bad review is galling. Denial of funding can be terminal. And besides, funders are distributing public money. But in both jobs, authority surely derives from proving to most people, over time, that you discharge your particular responsibilities well. You may be an insider or an outsider. Ideally, within both the Arts Council (as Hytner proposes) and the arts commentariat, there'll be a mix of both.
The Arts Council may well need artist participation at the moment because it is haemorrhaging, if not authority, then the respect of the arts community. But Hytner's address made me wonder. Is "artists on the Arts Council" a principle, or a pragmatic solution to the current crisis? And if it is indeed a principle that authority derives from experience, does it apply more to managing the arts than it does to, say, reviewing them?
