A Cultural Dominance
In this short text we open up an ongoing debate around the researching, debating, testing, assessing and supporting of creativity. Is creativity a human pursuit to be enjoyed by all or only those with the education, intellect, time and money to enjoy it? Are the artists and creatives whose works we have access to the best in terms of integrity, vision and ability? Are the models that claim to encourage, support, develop and distribute the creativity of (and to) the people, or at least some of them, fit for pluralistic purpose and how equitable and creative are the strategies and policies that shape our cultural landscapes?
Let us suppose a central aim of purveying a creative work or product to an audience of civilians. As long as the civilians know the product exists and how they can access the product the communicative link is made. Simplistically put, creative production ends with the individual citizen accessing the artistic or creative product personally. The initial question (for us all) is how much of a bureaucracy we need to facilitate this simple arrangement? The poet writes a poem and steps out of her front door where she reads the poem to the first passer-by who, stunned by the work, commissions a book of her poems, as he just happens to be a poetry editor at Faber & Faber. Now of course this doesn’t happen but it should. So let us start to explore the positive and negative dimensions of the many middlemen, women, departments, establishments and agencies that extend the space between the individual creative producer and citizen. How do such individuals and bodies help and hinder the production and distribution of creative works, how are their activities and strategies shaped, what do they provide for the considerable resources they consume and in whose interest?
