THE ARM'S LENGTH PRINCIPLE AND THE ARTS: AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE (page 2)

THE ARM'S LENGTH ARTS COUNCILS

History

United Kingdom

The Arts Council of Great Britain (ACGB), established in 1945, was the first arm's length arts council. The British government adopted the arm's length principle in. order to distance the arts from politics and bureaucracy. They wanted to avoid the system of state support existing in Russia and Germany prior to 1945, where official art was imposed by Ministers of Culture.³³  The government also recognized that within the arts community there was "a desire to run one's own show and deep rooted mistrust of bureaucratic interference" ³⁴

The arm's length arts council, as an institution, has been described as "distinctly British" ³⁵ for two reasons. First, the ACGB was the first of its kind. Second, the arm's length arts council had been developed from the experience of other British cultural institutions including the University Grants Committee and the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Established in 1919, the University Grants Committee was "an unelected body of university men, appointed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on whose advice the Government of the day asked Parliament each year to vote money for distribution, without strings, to each university." ³⁶  Similarly, the British Broadcasting Corporation was created in 1923 at arm's length from government to ensure freedom of the press.

Lord Keynes, first Chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain, described arts patronage in Great Britain as having come about in a "very English, informal, unostentatious way. ³⁷  Others view the arm's length arts council as:

a classic British compromise, dependent on Treasury grants, supervised by a Government department, but with Council members appointed, in theory at least, for their expertise rather than their political disposition, and a staff who were not civil servants. ³⁸

Canada

In 1951, the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences ³⁹ recognized the need for public funding of the fine arts. The Royal Commission recommended the British arm's length arts council model as that most suitable for Canada while rejecting direct funding of the arts through a ministry of culture.

Quite apart from the fact that the problems confronting us have little in common with those in other countries, we find that in general they are dealt with abroad by a centralized Ministry of National Education or by a Ministry of Cultural Affairs, arrangements which, of course, in Canada are constitutionally impossible or undesirable. ⁴⁰

The nature of the Canadian Confederation in which certain fields, such as education and health, are the constitutional responsibility of the provinces, was an important consideration for the Commissioners. The Commissioners were concerned about federal encroachment on provincial responsibilities, particularly with respect to education because of its relation to the arts and culture. The Royal Commission drew a distinction between formal and informal education. The former was the special domain of the provinces. The Commissioners, however, saw "no prohibition in Canadian law against any group, governmental or voluntary, contributing to the education of the individual in its broadest sense" including the arts and culture. ⁴¹

In response to the recommendations of the Royal Commission, the Parliament of Canada, using death duties levied on the estates of two prominent Canadian industrialists-Sir James Dunn and Izaak Walton Killam created the Canada Council for the Encouragement of the Arts in 1957.⁴²  The Canada Council differed from the British arts council in that it was endowed with $100 million, half of which was to be used for capital grants to universities - similar to the British University Grants Committee-and the other $50 million for an endowment whose income would make the Canada Council financially independent of government. In this sense, the Canada Council more closely resembled a U.S. private foundation than the Arts Council of Great Britain. In fact, the first meeting of the Canada Council, held in the Office of the Prime Minister, included representatives of the Carnegie, Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. ⁴³  In 1963, Dorothy Killam, wife of Isaak Walton Killam, donated $8.5 million to the Canada Council in recognition -that it was her husband's estate that, in effect, had endowed the Canada Counci1.⁴⁴  In 1965 she bequeathed an additional $7 million to the Canada Counci1.⁴⁵

For the first five years of its existence, the Canada Council was both politically and financially independent from government. Grants, services and administrative activities of the Council were funded from endowment income. The Canada Council first received an appropriation from the Parliament of Canada in 1965 in recognition of its success in fostering and promoting the arts, and in order to prepare for celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Canadian Confederation. From this time forward, the Canada Council became what was known as the "chosen instrument" of the federal government to encourage artistic activity in Canada. Currently the annual appropriation from Parliament represents approximately 85 percent of total Canada Council income.

The arm's length arts council model was also adopted at the provincial and local levels of government in Canada. The Saskatchewan Arts Board, established in 1948, is the oldest arts council in Canada. The Provinces of Ontario, Manitoba and Newfoundland subsequently created arm's length arts councils in the 1960s,1970s and 1980s. In addition, there are arm's length councils in a number of Canadian cities including Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa.

Other Commonwealth Countries

Other Commonwealth countries have also established arm's length arts councils patterned on the British model.  These include the New Zealand Arts Council established in 1963 (succeeded by a restructured Queen Elizabeth B Arts Council in 1975) and the Australia Council for the Arts established in 1975. Further research is required to trace more completely the evolution of arts support in other Commonwealth countries. ⁴⁶

United States

In the United States, until 1965 the tax system (the Facilitator role) was the only vehicle for federal support to the arts. In 1965 the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), an arm's length agency, was created. The experience of the United States is instructive because it highlights other dimensions of the arm's length principle, for example, who determines the budget, and to whom the agency reports. In the United States these involve the distinction between the President (the executive branch) and the Congress (the legislative branch).

The NEA differs from the Canada Council in that it is explicitly an executive agency. Its budget is proposed by the President through the Office of Management and Budget but is subject to the approval of Congress. The NEA "has learned to be more politically involved than the other two (Britain and Canada) . : . .if only because its budget is subject to much more legislative scrutiny and alteration than occurs in Britain or Canada with their much greater executive supremacy." ⁴⁷

The Smithsonian Institution provides another interesting contrast. Established in 1846 by an Act of Congress under the terms of the will of James Smithson, an Englishman, the Smithsonian is a legislative agency. Congress appoints its Board of Regents and proposes its annual appropriation. In 1983 the Congressional appropriation was $275 million and the endowment amounted to $250 million.⁴⁸

This distinction between an executive and a legislative agency has some parallel with the Canadian experience. The Canada Council was created by an Act of Parliament and reports to Parliament, but it is explicitly "not an agent of Her Majesty" and therefore beyond the control of Her Majesty's government of the day. Thus, the Canada Council can be considered analogous to a legislative agency such as the Smithsonian Institution. The evolution of the Canada Council has other similarities with the Smithsonian: both were created with an endowment derived, indirectly or directly, from private estates; both, over the years, have benefited from subsequent private bequests and endowments; both have developed special collections and special services (in the case of the Canada Council these include the Canada Council Art Bank, the most extensive collection of contemporary Canadian visual art in the country, and the Canada Council Touring Office, which services the touring and career development needs of Canadian performing artists and artists' management); and both have become "national" as opposed to "federal" institutions.

Operations

The arm's length arts council is essentially concerned with the development of the fine arts. Public support to the commercial arts generally is outside the terms of reference of arts councils. In the case of the amateur arts, the bulk of public support comes from departments of recreation and culture at the local and provincial levels.

Many arts councils are holding back on support to amateurs believing, as does the Arts Council of Great Britain, that although amateur activity is of great importance in the total spectrum of a nation's arts, support for amateur activity is not a proper function for national government, given limited funds and given, too, that there are other sources of support for amateurs, notably local government. ⁵⁰

However, in New Zealand, Australia and the United States, arts councils do provide some funding for amateur or what are called "community arts." In Canada, the Canada Council Explorations program also provides some support for amateur or nonprofessional arts activities.

There are a number of ways in which the arm's length principle is applied in the operations of fine arts councils. These include the role of the board of trustees, the use of peer evaluation to foster the development of artistic excellence and the nature of client relations.

The Board of Trustees

One feature of arts councils essential for the operation of the arm's length principle is the board of trustees, whose members collectively constitute the council itself. Members of the board are generally appointed by the government of the day. It is to the board that the State entrusts responsibility for the activities of the council; that is, after being appointed, members of the board are expelled to act as "legal trustees," independent of the political needs of government. It is public confidence in the integrity and ethics of board members that ensures that government remains at arm's length from the council. Ideally, members of the board should be individuals with wide knowledge and experience of the arts. The purpose of boards, "apart from the democratic wish to prevent the power of public patronage [from] being too narrowly concentrated, is to create an organization which can reach out into the community and be sensitive to community needs and conditions as well as to movements in the arts."⁵¹ Thus, the board of trustees ought to be very sensitive to the political implications of public opinion.

The essential role of the board is to act as "an intermediate body, responsibly and accountably disposing of public money and including in itself people with direct current knowledge of the arts and their administration."⁵²   In this intermediary role, the board is responsible for keeping politicians and bureaucrats at arm's length from the day-to-day operations, and from political directives and pressures; for preventing ministry officials who may have no background in the arts from handing out money as a form of patronage; for ensuring that judgments about the arts are made by professionals in the field; for serving as a buffer between government and the arts; and for acting as an advocate of the arts to government and the general public.

Peer Evaluation

The arm's length arts council uses a system of peer evaluation to ensure that its granting decisions are based upon professional assessments that are then approved, or from time 'to time rejected, by the board of trustees. The peer evaluation system lies at the heart of the arm's length arts council. This system has its origins in English law. It rests on the premise that justice imposed by the lords on commoners is unjust because the circumstances of lords and commoners are radically different. ⁵³  Therefore, an artist ought to be judged by his or her peers, and, accordingly, other artists are involved in grant-making decisions.

We believe that any judgment brought to bear on a work of art in our interest will be a subjective judgment and that any person we consult can only give us a subjective opinion, however stern his own inner disciplines may be. Therefore what we are seeking as criteria is in fact a consensus of subjective judgments from people who, through long commitment to the arts, have developed a controlled sensitivity to the means of expression and a profound understanding of the content. Where this consensus can be accumulated a kind of objectivity results. ⁵⁴

A similar system of peer evaluation is used in determining funding by scientific and medical research councils around the world. Although objectivity is generally more apparent in the sciences than in the arts, scientists and professional medical researchers must be used to make granting decisions, because they are generally the only people qualified, or sufficiently knowledgeable, to do so.

Client Relations

An arts council has, in effect, two distinct sets of clients, the artists and arts organizations. The ways in which an arts council relates to these clients reflect varying applications of the arm's length principle. Arts councils are not generally distant from their artistic clients. Council staff maintain ongoing communications with client arts organizations and artists. Generally, arts council staff try to ensure that applicants for support satisfy not only artistic requirements but also financial, administrative or other criteria.

After clients have received a grant, arts council staff also assess financial and other, administrative reports concerning the use and application of funds to determine whether clients have fulfilled their obligations as proposed in their application. Similarly, staff may also review the artistic activities of client organizations to determine whether other policy requirements, approved by the board, have been met. For example, they might want to know whether an orchestra had fulfilled its Canadian content performance quotas. The findings of these staff assessments are made available to jurors as well as to members of the board of the arts council. Such assessments are then used in the adjudication of subsequent grant applications.

The arts council's relationship with the public involves yet another dimension. In general, arts councils have mandates to support both production and enjoyment of the arts; that is, the arts council serves as both "paymaster and tastemaker."

On the one hand the artists and the organizations through which their work is presented will press their claim for artistic freedom to the limit, and view with alarm anything that smacks of taste-making. On the other hand, members of the public as taxpayers may object strenuously to what they perceive as an insensitivity to community tastes and standards or indulgence of artistic follies . . . . Contending with two would-be masters, the government and the clientele, it can succeed in its role of patron only by maintaining something of an arm's length relationship in both directions. ⁵⁵

Some observers have proposed that arts councils should operate at double arm's length. In this refinement, an arts council would operate at arm's length both from government and from its clients. Thus, an arts council, having assessed the artistic merit of clients, would not direct or control their activities. ⁵⁶  This policy would be in direct contrast with most continental European countries where publicly subsidized arts institutions have little or no administrative independence from government.

The Status of Arts Councils

The effectiveness of the arm's length arts council in fostering and promoting artistic excellence has been reaffirmed in a number of countries in recent years. In a 1982 Report by the Education, Science and Arts Committee of the British House of Commons, Public and Private Funding of the Arts, the Committee was concerned not to disturb existing arrangements where they work well simply for the sake of administrative neatness. The Committee recommended that the Arts Council of Great Britain should have "an assured future and central role in relation to the performing and creative arts." ⁵⁷  Similarly, in 1981 in the United States a Presidential Task Force on the Arts and Humanities "declared the Endowments to be `sound' and recommended that they remain as originally conceived." ⁵⁸

In Canada, the Federal Cultural Policy Review Committee also found that the Canada Council's arm's length relationship with government was necessary and effective. The Committee viewed creative and interpretive activity to be the principle responsibility of the Canada Council and that such activity had "the greatest vulnerability to political direction and the greatest need for autonomy."⁵⁹  Similarly, the arm's length status of the Ontario Arts Council was also reaffirmed by the Ontario Special Committee on the Arts in 1984. ⁶⁰

The arm's length principle as applied to arts funding has thus been reaffirmed in many countries as the most effective means to foster and promote the fine arts. However, the autonomous arts council remains the subject of ongoing international debate and now confronts "a volatile situation where the arts are thriving and vocal, the community is more aware and equally vocal about its need for the arts, while government is both interested and more inclined to interfere." ⁶¹

CONVERGENCE

Continental Europe, the British Commonwealth and the United States have each experienced a different evolution of public support of the fine arts. This reflects the differing political and cultural traditions of the various countries. In the United States, the tradition has been one of separation of church and state, free market competition and, particularly before the imposition of the income tax, private philanthropy. Based upon these traditions, the United States has adopted the Facilitator role. In Britain and other Commonwealth countries, governments have distanced the arts from the State, preferring to apply the arm's length principle through autonomous arts councils. The European experience has primarily been that of the Interventionist, reflecting the role played by the absolute monarchs from the seventeenth to late nineteenth centuries ⁶² as well as the earlier role of the medieval Church. Czarist "autocracy" combined with Communist ideology has resulted in adoption of the Engineer role by the Soviet Union.

One observer has suggested that in the last decade there has been "a slow convergence" between the Patron role embodied by the arm's length arts council and the Architect role embodied in the Ministry of Culture. ⁶³  This convergence, however, is only part of a more general trend that reflects a number of factors including the changing structure and nature of the economy, declining real resources available to the public sector and the rapid growth in the size and importance of the arts industry. The major trends leading toward a convergence of roles are outlined below.

Toward the Facilitator

The Facilitator State funds the fine arts through tax expenditures made on behalf of private patrons. Two factors are leading many countries toward the Facilitator role. The first is the decline in available public resources coupled with growing deficits. This decline has led many governments to consider what appears to be the outstanding success of the Facilitator role as practiced iii the United States. In the United States, tax expenditures, in the form of charitable donations, provide about two-thirds of all public support to the arts. ⁶⁴

The second factor leading various governments to consider an enhanced Facilitator role is the increase in corporate sponsorships of fine arts activities. The "up-scale" nature of the fine arts audience - that is, high levels of education and income ⁶⁵ - is an attractive market for many corporations. Corporations increasingly sponsor fine arts activities, not as charity but as a major marketing technique. Sponsorship reflects the correspondence between a corporate target market and the arts audience. Sponsorships are made from corporate or public relations budgets, rather than from donations budgets. As a business expense, corporate sponsorships are also tax deductible.

British, French, German, Canadian and other governments are currently engaged in various studies and efforts to enhance tax incentives for private sector donations to the fine arts. At first glance, the Facilitator role is an appealing option in a time of limited public resources because tax incentives are not reported as government expenditure. However, the Facilitator role has a number of drawbacks.

First, private patrons tend not to support controversial productions or new innovative art forms. For example, the Canada Council, in 1982, was the primary supporter of dance and theatre, art forms that tend to be controversial because of esoteric experimentation, scatological language, political themes or frontal nudity. The private sector, on the other hand, was the largest supporter of music and opera, art forms that draw on an established repertoire and tend not to be controversial.⁶⁶

Second, corporate donations and sponsorships are inherently "cyclical" in nature. When the economy is good, corporate donors and sponsors increase support to the arts. But when the economy is bad, times when the fine arts generally need increased support, private donations and sponsorships decline. Furthermore, private patrons tend to suffer from "money illusion," an illusion that also plagues support from the public sector. Real support, measured in constant dollars, declines or remains stable in times of inflation, while the nominal value of the donation, measured in current dollars, increases rapidly.⁶⁷

Third, problems with corporate sponsorship have been reported by some arts groups. Corporate sponsors from time to time try to exercise control over artistic standards to ensure the highest possible public relations value to the corporation. Such commercial interference can be as much of a threat to artistic freedom as political interference. Unfortunately there is no statistical information available concerning sponsorships, partly due to the confidential nature of advertising spending. The Institute of Donations and Public Affairs Research has initiated a survey of corporate sponsorships. Preliminary results suggest that in Canada the number of corporate sponsorships of cultural events now exceeds sponsorships of sporting events.

Fourth, tax expenditures cannot generally be targeted because funding decisions are made by corporate, foundation and individual donors according to their own tastes. Furthermore, the cost of tax expenditures is very difficult to calculate and can seriously erode the fiscal strength of the public sector.

Finally, although the American system is envied by many countries, it is a fact that most Western countries already have tax expenditure policies in place. These financial incentives do not appear to the authors to be less attractive than those provided by the government of the United States. The relatively low level of donations in other countries appears to reflect differences in cultural factors rather than in financial incentives. In Canada, for example, the same financial incentives are available to corporate and private donors in the Provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Yet available statistical evidence indicates that donations are significantly lower in Quebec, reflecting an Architect tradition in which the State is expected to provide the bulk of support to the arts directly through grants rather than through tax expenditures.

Toward the Patron

The Patron State funds the fine arts through arm's length arts councils. In countries such as Sweden and the Netherlands, where the Architect role predominates, the arts are funded through ministries of culture and are treated as part of the overall national social welfare policy. Both countries have, however, adopted a limited version of the arts council. In Sweden, it is called the Staatens kulturrad; in the Netherlands, the Raad voor de Kunst. Both differ from the British and Canadian arts councils because they are strictly advisory bodies at present. The ministries have the final say in how funds are distributed. Nonetheless, the creation of these councils represents an apparent convergence of the Patron and Architect role in both countries.

In West Germany, the situation is unlike that in most other European countries, but similar to the Canadian experience because of the confederate nature of government. According to the Constitution of the Federal Republic. of Germany; the lander (the regional governments) are responsible for funding and policy concerning education and culture. The federal government is restricted in its ability to support the arts because of the experience of the Nazi regime. No federal ministry or arts council can exist. Although. the arm's length principle is not explicitly expressed, the Constitution requires all public support of culture "to respect and defend artistic freedom and refrain from influencing methods, content and trends."

This mandate is succinctly summarized in the Constitution by the statement: "art is free."⁶⁸  Both the federal and Binder governments, however, are considering creating a semi-private national (as opposed to federal) grant-giving council somewhat similar to the Canada Council.

In the United States, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was established in 1965, and by the end of the 1970s state arts councils had been established in all of the states of the union, reflecting a shift toward the role of Patron for U.S. federal and state governments. Within Canada, some provincial governments have also moved toward the Patron role. In the Province of Alberta, the ministry of culture-Alberta Culture- has used lottery funds to create several independent arts foundations and other institutions. ⁶⁹

Toward the Architect

The Architect State funds the fine arts through Ministries or Departments of Culture. Artistic enterprises, however, maintain autonomy in artistic decision-making. In a number of countries there has been a trend away from the Patron role toward the Architect role in public. support of the fine arts. A number of factors have contributed to this trend. The first is the increasing financial needs of large arts organizations as they mature to "world-class" status. This maturation tends to be a function of 'a number of factors including development over a period of years of consistently high professional standards, international exposure and acclaim of these standards and, to a lesser extent, large-scale and complex operation. All of these factors increase the absolute amount of resources required.

In the performing arts, for example, rising costs result when larger companies maintain an extensive repertory with associated costs of rehearsals, sets, props, costumes, storage and back-stage machinery; operate professional development and training programs or professional schools to bridge the gap between academic accreditation and professional excellence; risk a steady stream of original works to challenge the audience and maintain the competitive edge of the company, and tour, the world with all the attendant financial implications.

World-class arts organizations may also diversify into multimillion dollar, and multipurpose facilities including restaurants, bars, parking and other activities. Such activities offer career development opportunities for Canadian arts administrators and thereby contribute to an upgrading of financial and management practices. These activities increase the competitive edge of Canadian arts organizations. But world-class scale also has greater down side risk, for absolute losses are an order of magnitude greater than they are for small arts institutions.

Second, as the financial needs of large arts organizations have increased, most arm's length arts councils have been receiving declining real resources from government while simultaneously confronting the increasing needs of the maturing national arts community. As the arts community grows from a small intimate group of individuals into a national community, the need for intra- and inter-community communications tends to increase, e.g., conferences, periodicals and seminars as well as service and support organizations. Similarly, as an arts community matures, the need for, and the fees of, experienced and talented artists increase.

Furthermore, like the sciences, the arts are a dynamic area. New art forms emerge from time to time. If these new and emerging art forms are to be fostered and promoted, arts councils must provide support to new clients at the same time as they are increasing their support of large organizations to allow them to attain or maintain world-class status. Failure to support the maturation of individual artists, arts organizations and the arts community as a whole encourages emigration of talent, both artistic and administrative, to other jurisdictions more able and willing to support excellence. This results in a loss of artistic development opportunities, highly qualified human resources and the economic spin-offs associated with a strong and vigorous artistic sector.

The pressure of large arts organizations on the declining budgets of arts councils has resulted in increased pressure on governments to intervene directly. In Great Britain, for example, the Arts Council continues to be the principal fine arts funding body. However, direct support is also provided by the Office of Arts and Libraries. A recent review of the activities of large performing arts organizations in Britain recommended that the Office of Arts and Libraries assume direct responsibility for funding such large institutions.⁷⁰  Although the government did not accept this recommendation, it did earmark funds for such institutions through the Arts Council. Similarly, in Australia, the financial inability of the Australia Council to provide more funding to the Sydney Opera has led the Opposition party in the federal parliament to call for the abolition of the arts council itself. ^7l  This recommendation has not been accepted by the government.

In Canada, the Canada Council also continues to be the primary fine arts funding agency. However, real resources available to the Council have declined for almost ten years.⁷²   In order to foster and promote small, new
innovative arts organizations, the Council has reduced support to large institutions, which have, in turn, pressured government for direct funding. A similar situation has also arisen in Australian. ⁷³  Thus, in Australia, Britain and Canada the dilemma is the same for arts councils and large arts institutions.

Although some may have been convinced that a well-disposed political gift horse should not be examined too closely, others remained strongly aware of the risks to the arts which can result from arts councils encouraging, ignoring or acquiescing in moves by the political arm of government which prevent a broad bi-partisan commitment to the arts. ⁷⁴

Another factor leading toward the Architect role has been the development of a new, unconventional source of public finance, specifically, lotteries. Over the period from 1970 to 1980, lotteries developed as a major new revenue source for the arts in Canada.⁷⁵  Lottery funding, however, has not accrued to arm's length arts councils except in the case of the Manitoba Arts Council. Rather, it has gone to ministries of culture. At the national level, lottery funds were used in 1979 to create the Program of Special Cultural Initiatives of the Department of Communications. Department funding of the fine arts includes deficit retirement, and capital and equipment funding, activities the Canada Council has been unable: to continue supporting because of limited financial resources. The Department has also increased funding of touring and special projects conducted by fine arts organizations, activities the Canada Council still supports.

At the provincial level, lottery funds permitted the creation of provincial ministries of culture during the 1970s. Lottery-funded ministries of culture at the provincial level radically altered the pattern of arts support in only ten years.

The pattern of support to the arts in the 1950s and 1960s was one of arm's length agencies created by the provinces, but with the provinces playing a relatively small role. Both the provinces and the arm's length agencies tended to take direction from the program initiatives of the Canada Council. By the mid-1970s the arts support pattern had changed to one of provincial ministries of culture using lottery revenues playing the leading role in innovative arts support programs . . . . The role of arm's length agencies declined, both in relative dollar terms and in terms of initiating innovative support programs. ⁷⁶

Similarly, the Massachusetts Arts Tottery was used to create local Arts Lottery Councils rather than giving resulting lottery revenues to the Massachusetts Council for the Arts and Humanities. The very success of the arts lottery has led to a passionate debate within the state. There is serious questioning as to whether the two arts funding structures should be combined and, if they are, whether the fine arts or the amateur arts will gain.⁷⁷  In general, state or provincial lottery funds hate been used to develop the amateur rather than the professional fine arts. The resulting growth in the amateur arts, or community arts, is another significant development during the last decade.

A third factor has been the increasing pressure of government to achieve egalitarian social policy objectives, which may inhibit attainment of artistic excellence. These objectives include equality of opportunity regardless of age, sex, color or religion. Such objectives, if imposed on arts councils by quotas or equivalent techniques, do not allow for the fact that the distribution of talent and promise is random and changes over time.⁷⁸  The long-term social policy objectives of governments tend to be effected through bureaucratic methods that do not allow for the dynamic nature of artistic activity and talent.

In most government activities, the civil service is concerned with the preservation of the status quo to maintain stability in the general running of the country while governments change and ministers come and go. They cannot readily respond to the rapidity of change which reflects a healthy arts scene. ⁷⁹

A fourth force leading toward the Architect role has been increasing public pressure for censorship of new electronic media. The rise of the video cassette has been accompanied by increased public awareness and sensitivity to the sex-and-violence issue in the commercial and the fine arts. Public pressure has been increasingly exerted on the fine arts. New legislation has been introduced in the Province of Ontario, for example, that compels video cooperatives and other fine media arts institutions to license art works before they can be exhibited. ⁸⁰


Toward the Engineer

The Engineer State owns all artistic means of production. In many Western countries there is a trend toward the Engineer role, not with respell to the fine arts but with respect to the development of a profitable, export-oriented commercial arts industry. This trend, however, does have significant implications for public support to the fine arts. It has been fueled by four factors. 

First; the cultural dominance of the United States in the commercial art has become a priority policy concern in many countries. For example, the French Minister of Culture, Jack Lang, has called for "a crusade against American entertainment, which he condemned as a financial and intellectual imperialism that no longer or rarely grabs the territory but grabs consciousness, ways of thinking, ways of living."⁸¹  Canada has explicitly recognized this threat in the restructured Investment Canada Agency (formerly the Foreign Investment Review Agency) by specifically designating culture as a sector requiring special monitoring. Concern about the geopolitical implications of American cultural products has been reflected in studies conducted in the United States itself.

Upon this ever-shrinking globe all societies and all cultures are involved in an inevitable struggle for pre-eminence and survival. Those who shape tomorrow's world will be those who can project their image in order to exercise a dominating influence and long-range control. If we wish our values and style to triumph, we are forced to compete with other cultures and other centers of power. ⁸²

Second, insofar as the commercial arts have become a preoccupation of government, they have overshadowed the fine arts. This dominance has been the case especially in Canada. For example, between 1978 and 1984 the Government of Canada dramatically increased direct and indirect funding of "end-product" commercial arts, compared to a significant decline in support for the research and development-oriented fine arts.

There are two dimensions to the federal commercial arts policy. First, with respell to its own agencies, the federal government has "engineered" a Canadian communications conglomerate consisting of Telefilm Canada, funded by a special cable television tax, concerned with financing; independent producers, supported by tax expenditure and grant policies, concerned with production; the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, funded by Parliament, concerned with distribution; and the National Film Board, funded as a department of government, concerned with process research and development. Second, with respect to the private sector, the Government of Canada created a commercially viable media arts industry through regulatory changes. Progressively, through its licensing agency, the Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission, the Government of Canada created a commercial television industry in the 1960s, the most extensive cable television system in the world in the 1970s and a pay-TV system in the 1980s. As in the case of copyright, by legislation and regulation the State created a marketplace and profit-making opportunities that previously did not exist. Given the important role played by legislation and regulation in national arts policy, institutional economics with its emphasis on maximizing behavior in the context of culture and lawprovides appropriate methodologies for the study of the economics of the arts. ⁸⁴

Third, economic impact studies have, over the last five to ten years, increasingly demonstrated the employment, revenue and tourist impact of the fine arts.⁸⁵  The increasing recognition of the economic implications of the arts has led to increasing government involvement in the fine arts, for example, the September 1984 designation of arts administrators as occupations of national importance for purposes of the Canadian National Training Act.

Fourth, Western governments from time to time have interfered with artistic freedom in the name of national security. The most dramatic example was the activities of the Congressional Committee on Un-American Activities in the early 1950s. The careers of several prominent artists, including the "Hollywood 10," were destroyed for alleged Communist affiliations.

In Canada a "separatist" provincial government was elected in Quebec in 1976. The electoral victory of the separatist Parti Quebecois occurred partially in response to support from the Quebec artistic community. In federal cultural agencies, including the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the National Film Board, the federal government investigated, blacklisted and, in some cases, fired journalists and artists with separatist affiliations. The Canada Council was one of the few agencies receiving federal support to resist successfully pressure to apply political standards to arts funding. The Council was not immune, however, to a general decline in federal political and financial support of the fine arts.

In Great Britain, the Thatcher government was recently accused of pressuring the board of the British Broadcasting Corporation to stop a program featuring two alleged members of the Irish Republican Army and the Protestant Ulster Defense Force from being aired, even though both were duly elected representatives of the Ulster legislative assembly.⁸⁶   A national broadcast news strike followed compliance by the BBC. This strike demonstrated the deep and widespread concern of artists and journalists that government was engineering the news and threatening the independence of the BBC.

The BBC does not know which crisis to panic over first. Its role as a publicly funded institution is being questioned by an official inquiry; its autonomy is being questioned by everybody, after the decision not to broadcast a television documentary about extremists in Ulster. Then comes the story, in the Observer newspaper last weekend, that the state security service has been vetting and blacklisting lots of BBC employees and would-be employees from an office within the corporation's labyrinthine headquarters, Broadcasting House. What price editorial independence? ⁸⁷