An interesting BBC News interview/overview with copyright activitist Larry Lessig suggests that the 21st century is bringing a burst of amateur culture and creativity. Says Lessig:
”Digital tools are inspiring creativity in a way that I do not think we have seen in a very long time….If you think of the 20th Century as this period of professionalising creativity — you’ve got the film and recording industries which become the professional creators, separating and stifling in many ways the popular culture.
”I do not think you are going to see the elimination of the professional creators but you are going to see it complemented by a much wider range of amateur culture in the original sense of the word amateur — in that people do it purely for the love of creating.”
The article points to the boom in weblogs, personal web sites, audio remixes, digital photos, and podcasting. And it also suggests the inherent tension between this newfound personal creativity and the established creative industries (film, radio, and dare we say, the arts). Says Lessig:
”Many of the professional creators don’t get it — they can’t imagine a world where creativity is not controlled….But they should recognise this amateur creativity has extraordinary potential for them too.”
This issue of personal participation in the creative process has come up before (here too) on this weblog, and will come up again, and again, and again. It’s likely one of the fundamental dynamic shifts in the way creative work will be conceived, created, distributed, and received in the coming decade.
David Pausch says
I think we should dare to include the arts when discussing ”push back” to amateur participation by professional organizations. It is something that, in general, I think many community-based performing arts groups struggle with constantly. Rather than being able to use their local professional organization (say, a LORT theatre) as a resource, mentor, and collaborator, these community groups are often dismissed, overlooked, or just plain ignored by the said professional organization. They are seen seen as ”poor imitators” of the professional organization.
This hurts the community group, because they aren’t as able to tap into the expertise of the professionals, but also hurts the professionals I believe.
Those community organizations are the place where individuals discover and learn about the various artforms…where they form relationships with the art, so to speak. The familiarity that is bred by active participation in amateur activities is something that professional groups could tap into to develop new audiences and funders.
Unfortunately, I think they too often don’t see it that way.
Nick Rabkin says
From time to time the NEA has studied arts participation in the US — usually from the perspective of the numbers of people who buy tickets to museums or the performing arts. Its 1997 study also looked at amateur participation. It found that in a nation of 200 million adults, over 35 million sing in choirs, operas or musicals. Nearly 25 million dance. Over 30 million paint or draw, and nearly 30 million make ceramics. Millions more undoubtedly participate in activities not counted by the NEA. Garage bands. Hip-hop. Folk guitar. These are numbers that would please any mass marketer, and they probably still dwarf the numbers of people using digital tools creatively. People make art informally because it gives them pleasure, they learn from it, it satisfies their need to communicate, tell stories, create beauty, or just make something with friends and neighbors. They know the arts have value and are a good thing in their lives. They deepen their connections to each other. They deepen their understanding of themselves and the world. They remind them of why it is good to be alive. Lessig’s observation about amateurs in the digital world really reflects something that has been true about the arts — but not well recognized — all along.
Not long ago, there was a tsunami of interest (and criticism) in the RAND report, “Gifts of the Muse: Reframing the Debate About the Benefits of the Arts.” Whatever may be wrong about the report, it strikes me that it got one thing absolutely right:
the benefits of the arts are available only through a process of sustained involvement, beginning with powerful “gateway experiences.” It cited research literature indicating that the most powerful engagements with the arts are “hands-on”. Well, guess what? Sustained hands-on experience with the arts is not a bad way to define amateur participation in the arts, is it?
Does it translate into “arts participation” in the ticket-buying sense of the word? Maybe and maybe not. The Center for Arts Policy at Columbia College Chicago did a study of the “informal arts” in Chicago (which very loosely translates to amateur arts) a few years ago. Our study found that some informal artists are among the most loyal and knowledgable members of the broader arts audience, and that informal artists are a far more diverse group than that audience. But we also found that arts organizations did not make particular efforts to find and market to informal artists.
We often frame the arts by thinking about the production and practice of professional artists in non-profit arts organizations. It is quite clear that frame excludes millions of people who are deeply engaged with the arts informally or as amateurs. The future of the arts may just depend on them, though.
Robert Reed says
I am a personal financial planner who works extensively with artists and by extension with arts organizations.
My message to both is that the most important thing an artist does is work with amateurs. This is how artists/art organizations create an audience. No one supports an art form more than the people who have tried to do it and only then realized how difficult it is. This not only creates an appreciative audience but an audience who has some basis for judging a professional’s performance.