[GENTLE READERS: I’m blogging early this week from the Grantmakers in the Arts Conference in Chicago. You’ll find most of my posts co-posted here, and on the official conference blog.]
The Grantmakers in the Arts conference in Chicago is swirling around the question of capital and capitalization in the arts. They’ve released the summary report from their extended conversation on the subject, called the National Capitalization Project. And they plan a series of talking sessions on what that report recommends.
It’s an absolutely essential conversation for any industry, and particularly for arts and culture, where ‘capital’ is both a necessary and harsh companion to creative work. It’s also a relatively impossible conversation to have, since the word casts a sleepy spell whenever it is invoked. It’s like the word “policy,” which we all grant as important but would rather talk about anything else.
So, what’s capital? And why do we need to talk about it? The best definition I’ve heard to date is that capital is “wealth that’s used to make more wealth.” It is money, or machinery, or buildings that are necessary to the production of goods and services, but aren’t consumed substantially in that production.
A factory is capital, as it enables stuff to get built in a warm, dry place. But the factory doesn’t get consumed in the production line. A large machine is capital, because it increases the productivity of workers to get work done. But the large machine doesn’t need to be replenished as often as raw materials. A large wad of money is capital when it is used to buy the factory or machine, or when it sits in a pile to generate return — like an investment or a long-term loan. The principal isn’t consumed or spent, it’s just there to generate interest or future equity.
Yes, I know. Your eyes are glazing over and you feel like drifting off to sleep. That’s the other thing capital does. It ruins a perfectly good dinner party.
But here’s the thing: arts, culture, and heritage endeavors often require capital — buildings, equipment, endowment, cash reserves — to make art work. A theater company that has visions of flyspace and air conditioned audience chambers; the museum that has lots of stuff to keep clean, cool, and secure; the edgy performance ensemble that wants to pay its musicians even though the audience might never come. These all require capital.
In the commercial world, capital is generated from positive cash flow, or invested by folks who see an economic value in the operations, or loaned by banks who’d like a return plus interest. In the nonprofit world, capital can emerge from many of the above (cash flow and banks, particularly) or from this magical other marketplace of contributed income. If you’re passionate and persistent enough, it turns out that people will give you capital and never ask for it back — at least not in money (they’ll want it converted to theater, music, artworks, exhibitions, happy children, healthy communities, and the like).
There’s lots more to talk about. But it was important to get the boring stuff out of the way. Capital is important. Capitalization is a longer word and a bigger subject. That comes next.
OMG… This thinking about capital is so industrial age. The world has moved on. Arts production is moving so fast beyond this model. I feel very discouraged by GIA if this was these were the parameters of their conversation!
Hi Tom,
Thanks for the comments. Are you suggesting that artists and arts experiences no longer require physical spaces to work? That no artistic productions are complex, and none require lots of people, equipment, and physical elements to realize their vision? That there are no arts activities that require money months or years before they receive income related to those activities?
I certainly recognize that there’s a whole world of creative activity that is low-capital and low-cost. But I don’t see ALL of the essential work of art-making and community engagement with creative expression moving to a universe that doesn’t require balanced and pro-active thinking about how to gather, align, focus, and apply financial and physical resources.
But maybe I misunderstood.
Tom: Did I not get it? What you so loosely call “so industrial age” really is the labour and planning required by live (non-digital, virtual-world) art, created, produced and performed by living persons, using tools and media in real time, and in real structures for a live bunch of people in a physical space. As long as human beings are embodied they will (I hope) make embodied, physically based, skill demanding, works of art, and will need labour of all kinds and working capital to do so. It doesn’t matter what you call that money or those tools or resources. They are the non-sexy infrastructure -the bridges, sewers, roads, buildings, energy transformers and carriers- the constructed social systems that ensure fairness like a legal system, universal health care, pension, education, of the art world. They’ll always need to be paid for, as long as live art “takes place”. They are “so real world age”.
Andrew,
Thanks for getting me to clarify. I didn’t mean to suggest that everything/everyone has shifted or changed — moved into the virtual realm and away from the need for physical capital…(and certainly the virtual realm requires massive technological infrastructure itself!). I don’t think about the world in monolithic terms, and I forget to qualify my comments accordingly. My point was that the conversation needs to be far more encompassing and inclusive. Ever since Bourdieu expanded the vocabulary around ‘capital’, it has enabled those without the traditional kind to understand that power rests in more than one place. I read the GIA conversation to suggest that there was only one dimension in the arts, only one understanding of capital — and of where power and possibility lie.
Tom