Arts Grant Writing Choices
As my wife and I gather the willpower to put together a large arts grant proposal for our fledgling ensemble... we have been reading through the requirements, and doing research on other arts organisations. And quite frankly... as we have always been when delving nto this sort of thing... we have been horribly depressed by the whole thing.
On both the grant giving and arts organisation sides... there is this incomprehensible managerial language that is lots of giant words and meaningless sentences about nothing. Mealy mouthed words and theatre (not the good kind...) about pretending to care and do the right thing... but in the end becomes a barely veiled exercise in box-ticking.
Now the grant side of things... well, they aren't musicians, so it is sort of forgivable that they revert to corpo-public-service modes of writing. Well, forgivable is the wrong word... it is just that sort of manner of speaking is just now ingrained as a substitute for actually being competent.
But on the artistic side of things... bleah! Unforgivable! Boards that are essentially stacked with well-meaning business CEOs and all the rest of that... that essentially drive arts organisations to be run like businesses... surface and gloss and money first, artistic substance a distant and annoying possible consideration.
The thing that galls me the most is when the administration side of things gets more heavy than the artistic side of things... entire teams devoted to the box ticking and philanthropic donor chasing. Money spent to be chasing money... and to wine and dine the rich. Yuck yuck yuck...
... and the mission statements... high sounding, and full of the correct things to tick off. But for those of us on the ground... hilariously two faced, as we know the sorts of effort they put into the box ticks! The things that bring in the money, and make you look like a giving community oriented arts organisation... that always are given the Z-team effort... but bring in the cash and money, with padded out grants and donor pitches, so that the extra money can fund the other things instead.
Anyway... off the rant and back on track. As our fledgling ensemble considers our approach to making an application for a small multi-year structural funding round... do we play the game, say the right things and the right words? Or do we stay true to our artistic vision, and refuse to play that game and just say things the way that they are?
In the past, we have won small grant rounds... and we refused to play the word salad game. We can't do the game... and we suck at it. Better to stick to what we know and the way that we want to say it.... perhaps it makes for refreshing reading; simple, clear, and to the point... and I'm sure that the grant people can see through the bullshit anyway.
... and our advantage. We don't need the grant... unlike other "arts" organisations... we have deliberately designed ourselves to be financially independent of donors and grants. The extra boost that they provide us is undeniably appreciated... but our existence doesn't depend on them. And that means we can do, play, program, and say whatever the hell we like!
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At the moment the world just seems to be empty platitudes, box ticking, and ass covering. It is the antithesis of the idea of art as good art is meant to challenge the way you see something. I loathe this constrained game playing and regimentation you are supposed to adhere to. I also have real difficulty filling out such forms as the pseudo-ethics you have to adhere to makes me feel uncomfortable in my own skin. I know full well if I'm honest that I won't get what I'm asking for if I'm honest but it just comes out due to lack of self-control.
One of my biggest issues with grants around here is the fact that they try to focus on specific geographic regions and it ends up excluding a huge part of the population that could use the funds. Most specifically when grants say they give preference to low income urban schools. Hello, us rural schools aren't living high on the hog either, we could really use the money!