I was a student in the UK, I graduated in 1982. I trained as a fine art painter. I can still remember the conversations about money obsessed people who understood the cost of everything and the value of nothing. They were passionate, political, personally challenging discussions. They were though, just a few of the fragments of self and group discovery that were happening for me, for all of us. We were exploring ideas, actions, history, the present, possible futures. We were discovering ourselves in new and complicated dimensions. We were discovering how we related to the world, and how it related to us.
There wasn’t much talk of jobs, or careers, certainly not as professional artists. Maybe some talk of teaching or lecturing. There was a lot of talk of art though, in all its forms.
Were we being coached and guided into becoming good economic contributors to society. No. Were we engaging with people who had vision and ideas and interesting views on just about everything. Absolutely yes.
Did we expect society to pay us to be artists once we graduated. No. We were pre Damien Hirst and the who Satcchi BritArt phenomenon. It hadn’t occured to us to exploit the living daylights out advertising and marketing. We were living in Thatchers milk snatching Britain. Some of us were political and angry, some of us were simply happy to learn how to paint nudes life models. We weren’t a homogenised mass of layabout students. We were individuals from all walks of life, learning and becoming fuller more rounded people in the process. I hadn’t mixed with people educated at Sandhurst, or people who had family members in the H blocks, or sons of diplomats, or people whose work hung in the Tate before. I was a working class boy from the north west of England. I got a grant and no family support because a) my family didn’t understand what on earth I was doing studying fine art, b) they didn’t have spare money to give/loan me, and c) I was proud and didn’t want to be cap in hand and beholden to anyone. I didn’t squander money at college, I was brought up with a working class ethic. I made ends meet and I left college with no debt, no prospect of a job, and a degree in fine art.
I was ready to begin a new chapter.
Since graduating I have worked and paid tax ever since. I’m sure I must have paid back my free education by now. I’m sure that I’ve also contributed my share to everything else that successive governments have decided to spend my tax on.
Maybe if I am feeling a little cynical I could say that had I decided to do some kind of free business degree back in the 1980′s then by now I would have been successful and smart enough to make sure that I was in a position to avoid paying much tax at all. Who knows, if I had bought into the greed is good ethos back then, I could be financially secure by now and could be enjoying a life of idle luxury.
I’m not, I’m working as a consultant, partly to bring to businesses, some of the innovative ideas and interesting ways of seeing the world that were planted into me back in my student days, into business arenas where experience has demonstrated to me that vision can be more limited and sterile.
Do we create a better society, a better environement if we get rid of the opportunity for less affluent people to study useless arts degrees?
Where will the affluent of our society go to experience art, to engage with it and who knows even invest in it when it’s no longer being produced?
Don’t we need a society where we have people who think differently, creatively, extaordinarily, magically, existentially, uncomfortably. Unconventional and counter-intuitive ideas don’t come from nowhere. Imagination and rediculous optimism are fertile enviroments for growth. Not much that is positive and helpful will grow in a climate of fear, debt, conforming, and being risk averse especially in young people.
To paraphrase from Funky Business, when you put a gun to the head of creativity, creativity rarely wins.
Dismantle the infrastructure that supports the development of the arts. Drive young minds to believe that only an education that promises a good job (ecomimically high paying) is worth pursuing. Make creative thinking a luxury item and what will we achieve?
The debt may be lower, but will we really be a more competitive and entreprenurial nation?
Will we have been busy building a future that is hopeful and thriving for the majority, or one that works well only for the masters of the universe and their offspring?
The arts have a cost for sure, art education being one of them. I would argue that the value that they deliver back in to society is more than paid back economically, and that’s really only a very small part of where the value begins.
