The Sunday News
Raisedon Baya
YES, the era of art for art’s sake is long gone and forgotten. Today the thrust is on art as a business. Today every serious artiste must make a living out of their talent or art — or at least have the majority of their income coming from art or their talent.
Artistes and arts institutions, alike, continue finding ways to sustain themselves in this unpredictable and harsh economic environment.
Today viability and profitability have become crucial words in the sector. How does an institution survive and continue to push production and development in the sector? How does the artiste continue to live on what he/she makes from his/her art?
Fading away is the myopic and dangerous view that art and artistes must depend on donor funding to survive. To be honest, donor fatigue has become a living nightmare for many in the sector. Several arts institutions in the country have gone under while hundreds, if not thousands of artistes have packed their bags and left the sector, all due to viability problems.
I have attended conferences and workshops and meetings centred around turning the arts into a business sector. I honestly think we have been big at talking and very small on actions. Too much rhetoric.
The artiste has been found wanting in terms of actions, so are Government and the donor community. For example, what business models are most artistes following? How does one expect to make a living from one show a year?
Having no shows simply means having no income. We all know all businesses survive on income. Our artistes need to start making money. They can only make money by selling products — not once a year but regularly.
Recently, I read a book, a biography of an English actor who lived in England in the early 1900s. In the book the actor talks of travelling and struggling to put up performances in different theatre every week just to keep the acting company alive and the actors paid.
Compare that to our situation. Which are the existing theatre companies in the city or country?
How many shows do they put up per month or per year? Look at musicians. How many claim to be fulltime musicians? How many shows do they do per month or per year? I repeat, a business without an income is a dead business.
As for the donor community besides supporting workshops to talk about turning art into business what else have they done?
Have they put up a fund or a loan facility to help those who want to take their craft to another level?
We have seen in other sectors donors setting up facilities to help small businesses grow. We are yet to see that in the arts.
Local banks don’t even consider art a business. They have no loan facility for the arts and that says a lot about what financial institutions think about the arts sector in this country.
We urge Government to do more and assist artistes and come up with a funding facility for the arts or artistes that want to make art a business.
We have heard about a fund for small-scale farmers, a fund for small-scale businesses, a fund for youths who want to go into business. and we believe artists should also be looked after.
There is so much potential for the arts to become a big business.
