The Deserving and the Undeserving Arts

My deserving great grandad, next to the man with the tar barrel.

Back in Victorian Britain, if you were in desperate straits, you had to prove that you were one of the 'deserving' as opposed to the 'undeserving' poor. Heaven help you if you didn't tick the right boxes in terms of general worthiness and conformity with the values of the time, because your bum would be right out of the window and you'd be heading for the streets or more likely the workhouse because 'sleeping out' was illegal too. 

When I was writing A Proper Person to be Detained, it struck me that there are now some correspondences between the deserving and the undeserving poor (at least some of my forebears would probably have been labelled undeserving) and the current state of the arts in this country, where professional creative people who find themselves down on their uppers can expect to get funding only if they are classed as 'deserving'. You have to tick all the right boxes in terms of the dreaded 'outcomes'. There have to be 'outcomes' and if these can be described by buzz words like 'community' and 'well-being' and 'inclusivity' and 'diversity', so much the better. We all have to do good, and prove that we're doing it. 

I can hear the outraged counter-arguments even as I write this. 'Why do you think you should get any funding at all?' But this isn't a post about me. I've done pretty well out of funding support and I expect to carry on working hard at what I do for as long as I physically can. Also it should go without saying that those charged with distributing public funds should certainly make sure that those same funds aren't going to be frittered away on - say - a new kitchen or a holiday. If public money is being distributed, the public should surely get some benefit out of the results. (Wish our politicians would play by those rules though, don't you?) And yes, diversity and inclusivity are well worth supporting. All of this is true.

But not all worthwhile arts projects have obvious or measurable 'outcomes'. And therein lies one of the problems.

I once tutored a writing group in an area of social deprivation in a small Scottish town. It was a pleasure from start to finish. We were inclusive and diverse and I think we fostered a whole lot of well-being. But at some point in its long history, we were told we needed an 'outcome' in order for me to get the vanishingly small sum of money I'd been paid for doing it. And by 'outcome' they meant something that could be weighed and measured. 'People enjoy it,' didn't come into the equation. 'It's good for people's mental health' might have swung it, but how on earth do you measure that? We soldiered on, producing end of year anthologies for a while, but in a mixed group of writers of all ages and stages and literary forms, it was a thankless task. I eventually did it for nothing so that we could jettison the official demands but the wonderful group voluntarily decided to pay a little each week and gave me some cash so that I was never out of pocket with the travelling. 

Over the years, when it comes to the arts, and the need for some kind of funding, I have come to believe that the bodies charged with distributing the cash should, in a good proportion of cases, focus less on 'outcomes' and more on the nebulous set of criteria that go to make up the kind of professional art or writing or music that can seldom if ever be defined in terms of stodgy dodgy box ticking. 

Wonderful writing, as with every other art, comes straight out of nowhere and practically hits you between the eyes with its quality. It doesn't have to be opaque or difficult or snobbish. It can be as popular as you like, but you know it when you experience it and it can be life changing. And it's often art or music or writing that nobody would have predicted beforehand would prove to be so absorbing for so many people. Or as William Goldman says, 'nobody knows anything.' 

Take Craig Mazin's extraordinary Chernobyl. Who could ever have predicted its success beforehand? 

Chernobyl? Who would be interested in that? (Well, I would, but that's another story!) Besides, they would have said, Mazin writes comedy. And I doubt very much if it would have ticked any boxes at all about community involvement or well-being. Definitely not well-being. It might have slid under the funding wire with 'environment' of course. But that would have told you very little about the quality of the writing, the acting, the production, everything about it. 

I don't pretend to know what the answer to this conundrum is, but I know it isn't what we've got right now. The power of professional arts to entertain and inform and enlighten and move and  - yes - to include is too often hedged around with constraints that seem to reduce those arts to very much less than they could be. Practitioners spend too much time jamming their fascinatingly diverse and imaginative projects into a set of uncomfortable one-size-fits-all holes. 

Why are we surprised when what often emerges is deserving but irredeemably 'square'. 

Precious Vintage - Another Potential Income Source in a Precarious World.

For many years now, I've been supplementing my writing income by dealing in antique and vintage items, mostly on a part time basis, although occasionally, when the income from writing has been particularly abysmal, I've devoted a lot more time to this 'second string' to my bow. I used to write for BBC Radio 4 which was a good way of earning a day to day living, but when commissions pretty much dried up about ten or fifteen years ago, I had to find another income source.

It wasn't that I stopped writing drama, just that the BBC, for reasons they have never divulged, stopped wanting what I wrote. I went from being an experienced radio writer with more than 100 hours of well reviewed and varied radio drama under my belt, to being the kiss of death on any submission, almost overnight. There had been no falling out, nothing that I could ever put my finger on. And I still had producers queuing up to work with me. It's just that almost nothing we proposed was ever accepted.  I write this not so much to complain - well, it's a bit of a complaint, or I wouldn't be human! - but really to point out the tenuous nature even of a career that appears to be quite successful.

In reality, it was a blessing in disguise, like so many of these unpleasant crises can be, because it forced me to take stock and make other plans.

With hindsight, and although I had loved radio and had thoroughly enjoyed most of what I had written for this most imaginative of media, I should have quit well before I was pushed. We are much too inclined to stay with what we know. We are also - of course - reluctant to abandon something that pays the bills. But even so, any career that relies on submission and commission from an organisation as capricious as Aunty, is skating on very thin ice indeed. It's one of the reasons why I keep banging on about the need for writers, like all creatives, to be well aware of business realities. You need to think of yourself as a sole trader rather than a humble supplicant, and act accordingly! Most of us learn this quite late in the day.

My husband and I are both freelances, so times were hard for a while. But two things came to my rescue. I had been collecting antique and vintage textiles in particular since I was very young and first went to the saleroom with my mum, who loved pottery and porcelain. Over the years, I had amassed not just the textiles, but a certain amount of knowledge about them. Meanwhile, fiction writing had really taken over from drama for me (although I would never say never if the opportunity to work on a new stage play came along) and my love of antiques in general and textiles in particular began to find its way into my novels and stories, especially my historical fiction. The Curiosity Cabinet and The Physic Garden both involve embroidery and textiles, albeit as only one among many themes in both novels. Some of my short stories involve antiques too - including a few ghost stories.

It occurred to me that one way of filling the income gap left by radio might be to try dealing in antique and vintage collectables. With the wealth of television programmes and magazine articles as well as the general interest in 'vintage', which I had loved well before it became fashionable, this seemed like an idea whose time had come. But my current home area was not the ideal place to take on shop premises and besides, I didn't want that kind of commitment. I had too much writing to do.

It didn't matter. The relative ease of selling online meant that I could work from home. One of the most appealing aspects though was the idea of being in charge, taking control. It's hard to explain to somebody who hasn't been involved with the submission/rejection process central to the 'creative industries'  how difficult it can be. We're not talking about the necessary learning process here. We're talking about a giant game of snakes and ladders during which you can be an experienced professional, climbing the ladders (not making any fortunes, but surviving) but can suddenly and without warning, find yourself sliding all the way down to the bottom of the board within a matter of weeks. In these circumstances, my love of vintage became very precious indeed.

I've been dealing in Scottish and Irish antiques, mainly textiles, but really, whatever takes my fancy, for more than ten years now, and have learned a lot along the way. I've also found my research invaluable in providing inspiration for so much of my fiction. The other factor that helped immeasurably was the ease with which it is now possible to publish, and republish work in eBook form, the possibility of being a 'hybrid' writer, of working with a publisher on certain projects, self publishing others. It makes for a complicated but undeniably interesting working life.

I notice that an increasing number of my friends and colleagues are willing to try their hand at antique and collectable dealing, either online, or at antique markets, or with a combination of both. Often it's because they could do with some money to supplement the family finances but need something that can be part time and flexible. It also occurred to me that some of them were very knowledgeable about their favourite area of collecting, more knowledgeable than some of the dealers I had met, but a little bit nervous of dipping a toe into the waters of selling.

That was when I thought about writing a short guide - by no means a definitive 'how to'  - but something that summarised all the hints and tips I had learnt over ten years or more of trading. Precious Vintage is the result. I should caution that this is in no way a 'get rich quick' scheme. However you decide to do this, hard work and good customer service are the key to making some kind of income. As with writing, other people's experience will be different from yours, and that's fine. But if you've been clearing out your granny's attic and wondering if you might have a go at some trading, then this little eBook guide might be a helpful preliminary read.

You can download it on Amazon UK here. 
The guide is written from a UK perspective, but since so much buying and selling is conducted worldwide, readers elsewhere may find it helpful. You can download it on Amazon.com here.