Publicly Funded Art

17 May 2018
The Work of Art, National Galleries of Scotland

Transcription

(00:00-00:38)

Ellie Harrison: I’m Ellie Harrison. I’m an artist based in Glasgow and what I’ve got here – this is the first week of media coverage from The Glasgow Effect. This is a document, it’s probably about an inch thick… printed out by Creative Scotland for me actually, because they have a subscription to this Press Data thing which will search for every time Creative Scotland is mentioned in the media and then send them a copy of it. So their inbox was pretty full that week [laughs]… just put it that way.

(06:58-08:11)

Jan Patience: Spending public money on art still walks hand-in-hand with controversy, as Glasgow-based artist Ellie Harrison found out:

Ellie Harrison: I was lucky enough to get a £15,000 grant from Creative Scotland. That is the top limit of the smallest grant pool that they give out… I think, you know, as soon as you’re taking public money you kinda become public property to a certain extent and people want to see a return on their investment [laughs]…

They started this rumour that I was from London [laughs] which is true, but I haven’t lived in London since 1998… And that I’d just been paid £15,000 to move up here to see how the Glaswegians do it [laughs], which is, you know, a complete lie. And people, kinda understandably, got a bit annoyed that somebody was being paid this public money to do this so called ‘poverty safari’.”

(18:33-20:52)

Jan Patience: In 2016, Ellie Harrison devised what she called an ‘action research project’ called The Glasgow Effect. Her idea was that she would stay in Glasgow, her home city, for a whole year, cutting her carbon footprint and measuring the impact she would have working as an artist in a community-based context.

When the story broke in early 2016, that Ellie had received £15,000 from Creative Scotland to carry out the project there was a public outcry, in the press and on social media.

Ellie Harrison: I think The Glasgow Effect was an example of a sort of new form of public art really, that could only emerge in the era of social media. And because, you know, a lot of what I’m interested in is dealing with this issue of how do we operate in a more sustainable way, and the contradictions that you face as an artist as somebody who wants to have a sustainable life, but is in the business of making stuff…

So, I’m interested in how you can make spectacles, create an impact without producing material things. And I think that The Glasgow Effect and the social media storm that it kicked off is an example of that, because it was a huge project. You know, a million people saw the Facebook page in the first week… You can’t even comprehend those numbers. Yeah, so in terms of public impact it is enormous, and yes it wasn’t always reflecting on Glasgow in the most positive light, but that was part of it you know, to draw attention to the problems that we face in this city… with the hope of somebody starting to do something more about it. And mobilising people maybe pissed off with me to start to take action themselves.

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Ellie Harrison Louise Haigh and Labour say that they will reform the complex fares system to ensure that passengers are confident that they are getting the best fare; confidence that X is the case, and X being the case are not necessarily the same thing. Simplification of fares would have to include the abolition of many fares. The assertion that simplifying the fares structure would reduce travelling costs is based upon a false premise, that being that the complicated-ness of the fares-and-ticketing structure is the reason why fares are expensive, that is not why they are expensive. They are expensive because the base level is too high. If you massively simplify the fares, one might then always be certain of getting the best available fare because there are no obscure cheaper fare hidden away in a Byzantine monolith, but that best fare is likely the best of a bad bunch. Railway fares are complicated, but it is within this myriad complexity that the nuances which facilitate cheaper options lurk; if you take a sledgehammer to the behemoth you bring down the cheaper options which lurk within the behemoth. If there are presently 18 options for doing Thing X, with 15 of those ways being cheap, and 3 of those ways being expensive, if you abolish the 15 cheap options for doing thing X you have massively simplified the paying-to-do-Thing X process because having 3 ways is much simpler than having 18 ways, and you have made it such that one is highly unlikely to not notice the cheapest of the available fares, because one is more likely to notice something when it is one amongst 3 than if it is one amongst 18, but it is nevertheless the case that the person is selecting the cheapest of the 3 most expensive. (i) Being guaranteed to always get the best fare; and (ii). getting cheaper fares are not necessarily the same thing. Be mindful of the actual specific wording of things: both before and after coming into government, Labour has never in actually promised cheaper fares, what Labour has promised is that one will be guaranteed to get the best available fare. The general public, politicians and public-transport campaign organisations alike have been seduced by the word 'simplification'. Simplification is not a virtue in and of itself. Simplification is a neutral concept, neither a good thing nor a bad thing; what is pertinent and important is the nature of the simplification. One can simplify travelling costs upwards. Simplification can simplify out the cheaper options. I deliberately say 'travelling costs', not 'fares', because thinking only terms of fares when it comes to simplification of railway fares and ticketing, and when it comes to Single-Leg Pricing is a proverbial red herring, one should think both in terms of fares AND in terms of travelling costs. Fare decreases do not necessarily mean travelling-cost. LNER is a prime example: with the June of 2023 introduction of Single-Leg Pricing on LNER, and the February of 2024 introduced of the Simpler Fares pilot, travelling costs for using LNER have gone up. Two halved-in-price Singles are more expensive than one Day Return; a fare reduction, but a travelling-cost increase. The changes December of 2023 fares-and-ticketing changes on c2c have many of the same fare-decreases-but-travelling-cost increases as LNER, plus its pay-as-you-go tap-in-tap-out integration with Transport for London (to simplify things) has necessitated the introduction of a weekday early-evening peak period between 4.00 p.m. and 7.00 p.m., which has numerous knock-on effects which can hugely increase one's travelling costs. The answer is not reform of the fares-and-ticketing structure. The answer is not simplification of the fares-and-ticketing structure. The answer is to decrease the price of all existing fares. Do not abolish any existing fares. Do not introduce any new types of fare. Just make all existing fares 45% cheaper, and leave it at that.

As the idiom goes: 'Be careful what you wish for, because it might come true'. Reform will only be good if it is good reform. We don't need reform, we need good reform. Some might fear that prices would inevitably be rationalised upwards. Inevitably, the rationalisation would rationalise out the cheaper options. Some might fear that reform of the fares-and-ticketing structure would, inevitably, reform travelling costs upwards, and reform out the cheaper options. Some might fear that simplification of the fares-and-ticketing structure would, inevitably, simplify travelling costs upwards, and simplify out the cheaper options. Just take a look at LNER. Be careful what you wish for, because it might come true.

Publicly Funded Art

17 May 2018 The Work of Art, National Galleries of Scotland

Transcription

17 May 2018
The Work of Art, National Galleries of Scotland