Business/ Art Podcast EP.3 with Lilli Geissendorfer

Where to find Lili:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lilli-geissendorfer-697a8617/

Transcript:

Tom: Hello and welcome to the Business Art podcast, a new podcast created by BAP to try and open up the conversation about how money and art are interacting. My name is Tom, and on every episode I'll be having a chat with someone from the arts about art and money. This time I am going to be joined by Lilli Geissendorfer who has most recently been the Director of Jerwood Arts and the Deputy Director of The Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, however not too long ago, very excitingly, she became  the director for the Theatre Green Book. 

*Whoosh sound effect* 

Thank you so much for having a chat with me and for joining me for hopefully the next half  hour so we can talk a little bit about freelance artists after this and how we fund them or drive resources to them. Before we get into it though I have a bit of a different question for you and while I was preparing for this podcast, one of the threads I found throughout your life was about cycling and I was very impressed by your strava profile as well - I thought it was much better than my non existent one and I remember one of the first times we met in person, you came to the show I was working on the Barbican  and you cycled there and it was mid November and it was probably about two degrees or something like that and I was so impressed with it and since then, I tried to cycle to more theatre shows. And I started finding my favourite little theatres to cycle to based on like whether I feel odd in there in cycle gear. I've never been to the opera in lycra yet and things like that and so I think I found my favourite. I think it's Camden People's there, because they do a thing where if you bring your cycle helmet into the bar, when you buy a drink, you get 25% off, soft drinks to sort of encourage people to cycle in which is quite nice. And I just wondered  as you've just been Director of the Green Book, do you have a favourite theatre to cycle to or … if you have to be impartial now you are the director of the Green Book, how do we get more people to cycle to see shows?

Lilli: Okay Tom what a way to start. Thank you so much for having me first of all and  what a brilliant bit of Googling you've done. I feel utterly outed and … Yes, my cycling is on Strava… but more than that I have been a cyclist and cycled to theatres all my theatre going life. And so, yeah, I do have a really strong set of opinions about cycle racks in the vicinity or not … of the front of house and I guess I probably should be quite impartial on this one. I think for me it's probably is more about the conditions on the day. So I remember that trip to the Barbican. I've definitely gotten quite in sort of I guess … I don't mind showing off my cycle helmet in the foyer amongst the suited and booted. I guess in a funny way, you feel every time you do it, you feel a little bit like you are flying a flag haha but I'm usually quite sweaty and I guess one of the things it always makes me think is can we turn down the heating in this foyer keep our coats on a bit longer and so you could encourage cycling, perhaps by kind of, allowing for a climatization in the foyer, for those who've arrived with a bit of heat. 

T: Yes, one thing I always thought as well is them not just the climatization but you know if … when a theatre is next doing a capital project feel free to add showers in front of house as well for anybody who has cycled in. I would love that, but it might be a bit expensive in the current climate

L: And to be honest, the Camden People's Theatre is definitely my favourite -  the 25% off … a, it means I'll definitely buy a drink but it does just feel like you're recognized for having taken alternative transport there. I know that some places do kind of stuff around encouraging people, not to take their cars, but I don't know about anywhere that actively encourages cyclists, or the walker, the pedestrian, or the wheeler, or the roller. And so I feel like maybe other theatres could take a leaf out of CPTs book and be a bit more innovative in that respect, but yes with apologies, to many people I've sat next to a bit sweaty, it's definitely the way forward.

T: This makes me think of another thought is that and if anybody's listening and has some free time, why don't we have cycle nights at theatres? Where for that night, you're encouraged to attend in your cycle gear. It's one night in the four week run, encourage people to cycle in, everybody's gonna be sweaty, so you're not self-conscious and t's just sort of a chance for everybody to come together and be sweaty at the same time so you don't feel singled out. 

L: Yeah. I can share that there is a cycling community and the venn diagram of people interested in riding bikes and interested in theatre is greater than I had thought one 

T: Yeah! 

L: and I know quite a few artists, designers, creatives who are all secretly lycra wearers so yeah, I think that might work and it reminds me of way back when I started working, my first, paid job in theatre, was at the Arcola. And one of the things we do with a little bit of funding from the GLA was put on a theatre by Bike Festival where the single kind of innovation was that you had to cycle between six venues in East London, including Cafe Otto and the Arcola is the sort of main hub for this sort of day long festival of performance by bike and this is literally back in the 2006. So a very long time ago, but I don't think I've managed to combine cycling and theatre in my job since which is clearly a deep failing on my part. And yeah, I should do something about that.

T: Yeah, I think a few people have managed to combine it a little bit. I know that you can get shows powered by bike and things like that now, and I've heard of the handlebards who do Shakespeare, I don't know if it’s Shakespeare on a bike or cycle around the set. I can't quite remember what they do, but it's sort of Shakespeare and cycling brought together, which I think is a great idea as well. 

L: Amazing. I have not heard of them.

T: Yeah, there's a few cycling programs in the rural touring network kind of thing about moving shows around on bikes, which are doing some really great work and yeh have a look there, if we do want to massively change cycling policy around arts all of a sudden but we are here to … 

L: We should move on. 

T: Yes we should move on. One of the things that me and you talked about quite a bit and as we’ve  each other, and something I think you're really knowledgeable about is the way we drive resources or money to independent artists. And I wrote a bit of a short blog about it recently and one of the things I argued in there is that often the sector incentivizes the creation of charities as opposed to the creation of arts and culture and it does this by, you know, most grant makers will only give the charitable legal entities, it's very difficult to get around outside of the Arts Council if you're an independent artists and we're incredibly reluctant to put a sort of large sums of money into the hands of individual artists, a lot of the time unless they form a charge for legal entity.And as soon as you form a charitable, legal entity, it absorbs a huge chunk of the funding on overheads and doing accounts and all these kind of things. I think it's thing we know is happening, but I wondered why do you  think the sector is so reluctant to put large grants on large amounts of money in the hands of individual artists a lot of the time? 

L: It was a brilliant blog and it's a brilliant line of thinking. I think the origins of this go right back to the 19th century and the foundations of the Charity Commission - should think is 1852/53. And at the time, what they were trying to do is protect and support and give money, set up vehicles for philanthropy, that suited the era. And the fact is, although there's been changes to that since,  it's not really touched the sides of the fundamentals of governance and the charitable structures. And so what we've got is a kind of very strong core model, which relies on risk management and relies on a view of people who need help - The deserving poor - as being unable to make decisions for themselves and so being beneficiaries of the benevolent benefactors, the philanthropists of old and therefore you gave your money through your charity to an organisation that would make best interests in respect of orphans or destitute or whatever it was. But you very rarely and still don't ever have a charity that puts money directly into people's hands. And that model into the arts are clearly - No, you don't give money to artists, you give money to arts organisations. So I think the origins go really far back. And are literally as a result of how philanthropy and how charitable giving has been conceived by the establishment and put into law. And that risk aversion to well what if they spend it on something else - if it's a charity, there are structures and ways of holding that thing to account through the laws. And if it's just a person the risk is just perceived as incredibly high and there's very little that kind of pushes against that and we don't have models for that in other parts of the charitable or third sector or very few. And so yeah, we don't give money to homeless people, we don't use this, it's the same, underlying kind of thinking, but yes, I think with the current context where you've got 70% of our sector, in some disciplines more, working freelance, working as individuals, that presents a real problem because you've got a total mismatch of the way creativity and innovation and new ideas are happening at an individual level in collaboration, but fundamentally through individuals own endeavours, and the structures by which the resources are made available. And we can see all around us just how that distorts the flow of resources, and the way we're able to make things happen.

T: Yeah I think maybe another distinction that comes in as well is  the fact that - something a bit unique to the arts sectors is that we have a huge freelance workforce, so the people were advocating to give money to are also workers and so I work in and development and fundraising and a lot of family foundations are maybe older foundation still have questions in their forms that are after charities that are how many volunteers do you have, what your volunteers do, because this is sort of expectation or belief that all charities are sort of affluent people doing good for less deserving people.

L: Yeah.

T: And so we then have to explain to know what we want to commission an artist who is doing work. And that is a valid thing that we should be spending money on, you know there's a conceptual thing there which is really unique as well.

L: Oh absolutely. There absolutely is. And most of the charities will have their mem and arts, and they will have expressed in charitable terms, their core mission and it will be very, very clear that, you can't remunerate someone to make a profit to them - to make any money. It … 

T: Yeah.

L: Even things including a fee for the artist in a project budget - Some funders will be really nervous about that because it's not just paying for the practical physical, materials and other things it is that they - are they making money? And that's … that's not allowed, essentially literally fundamentally at odds. And so yes, you have these kinds of question around how many volunteers do you have? Yeah. It's a very different culture to recognizing artists' work as work, that they should deserve protection under the law as workers. Yeah, and the working conditions …  they are not volunteers in the service of collective imagination.

T: Yeah, and yeah, I don't know that the creative unions would be massively impressed with that and version of the world as well if we start saying that all arts workers had to be kind of creative volunteers in the service of some kind of vision - I don't think that's the modern art sector and maybe there are some routes in establishment  art that go back to that, a long time ago, but I don't think that's what we understand it to be now. And one of the other really interesting things you said was about risk as well and I think we in the outset at the moment love to talk about risk is kind of like the big thing we're all talking about all times - it feels like you can't move through it. And yes, I think risk is baked into risk management or risk aversion is baked into the philosophy and the system of philanthropy, a lot of the time as well. But in terms of the practicalities of when maybe a grant making body is thinking where do we put this money? Whereabouts is the concern about risk often emerging? Is it in a certain kind of discipline within the organisation, or, where is risk, this question of risk management coming from?

L: It's a really good question. I think there's no one single answer … And as you were just saying risk is everywhere, we talk about it a huge amount. We rarely define exactly what is the risk and yes it's a risk but actually measuring the likelihood of it and the potential impact that it might have … getting into that nitty-gritty of detail as a sort of risk management process is quite rare. I mean, certainly I think funders do risk assessments and it's almost all on the basis of financial continuity, what's it called - being a going concern? Is this organisation … has it had previous funding? Does it know how to spend money and process it? Does it look like it can turn over this size of grant? And in a well-managed, professional way, that won't in some way risk our reputation for supporting them. I mean, it’s … that's where they ask the management accounts very practically to have they managed anything of this size before? Does this look like an organisation that can be trusted essentially to do what it says and deliver? 

T: Yeah, I think something you just said about sort of reputational risk is becoming and present in people's minds right now as well. I think I definitely see a lot of concern about the risk of a thing coming from maybe whoever  kind of holds some of the legal responsibility in an organisation as well, because part of it is we're seeing a rise in kind of scrutiny of certain areas of the arts sector, which is largely come from, the kind of dominance of the culture wars, and things like that and the kind of reputational risk of grant makers that if you were to fund an artist to do something just that represent a full endorsement of whatever art they might make not - there's a big I think legal riff that's begun to rear its head, especially in the last kind of five to eight years, maybe, that is really progressed, which is making itself quite heavily known when having those conversations about risk management in a thunder as well.

L: Yeah, absolutely. I think that spot on. There's the financial risk. And of course, trustees will always be thinking if they are the final decision makers And so often, it is them, and they will be thinking about that financial risk but they would also be looking at reputational risk as you say, in the sense of culture war topics. Or, freedom of expression, artistic expression in this case. I think we have this quite traditional look, view of, most boards tend to be a different demographic to most arts organisations staff and associates and artists. And so you see some of those tensions often played out in those decision making moments, and I think it's fair to generalise and say that on the whole because boards bear that final legal responsibility, it's it is there it is their job to keep the charity going, they will tend towards being more conservative and risk-averse, even when a staff team, can give full assurances. So it's …easy? Easier? It's very hard I think and yeh, a culture of risk management and… and a sense that I guess, where does the buck stop? We constantly see this passing of responsibility back and forth between different organisations, legal entities, the charity commission, that go back down again, up, arts councils, other funding bodies, individuals, should they be taking all the responsibility? So, I think this conversation about risk and responsibility is kind of constantly doing somersaults, but it's very few people or organisations are prepared to pick up … but actually hold a space for risk to be taken and take responsibility for it.

T: Yeah I optimistically think we're maybe at the beginning of the change here, which is that we have seen more artists on governance bodies of either funders or organisations and I think that goes a long way and kind of bringing new perspectives governance and considering other things, I think it's gonna be quite a few years of building that but I find some optimism in the movement of artists in to governance positions now, which I think has been one of the big wins over the last few years and in terms of other things we've seen recently … have recently seen Creative Scotland briefly close one of their funding strands for  individuals … I understand the plan is for that to be open at some point now and I don't know if we’ve have any data on this yet, but I know that commissions artists that becoming rare and rarer across the arts too. So in this context of kind of funding is very difficult for artists, get funding, commissions are drying up. Where are the resources coming from? However, all that said, in the middle of the pandemic, beginning when you were with Jerwood Arts you launched a  live work fund  with a group of other funders and this, for the Fund, for people don't know that put large sums of money into the hands of individual artists and we also saw in that time sort of emergency funding from arts council disputed very quickly with very little reporting, kind of accountability between individuals as well. With these funds that kind of popped up in that moment and what do you think it was about the conditions at the time that kind of made it possible and what have we lost from that moment now that means they haven’t sustained their existence.

L: Yeah. Yeah, you're taking me back. I mean, it was what a time what a time to live through and for so many complex reasons freelancers just fell completely through the cracks in those initial covid responses and then at best could access those relatively small hardships grants from benevolent charities and charities with the explicit focus on alleviating hardship which is not the same as a focus on education and arts for public benefit etc. which is what most of the big arts funders are set up to do. So, artists were applying for anything between 250 and 2,000 pounds a time, having to show their financial need, just plugging gaps. It was, it was stressful for so many. I think those conditions were obviously so challenging and not fit for purpose in our sector. When I reached out to the other foundations who became part of the live work fund,  it would have been May 2020 and so Wolfson Foundation, Esmee Fairbairn Foundation and the Linbury Trust … it was an obvious thing to try and do the opposite, and none of them had the mechanisms or the processes to provide open call grants to individual artists. So, Jerwood Art at the time was really well set up to distribute those funds. And the argument that they should be large funds in part rested on the fact that they weren't simply hardship grants, these were to support artistic practices to survive the pandemic, to innovate and thrive through the pandemic, and they were specifically for live work, as the title suggested, that those working in live performance, those musicians and performance-based artists and composers. And so, yeah, we made I think 33 grants of 20,000 pounds each which was of course, a drop in the ocean. But for those 33 artists and over I think it was 1,242 artists who applied … it's amazing, my memory feels very sharp on this because it was testing context for everyone involved, and we felt so responsible for trying to make impossible decisions and I remember, we put together a panel of artists to make those decisions, that was part of it, so there was maybe 18 artists across disciplines across the UK to try and make those decisions. Yeah, I mean the context was just so extreme and we did do a full evaluation, you could see the impact, absolutely. Did I manage to do it again? No, not in that shape and form. And as you say, things despite, I guess a lot of learning and good practice coming out of the pandemic, a lot of things did revert to some sort of new hybrid form of, yes we'll take some of the learning but we also want to go back to a little bit, how things were, and some of the reassurance or assurance with that, I suppose played a part. Yeah, it's really hard to identify, isn't it? Why was it only under that extreme conditions that decisions could be made quickly? Why can't they be made quickly at other times? 

T: Yeah, and I also wonder, I don't know if I believe this point before I say it, but I'm gonna say it out loud anyway, if part of what happened was that the context that people were operating in suddenly looked more like, traditional philanthropy and the psychology of that, kind of you give to people that don't have money to keep them going. And, I wonder if part of, we asked that old version of philanthropy. So embedded in psychologically that we people can hear the arguments now because actually does look like what we understand to be more traditional funky and benevolent funds, and those kind of things. And I don't think that is the kind of story and the life work and told this is their hardship grant or anything like that. It was about sustaining artists, that was really important but maybe other people could hear the arguments. And now and again, there's been some economic stabilisation. I say some just to contextualise that …  people have kind of gone back to it doesn't look like the need for benevolent funds and those kind of things anymore or It doesn't feel as extreme as it feel as traditional and therefore we are not in that moment. I wonder, I wonder sometimes if that is what happened which is maybe a pessimistic way of thinking about it but I think there's something in there 

L:  I definitely think you're onto something in terms of the, the kind of vibes, it was absolutely like, certainly you had that sense that you were unlocking funds for the rainy day. This was kind of the worst it could get. There was definitely no way these artists could earn an income. All their Shows. Performances, etc. cancelled. There was sort of an absolutely crystal clear argument for support in that sense. I mean, as you say the way we wanted to position the fund was, wasn't that in the sense that it felt like artists were yes, they were receiving that sort of emergency support and that was absolutely crucial that all of that existed as well. Every single last penny. But, we also wanted to show that we recognized the huge harm to the kind of imagination that was being done through that time and that you need to give artists space and time, you need to value them as artists. And value their practices and that was really, really important. And that came through in the feedback we got that even though the vast majority of people who applied were not successful just knowing that there was people and funders and philanthropists out there that recognized they were still artists and asked them about their practice rather than how much money have you lost due to the covid … yeh it was a different way of then yeah approaching the situation.

T: I wonder if one of the learnings we might take from is that if we follow this line of inquiry and go maybe it did resemble a more historic version of the philanthropy context and actually that could happen … that, that's some arguments are more effective and money moves very quickly that actually, maybe we  wouldn’t, we almost don't want to replicate what happened there because actually the arguments put forward there would only be successful if the context happened again and…

L: In extreme context.

T: Yeah. And that yes there's a lot we can learn from those kind of things that happened in that very specific moment, but there's maybe another line of inquiry to follow which is that what is … how do we put the argument into the current context, as opposed to trying to distil the arguments that happened at the time and bring them forward because they're not affected here.

L: Yeah.

T: There's some evolution to be found, I think

L: Definitely and there's evolution all the time. So I think most funders did take forward learning and did change their system and processes. And certainly the recognition of how much work, unpaid work goes into application making, that went up significantly, and I think funders are much more aware of the burden that their information seeking places, and there is a lot more commitments across the funding sphere, there are kind of charters nd campaigns within philanthropy to reduce the burden on applicants and to do things differently. And all of those, I think are very positive legacies of that time. It pushed us at Jerwood Arts to also do some really innovative decision including a random, a partial random selection fund in 2022. Which we did it the much lower end of 2,000 pounds for each grant, but it took out any judgement on the art, the track record, the supposed excellence, quality potential of those artists, and used random selection to award the grants and we opened up a forum for conversations around that both before we run it, a series of essays, we published exploring the idea of it, how it felt to artists, pros and cons, plenty of disquire, as well as enthusiasm for a fund that would require, very very little time to apply to, and if you met a very basic threshold and forgive me, I can't remember the exact details, but it was around a length of practice. So, we needed to have confidence that you were committed to being an artist and that was the main one. Then you were going to go into the pot and that was really, really influential in helping me think very differently about how we supposedly make judgments about potential, about talent, about exceptionalism and excellence and how those words kind of hide an awful lot of things in the arts.

T: Yeah, I guess on that topic of kind of judgement and exceptionalism, often when we make the cases funding for individuals, we have to make the argument that we're protecting, exceptional, talent, in some way. 

L: Yes.

T: And it's one of the arguments around time and time again. And I kind of wonder how we begin to define the term exceptional, when we know there are huge disparities in the career progression of artists depending on what their lived experiences are and things like that. And except …  this narrative of exceptionalism strikes me as less of a solution to the problem and more of a sticking plaster that allows something to happen, the argument you use at the time. If we were to get a bit curious instead about things are not sticking plasters about kind of the changes to the system that we might need to see, where might you need to kind of create change the affairs and for freelance artists,you know, where is the, you know if you were in charge of the world for an hour, what would be the levers you would love to just pull that would make all this easier.

L: So, you might have already gathered this, but I am really interested in the nerdy geeky changes in process, in bureaucracy, in the methodologies, we use as, behind the scenes often being able to unlock things. So if I had an hour to change the system, this - Going back to your question about why are we focus seemingly creating all these charities when we want to be generating art,  I would change things like the NPO governance guidance - when you apply to be an NPO, Arts Council has a very nice set of guidance. It sets out the basic kind of governance that you need to have in place. And although it doesn't say you have to be a charity, the bullet points essentially add up to being a charity or looking and, what's it?  Walking like a duck. Quacking like a Duck? 

T:  Yeah. Yeah. I know what you mean 

L: There's very very little flex in that. Whereas if we could open that up with a couple of lines, to include different forms of governance and company structure, you would unlock an, and make possible a very different set of collaborative… Yeah, everything from citizens, sort of the citizens assembly led governance setups and yeh very different forms of organisations and ways of managing risk as we've discussed and so I'd like to do something in there. There were things at a higher level if you like around, how we pay our taxes, how we pick our welfare support. How that works, and how the definitions of work and workers might be tweaked to better reflect and compensate and support the overall workforce of which and recognize the specificities of what creatives and artists do and how they do it in and through those systems. I can't believe we can have AI and these extraordinary innovations and we can't have a more bespoke, more specialist tax and welfare support system, so there's some really geeky things that I think you could do at that kind of structural policy level that would really change the sort of groundwork. The soil that we all work in and provide a much more firm footing, a firmer ground for things to grow in and to kind of go with that metaphor.

T: yeah, I mean I think i like you think that there is something to be pushed at in the legal structures thing, which is that I work a lot of disability arts where we're seeing a massive rise in the number of CIC’s as opposed to charities and part of that has come from if somebody's gonna be in a governance position - so as a trustee of a charity really it's very difficult for you to pay a trustee of a charity and for disabled people who are relying on paying for their own access need and things like that, that's not possible. Whereas a director of a CIC can be paid so we've seen a slight change there and those kind of things 

L: Yeah. 

T:  and I think there is this tense moment of at some point, the dominance of the charity model, somebody has to have a bit of imagination about that and go actually, what happens, it's a bit scary because, it requires …, what happens if we just free ourselves from that reliance and go, let's see what happens.  I guess what we need is kind of … I'm not seeing the curiosity from people at the moment to go let's see what happens if we just let go of it. I think a lot of the time that might be the first step

L: Absolutely.

T: Which is to kind of have some curiosity to go, what happens if you relax this a bit and see what happens? And measure it. And I do think it's somewhere in those legal structures.

L: You just made an absolutely brilliant case for why someone should go and talk to funders. Not about, we all need more money. But actually, you want to increase the diversity of the organisations you fund, you want to fund more disabled-led organizations, have you noticed they are all CICs and…

T: Yeah.

L: therefore not applying to you because you in your small print have said you can't fund them and…

T: Yes.

L: And yet all it would take is a board meeting. That said, are we happy to change our funding criteria to include CICs. Here's some information of how they're regulated and for the board to sign off on that and suddenly, you could be funding so many more innovative disabled-led organisations. So you see how these things are all connected in terms of aligning a vision and values with as I said before, the kind of nerdy back end of the processes that actually enable us to do what we do.

T: I think it's about finding those pressure points to go, how do we release the pressure? And one of those things is, yes everybody would love a bit more money. But actually CICs actually require less overhead costs than charities. You're not duplicating your accounts every year to company's house and charity commission, you know like not doing all of that. So actually there are preexisting pressure points which has precedent for the funders really the knowledge that they can engage with that it would be lovely to see some of those pressed I think. 

L: And it's not my field of expertise, but I was talking to a friend who works in the homeless sector and funders in… about the funding challenges in that sector just the other day and I'm going to just end by saying I'm pretty sure there are funders in different sectors who because that particular sector has also a massive issues around who gets paid, and who doesn't and therefore, who is represented on their boards, in their volunteer workforce, etc, So I imagine, there are probably interesting examples pushing at the boundaries of what's legally possible and what the norms are around all of this in other sectors, but we just don't have the time to get to look above the parapet and see but yeah. It's a nice positive note to end on.

T: And thank you so much for joining me for this little bit of time. It's been lovely to have a chat to you and hopefully we will get a chance to chat again soon.

L: I very much hope so Tom, don't be a stranger. No, it's been absolutely lovely. And as you tell love talking about this stuff, it's really interesting. So thank you very much.