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RESTORATION MAN
20.01.2012 / AI Profile / 0 Comments
Graham Sheffield, director of arts, British Council
Graham Sheffield left his last UK post heading for "the job of a lifetime", he said, to create a new cultural quarter for Hong Kong. He lasted less than a year before labyrinthine bureaucracy got the better of him, and last year he was the surprise new director of arts at the British Council, itself an organisation that had gone through its own cultural earthquake.
Now, he says, the BC's arts programme is back on full throttle with a bold global strategy that he hopes will reinstate the organisation's dulled international reputation and create a unique universal network.
His predecessor, Rebecca Walton, is an old BC hand who had been drafted in after the debacle of 2007-8 when the council's famed global arts operations were to be dec- imated in favour of "cultural diplomacy". After a damning report and the intervention of the then Foreign Secretary, the council's chief executive, Martin Davidson, made a spectacular u-turn. He recruited Sheffield, then arts director at the Barbican, as a 'specialist advisor' to help Walton put "the arts back into the main bloodstream of the organisation", as he puts it. It was 2009.
Walton brought pragmatism and a listening ear, restored morale to what had been a renowned arts department, reinstated programmes and rebuilt budgets. She and Sheffield devised a five point scheme of showcasing British art, promoting cultural leadership in areas of interest, the development of a creative economy network, building creative capacity and the introduction of a relevant arts element into all of the BC's existing programmes.
Fifteen months ago Walton became director of partnerships and business development, and the search was on for a successor. Unhappily for Sheffield his Hong Kong adventure was shredding, but it meant that at Christmas 2010 he was suddenly available again and in May last year he succeeded Walton.
"I'm really building on what we started together" he says. "Staff morale was not at its greatest, to put it mildly, and she gave people a sense of belonging again, and that was extremely important.
"We'd lost touch with artists so our specialists disappeared. We're reinstating them. One of the first things I
said I wanted to do was to keep things very simple, and make sure we had the right people in the right places."
Sheffield started as a classical musician, playing piano and conducting, and his first ambition was to be an opera director. He went to the BBC and by the age of 25 was working on the music output of Radio 3, Radio 4 and the World Service. In 1990 he went to the Southbank Centre as music director, and in 1995 he took on the new post of arts director at the Barbican. A preview of the situation he was to encounter at the British Council, the Barbican was trembling from the effects of managing director Detta O'Cathain being forced to leave after her commodification programme alienated resident arts organisations and art form heads. Her successor, John Tusa, and Sheffield trans- formed the institution.
How much risk the British Council is taking on with him remains to be seen, but at 59 he is seen as a safe pair of hands, albeit hands that are never still. He has spent his first six months in post identifying the regions of the world that will best benefit from his attention, and that will best benefit British artists, and identifying the people take on these brand new posts.
"The corporate line is that we're a cultural relations organisation, and the arts clearly has a very big role to play as part of that," he says. "End of corporate statement."
There cannot be a feasible policy that fits every situa- tion, as had been believed: each world region has its own history, capability and culture, each will need to be treated differently. So he has appointed six regional cultural leaders, half found internally, half from outside, who Sheffield says are critical to linking what is happening around the world into the specialist teams in London.
The regions are the Americas, based in Colombia; wider Europe in Istanbul; wider South Asia in Dacca; the Middle East and North Africa in Cairo; Sub-Saharan Africa in Johannesburg; and EU Europe, which is split between Paris and Bucharest. Joining up the dots, Sheffield calls it, but that includes not only learning the terrain but affirming - or establishing - vital ambassadorial and political contacts. Gregory Nash, founder of The Point at Eastleigh, is bound for Istanbul; Shreela Ghosh, most recently director of the Free Word Centre, goes to Dacca; Steve Stenning, festival producer, heads for Cairo. There are already leaders established in Vietnam for East Asia, Beijing for China and New Delhi for India.
"It's very much a mutual agenda now, it's no longer about just sending the RSC to far-flung colonies. Those new positions are really at the start of a new global net- work" Sheffield says.
Three years ago Russia was a major headache for the British Council, with 15 of their 16 offices closed amid accusations of subversive activities. The attitude towards British culture has thawed dramatically since, and though the offices are still closed, electronic communications have meant there is no hindrance to a startling upgrade of activity, particularly in the visual arts.
Here, the Gagarin statue was unveiled in July outside the British Council's London offices by the Russian ambassador, who also went to the London Book Fair for the first time in five years where Russia was the focus. There, President Medvedev deliberately mentioned the arts in a communiqué marking David Cameron's visit (Cameron did not), and there are Gormley, Henry Moore and William Blake exhibitions going out there this year, as well as a Britten centenary project in 2013. It is traditional cultural diplomacy, where the arts take the lead over politics. "We're not going to change the world sin- gle-handed, but it certainly helps to create a space where two countries can talk together in a more civilized way" Sheffield says.
At home, a charge that the BC's commitment to the arts community had been weak struck a nerve, and there has been a concentrated effort to engage the sector. "A lot of my job is rebuilding confidence in the British Council, not only with the big institutions like the Tate and the National Theatre but with young talent too. We've got to cover the spectrum" says Sheffield. "The teams are now very heavily engaged in talking to the sector and trying to be partners, and we can be better partners if we've got a strong network abroad". He is working closely with the UK arts councils, and there will be a stronger BC profile at home, particularly at arts festivals.
The big effort for 2012 is the Dickens Project, with over 50 countries taking readings, film showings and performances. "We don't realise in this country how universal a figure Dickens is" he says, and the list of those that have asked for Dickens in his bicentenary year goes from Armenia to Zimbabwe, with Germany, Brazil and Vietnam in between.
"They want to benefit from some of our skills and knowledge of the creative cultural economy, and we see ourselves as a kind of managing centre. The UK is one of the strongest providers as well as a mover and shaker in the field, and we're coming up with a more coherent arts story that you will see emerge in 2012."
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