Polska! is introducing us to another side of the nation many of us know only as diligent migrant workers

It might be the start of our calendar year, but the UK is in the middle of a year of culture that has seen Polish visual art, music and drama in corners of the country that rarely get the attention of arts touring planners as well as the national venues.

The year will be rather more than 12 months, too, having started back in March 2009 and scheduled to run until May.

The reason, says Aneta Prasal-Wisniewska, is simple. “2009 was the 70th anniversary of the second world war when we remembered Poland standing with Britain, it was the 20th anniversary of fall of communism for us, this year is the bicentary of the birth of Chopin, our greatest composer.

“But these are all excuses. The real reason was that with a million Polish immigrants in this country, Britain needs to know more about Poland and Polish culture so that we can communicate who we are.”

Polska!, or PL! as the press material has tended to shorten it to, is a saturation exercise that began in Canterbury Cathedral with Penderecki’s St Luke’s Passion – conducted by the composer. The Barbican had the Gospels of Childhood, a mixture of traditional story-telling and contemporary theatre direction. The Sainsbury Centre at Norwich had a show devoted to Tadeusz Kantor, the legendary Dada-ist artist-performer who died ten years ago, coupled with the work of 16 of Poland’s New Wave artists.

Poland’s designers and architects were a big part of the Design Festival in the autumn, and Polish film has figured large at the Southbank and the Barbican. For the next six weeks or so, Chopin is the centre of attention at the Southbank Centre.

Visual art has been the biggest domain among more than 200 events on offer, with the first serious solo exhibition here for Robert Kusmirowski, Bunker, for which the Barbican’s Curve gallery was transformed into a second world war bunker filled with found objects from the time. The Tate has just acquired its first piece of work by Artur Zmijewski, perhaps Poland’s; most provocative artist, and he has just had a major retrospective at the Cornerhouse in Manchester. And at Dulwich Picture Gallery, whose collection was based on the national collection being put together by the last King of Poland when he was forced to abdicate, London-based Antoni Malinowski created an installation to link the 18th century with the 21st.

Modern Art Oxford is currently hosting Pawel Althamer’s extraordinary piece, Common Task, in which the 33-year-old intertwines sculpture and performance. Althamer’s has taken to travelling al over the world with groups of friends and neighbours, mostly unassociated with art in their normal lives, who become parts of his creations.

Poetry and prose performance is a growing theatre form which Lit Up both examines and promotes. Annabel Turpin and Gavin Barlow explain.

“Spoken word in a way is a very new artform but… communicating to your community with your voice is also as old as time”. Baba Israel, artistic director of Contact Manchester, offered a historical context in his keynote speech at the Lit Up showcase and conference last September at the Albany, Deptford. The event was the second in a series of three, the final one taking place in a few weeks at Bristol Old Vic on February 16.

The Lit Up events explore the exciting potential of the artform, aiming to bring spoken word into established theatres and arts centres. “Spoken word” and “live literature” may be hard-to-define, somewhat slippery terms, but they represent a fast-growing body of work in the UK.

Live literature includes performances of poetry or prose-based work, often (but not always) performed by the writer. Live literature blurs the lines between theatre and other artforms but, as Antonia Byatt, the Arts Council’s director of literature strategy, said at the last Lit Up, “let’s not worry about defining it too much, it combines writing and performance, but trying to put it in a box is probably a mistake”.

Why then is it exciting as an artform and why should it be of interest to theatres and arts centres? For performer Stacy Makishi, “it is about your own personal breath, sharing stories that are very close to you.” At its best, it is very direct, even visceral, often political, and certainly very personal. It provides artists with a whole range of possibilities, and venues with opportunities to attract new audiences. In particular, it often has a strong appeal to young people as both audiences and performers. In some ways it is the essence of the communal live experience, creating a very intimate relationship between the performer and audience.

Whilst the hybrid nature of the form might bring problems of definition it also brings a real diversity and the almost limitless creative potential. Lit Up’s own commissions, which include new work from poet/musician Zena Edwards and a collaboration between novelist Jonathan Coe and musician Sean O’Hagan, illustrate how music from jazz and pop traditions, as well as folk and hip hop, are enriched by their meeting with spoken word.

Spoken word’s collision with theatre is also a rich area of possibility. Poet Inua Ellams’ first full-length show The 14th Tale was profiled at the Lit Up event in June, and after a successful autumn tour will find itself on the National Theatre’s stage for a short run this spring. Lit Up associate artist Polarbear will premiere his “spoken screenplay” Return at BAC in March, having previewed the work in development at each of the Lit Up events. Both are clearly spoken word performances, but can also be seen as boundary-pushing theatre productions.

The recession has forced private arts investment down by 7%, according to Arts & Business, including individual giving. And A&B chief executive Colin Tweedy has warned there is worse to come.

The figures announced this week for 2008/9 show a £31m slump from the previous year’s record overall high of £686m to £655m.

While business investment was already in decline last year, individual giving in 2007/8 had defied the trend and risen by 25%. A year later the graph has reversed its direction, heading down by 7% with a £19m drop from the record level of £382m to £363m.

All three private sectors have fallen, with business investment down 6% - a slowing decline on last year - and standing at £157 million, 24% of the overall private sector contribution.

Trusts and foundations, a sector which had been a reliable friend to arts organisations and had also continued on the up in the previous figures, have also lessened their contributions by 7%, down from £141m to £135m.

“We would like to be optimistic, but predict the worst is yet to come with 2010/11 being the low-point” Tweedy said. “But we must remember that despite the economic difficulties, the UK’s arts fundraisers have still secured close to £655 million from the private sector – which is a remarkable achievement. We must now give them every opportunity to maximise their skills and ideas.

“In this fiscal climate there is still enormous pressure on the arts. With much focus on public expenditure budgets, many are looking to the private sector to contribute more – we believe it can”. He said that businesses seeing attendances up on average by 12% will also see potential gain for them in targeting these markets and their future consumers.

‘New policies are the way forward’
Colin Tweedy and A&B are calling for three policy initiatives to stimulate private sector support for arts and culture:
1. New far-reaching incentive schemes to encourage businesses.
2. The training and knowledge to deepen a pro-enterprise and innovation culture throughout the arts.
3. New challenge funds to grow and inspire cultural philanthropy, which has huge potential for growth.

“Be clear” Tweedy said, “there is no magic bullet for cultural philanthropy. We need challenge fund programmes to motivate individuals; yet wider recognition and celebration of philanthropists; better use of existing and potentially new tax incentives (the extent to which Higher Rate Tax Paying donors are claiming the tax breaks due to them); a stronger provision of legacies; enhanced donor care and the training of the real skills to make the case for culture to potential donors. These are all part of any future growth.”

The arts are sprouting them, but are they worth anything? Dea Birkett, director of Kids in Museums which has just produced its latest, wonders

We all love a good manifesto. The 11 point Futurist Manifesto, published in 1909, the first arts manifesto of the 20th century, called for the demolition of museums and libraries, but its centenary was still celebrated this year as if it had paved the way for every arts initiative since. Manifestos are credited with having clout beyond that of any mere document or proposal. Just the name is enough to conjure up visions of revolutionary change.

I’ve noticed that, as the political parties clamber to construct their own manifestos, the arts world is also drawing them up by the dozen. The National Campaign for the Arts’ Arts Manifesto, the Manifesto for Children’s Arts, the Northern Ireland Manifesto for Children’s Arts, Manifesto for Participation in the Arts and Crafts … It seems there are so many of them, organisations are struggling to find a new name for each. To fit in with this trend, we’ve also been busy producing our own 2010 Kids in Museums Manifesto – 20 ways to make a museum family friendly – compiled from visitors’ comments. (See page 4)

There are some really good examples of arts manifestos, I hope ours included. The Music Manifesto, for example, with its key five aims, demonstrates how something simple can have real force. However, I’ve also noticed that many manifestos are so in little more than name. That doesn’t mean that they don’t meet the dictionary definition – a public written declaration of the intentions or motives of a party. It means they don’t work. And the reason they don’t is because they’re nothing more than yet another report on the arts, thinly disguised as something else.

I believe the heart of a useful manifesto is brevity. It can’t only be called it, it must be it, and that means it must be a call to action that can be easily summarized. We keep our Kids in Museums Manifesto to one side of one sheet of paper. I have yet to come across a shorter one, although I’m sure there is. But longer ones – I’ve found plenty, and the more you write, the less gets read. If you write one page, everyone reads it. If you write two pages, hardly anyone even reads the first page. I learnt this over years as a journalist. I’ve noticed, since I’ve strayed into the world of the arts, that arts organisations like to have big, fat publications, not single sheets of paper. How can people rally around essays?

In addition to brevity, there must be clarity and clear purpose. It’s no good having a manifesto with aims that boil down to nothing more than “enabling more people to have access to the arts” or “placing the arts at the core of improving people’s life opportunities”. Or, even worse, things like “expanding the cultural offer”. These may be rallying cries – but to do what exactly? It’s rather ironic that so many manifestos call for accessibility in totally inaccessible language. Phrases like that have no real meaning and no clear aim. It’s what I call a Motherhood and Apple Pie Manifesto - asking people to sign up to what everyone wants to happen anyway. A manifesto must have things in it that people object to, otherwise there is nothing to implement. It also must have an outcome that is measureable. There’s no real way of assessing when and if any of the above are achieved.

I think the reason so many manifestos are written is that the idea sounds simple. Just write a list of points. But being clear and precise is far more difficult than any amount of waffle. If the arts sector wants things to be done, and just not talked about, they need to get a little better at being brief and being clear. In these times, we need rallying cries. But we also need to understand what they are.

To order your copy of the new 2010 Kids in Museums Manifesto, just email manifesto@kidsinmuseums.org.uk.
To download a pdf of the Kids in Museums Manifesto, go to www.kidsinmuseums.org.uk

Education secretary Ed Balls has pledged £25,000 to introduce a “flexible family ticket” for museums. The new concessionary ticket is one of the recommendations in the new Kids in Museums Manifesto, and the announcement was made by Balls at the British Museum launch of the manifesto yesterday.

“The present two-plus-two concession whish is only available to a family of two adults and two children ignores the shape of the modern British family” said Dea Birkett, director of Kids in Museums. “It takes no account of single parent families and it is the lower income families that tend to miss out. The new flexible family ticket will take into account the different make-ups of families visiting museums and we think it will give a lead to all sorts of other public attractions that will follow suit”.

A “flexible family ticket watch” is to be set up by the Department for Children, Schools and Families and Kids in Museums whereby museums will report back on the needs and wishes of families visiting museums.

The flexible ticket is one of a number of surprising revelations in the manifesto, including the fact that museum visitors don’t want hands-on computer driven attractions any more, preferring traditional object displays.

“Visitors have said they don’t want unlimited hands-on any more, they can do all that at home now” said Birkett,. “What they want is to touch a real bone, they want to be tactile and get a sensual experience. Let’s face it, the technology is never going to be as good as Avatar. They want the thrill of the real”.

The manifesto also calls for pram parks in museums, adding to the convenience of mothers with small children and other visitors who often find large buggies impeding their access to objects, .

Visitors have called for flexible family tickets for paid exhibitions and institution, too, instead of the “two-and-two” system which only gives concessions for two adults with two children.

Like you I’m sure, I had hoped the Ben and Boris Show, or Wadleygate as it has inevitably become known, would be fading away, at least until an ACE London chair is appointed. Fat chance. I’m talking about Boris Johnson’s attempt to get his cheerleader, erstwhile Standard editrix Veronica Wadley, into the job, culture secretary Ben Bradshaw’s resistance and the collateral involvement of Liz Forgan, ACE’s national chair. First, a stream of emails has mysteriously appeared which point to a complex strategy – conspiracy? Of course not! – to get Wadley appointed. Now the lady herself has waddled on stage in this developing pantomime, showing through a column in the Spectator what we would be missing if she failed to get the job. ‘A waspish Hampstead shrink recently diagnosed Bradshaw as suffering from “malignant narcissist syndrome”’ she writes in the latest Spectator. ‘I think that’s far too grand’ she opines. In her view Bradshaw ‘doesn’t deserve serious analysis’. So instead she treats her readers to her unreconstructed Thatcherite view that arts organisations need to ‘monetise assets’ and warns, ‘Subsidy junkies take note’. Well, the job has been advertised again and she’s had a letter from someone, she doesn’t say who, ‘inviting me to re-apply for the chair’. Will she? Buoyed by having been ‘overwhelmed by support from London’s cultural leaders’, she lets on: ‘You bet’.

Morecambe has just opened at the Duchess, a delightful one man show which ingeniously gets overt the problem of the best loved comedian every having been half of a double act. But I gather Ernie Wise’s widow, Doreen, is less than amused that her beloved is being portrayed as a ventriloquist’s dummy.

A preview visit to Leighton House, the Kensington home built for himself by the Victorian painter Frederic Leighton, which is due to reopen in the spring after a £1.6m refurbishment. It is the gloomiest place I’ve ever been in, everything painted in what a contemporary called ‘peculiar blue’ and actually a dark bottle green. Leighton was the only person ever to live in the sepulchral place, and I can understand why. When he died in 1896, three weeks after being made the only artist baron, his sisters couldn’t sell the enormous pile because it only had one bedroom. It has always been a supposed that the ‘aesthete’ Leighton never married because he was a closet gay, but there were rumours that he had fathered a child on one of his models. Now the refurb has disclosed a backstairs, leading straight into his capacious studio – still gloomy despite the large north-facing picture window – up which he seems to have smuggled the likes of Ada Alice Pullan, the alleged model for Leighton’s chum Bernard Shaw for Eliza in Pygmalion.

‘The paintings are dreadful’ said the Times of the exhibition at the Wallace Collection, ‘Bumptiously confronting Titian, Poussin and other venerable elders’ according t0 the Observer; ‘neither eloquent nor commanding in their manipulation of paint, (the pieces) merely go backwards, spelling out a derivation’ said the FT. The critics, be assured, do not like Damien Hirst’s No Love Lost, Blue Paintings at the nationally-funded Wallace Collection until January 25. Now I hear the opprobrium is falling on the museum, and its director, for putting the exhibition on. It seems to come from the collecting quarter that thinks no painting is worth looking at until it’s 100 years old, and preferably by an Italian or French artist. I’m sure the chairman, John Ritblat, is turning a deaf ear to these moaning ninnies, but I hope he’s also turning on them and reminding them that this particular director, Dame Rosalind Savill, who has transformed the once quaint and little regarded collection in a niche of Fitzrovia that came into the national ownership almost by accident into a genuinely international resource with a series of gallery transformations and brilliantly unexpected exhibitions, including the enormously coup of a Freud show a couple of years ago. So what is she to do? The most celebrated living artist in the world, recognized by his peers who have elected him a member of the Royal Academy, who is best known for his sculpture comes along as asks if he can have an exhibition of his paintings. Does she say, ‘I think not, Mr Errum, not our sort of thing you know’? Like the stuff or not, these 25 daubings have brought more than twice the normal number of visitors to Manchester Square, something of which I hope Sir John is as proud of as he will be of Dame Rosalind’s new 18th century galleries due to open next year. And I’m sure he is aware that in the context of places like the Wallace, there is such a thing as dumbing up.

ACE’s Grants for the arts scheme is closing to new applicants between January 18 and February 26. Philip Deverell, the scheme’s director, explains why

Since it was set up in 2003, Grants for the arts has been a National Lottery success story providing over 25,000 grants from £1,000 to £200,000 to an astonishing range of artists and arts organisations all over the country.

It replaced a plethora of small funding programmes, and has enabled individual artists and arts organisations to make transformational journeys and create some of the most exceptional work of the last decade.

Recipients have created work of national and international acclaim, ranging from Cornwall based company Wildworks’ unique landscape theatre that ties communities and place together, to Roger Hiorns’ Untitled, which he recreated for this year’s Turner Prize exhibition.

We are constantly looking to improve how the programme works to ensure it offers the simplest and most cost effective way for artists to apply for funding. That’s why Grants for the arts will be undergoing a number of changes over the coming months, both improving how the scheme works for applicants and saving almost £1.5m a year in administrative costs, which will be reinvested directly into the arts. The changes are firmly focused on improving the service for applicants, providing a consistent and transparent service across the country. The eligibility criteria and our assessment criteria will remain the same.

The biggest transformation is that a new national Grants for the arts network, based in our assessment centre in Manchester, will assess and monitor all applications. The new teams will be focused around individual artforms and will maintain close links to each region. Grants for the arts has been very successful in balancing the twin challenges of regional and artform difference. Grouping the teams in this way means applications will always be assessed by an artform specialist and with an overview of arts activity across the whole country. This allows the Arts Council to make funding decisions using a national framework and ensures consistent advice and assessment is given to applicants wherever they are based.

We’re also continuing to make it easier to apply for Grants for the arts. Following the simplification of the application form in May 2008, from the 1 March artists and arts organisations will now be able to submit their applications online. We are also simplifying the information we need for applications of £10,000 or less. This will speed up the assessment process and allow us to make decisions within 6 weeks (previously only applications of up to £5,000 we’re assessed in this timeframe).

These changes will deliver nearly a quarter of the £6.5 million we are saving in administrative costs as part of our organisational review, ensuring the Arts Council runs as efficiently as possible and maximising the amount of funding going directly to the arts.

We want to implement the changeover to the new team and online process as swiftly as possible, and in order to achieve this we will be suspending new applications to the fund for a period of six weeks, between Monday 18 January and Friday 26 February.

This means that applications need to be submitted by 5pm on Friday 15 January to ensure we can make a decision before the end of March. So anyone looking to apply for a grant should plan ahead and think about the best time to submit their application, not forgetting that from 1 March they can apply online and applications up to £10,000 will be assessed within 6 weeks.

Grants for the arts plays a unique role in the country’s arts ecology, providing an important addition to central government funding for one-off projects and ideas. I believe that the changes we are implementing will make Grants for the arts faster and more effective at helping artists take risks and create truly exceptional art.