Escaping the Neoliberal Gallery

This illustrated essay speculates on alternative economic models for embedding social practice within commercial and public spaces in art galleries in the UK’s charity sector. Cultural institutions are being asked to ‘do more, with less’ in a period rife with budget cuts, reduced staffing, zero-hour contracts and redundancies exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. The cultural sector is urged to become less reliant on public money, to diversify revenue streams and look towards other, private stakeholders.

All the while, institutions under the Arts Council England’s 2020-2030 ‘Let’s Create’ strategy are told to prioritise societal challenges, such as ‘inequality of wealth and of opportunity, social isolation and mental ill-health’ as well as ‘the accelerating climate emergency’. Cultural institutions are being asked to make meaningful, impactful and long-lasting relationships with their local communities inclusive of LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, and people with health conditions or impairments, school children and teachers, championing mental health, diversity, and equity within their programmes. All the while, those working within the sector are struggling due to low pay, barriers to employment and consolidating of multiple jobs into singular positions.

Social and Community art practices of the 1960's-1990's sought to interrogate and democratise art production and address how this production could enact change in society. Socially engaged art practice showed that art can be a useful tool to explore societal issues and give people agency, space and power to make changes. However, I would like to argue that the way social art practice is implemented within arts institutions today does not fully capture the radical potential of societal change, due to the nature of funding structures and institutional workflows. Barriers to embedding social practice within arts institutions are structural and ideological problems, with governance, finance and requirements from funding bodies being the key barriers faced by social practitioners. There are lessons to be learned from artists, communities and other sectors to better embed social practice within arts institutions and offer alternatives to the current models. I explore how artist- and communities-led institutions embed social practices by discussing new models of democratised cultural spaces, places, programmes, highlighting artists and collectives providing examples of cultural alternatives.