ABSTRACT
While understandings about art and its value vary across time, space, culture and sub-culture, most accept the premise that a world without art would be a much lesser world indeed. Yet, there is far less agreement on whether it is possible to systematically harness art’s often ephemeral qualities for tangible social or economic benefit and, indeed, whether such pragmatic goals are relevant to the practice of art. Philosopher and cultural critic Achille Mbembe’s words remind us that art and the world of quantifiable ‘objective knowledge’ are often incommensurable. Yet, an increasing number of donors and partners in the development field are supporting art in the Global South with the intention of effecting change. The projects and processes that emerge with their support generate a new cultural space that inflects some old questions about the social value of art (see Belfiore and Bennett 2008; Carey 2006) with the politics of transnational funding in a context of unequal power relations. In this context, tying the value of the arts to processes of social change is highly charged. Who decides what kind of art matters (and to whom and in what ways), and how do those questions intersect with local and global striations of power? Is it possible to predict ‘outcomes’ from the artistic processes with the certainty desired by project managers focused on accountability, and what are the implications of the unpredictability of art for donors who have to report back to their own funders? What forms of social change are valued by different actors in this space, and what assumptions about art, artists and social change are revealed through
different policy approaches? These are some of the questions that development support for the arts raises and with which this book engages.
