When we speak of contemporary artistic creation, we have to think of the value chain that passes, in a cyclic and interrelated manner, through training, research, experimentation, production, dissemination and reception. Now that we find ourselves in the 21st century, in a theoretically adult democratic state with pretensions of being a leader in Europe, we can clearly see certain grave shortcomings which impede the correct professional development in Catalonia of the various agents and actors involved in this sphere of culture, serious deficiencies that push us closer to developing countries and further away from the cultural leadership that corresponds to a region that claims to be a motor of Europe. I refer to the lack of a cultural policy which will once and for all put an end to the shop-window policy practised by all of the political parties without exception.

The lack of a decided interventionist policy of promotion of creation in areas as sensitive to market pressure as those of the visual arts means that both public institutions and private foundations have opened up spaces of dissemination (exhibition, publication, distribution), both physical and virtual, without considering the origins of what circulates through them or what has to fill them and give them meaning. Dissemination is no more than a link in the value chain of contemporary culture, and when the latter does not implicate itself in creation and is not even related to the research, experimentation and production media, artists find themselves condemned to a role of sponsors of culture that does not correspond to them and entails a serious risk of alienation of the symbolic production of our time, since it is perceived socially as an entertainment reserved for people with high purchasing power.

Giving access to culture does not mean displaying this art which emerges spontaneously out of nothing or miraculously and overcoming adversity or as the fruit of a hobby of the moneyed classes. Giving access to culture, in an advanced democratic state, means creating the necessary public services (and endowing the existing ones with an adequate budget, before anything else) in order for all of the citizens to have equal opportunities to:

• train adequately to enjoy, understand and even learn to produce and criticise the creation of their time.
• investigate: to be competent in a form of knowledge different from the scientific or the philosophical and to be able to develop their own works independently, either individually or under institutional umbrellas (today practically non-existent).
• experiment with their own forms of expression and communication, alternative, parallel or simply different from those used habitually in the interpersonal sphere, even (and very especially) without a concrete purpose.
• produce: having access to the means of production independently of the chosen procedures, whether they stem from the disciplines of the craft tradition, audiovisual media, urban or rural spatial resources or telematic channels.
• disseminate: using the platforms (art centres and museums, televisions, radios, networks and other public spaces) that are the fruit of the social conquests of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
• receive in a contemplative and interactive manner, by way of all types of public spaces, networks, programmes and amenities, the fruit of the cultural creation of their time.

Who conceives a sustainable productive venture nowadays without a serious investment of public and private capital in Research, Development and Innovation (R&D&I)? If we take this question as our starting point, it is obvious that a lot of work is required to bring this country up to date. It is not enough to set up production centres distributed around the territory, nor to create a network that will relate them once they exist. Before all this, we need a well-structured policy based on a solid analysis of the weakest links in the value chain. A clear policy with precise procedures for deciding when, where and for whom it is necessary to develop a support programme for experimentation by means of non-recoverable subsidies; when, where and for whom it is necessary to promote a line of research grants; when, where and for whom it is necessary to develop a programme of soft credits for funding productions which can be returned in the event of selling what has been produced; when, where and for whom it is necessary to develop venture capital funds that will allow artists to interact with small, medium and large companies; when, where and for whom it is necessary to reinforce the educational system that will make us citizens competent in the culture of our time. We must reject arbitrary and irresponsible actions born out of party interests that only seek to camouflage the lack of resources by inaugurating festivals and infrastructures that later will not have the economic means needed to perform their cultural, civic and social task and will consequently become sources of occupational insecurity and proletarianisation of the men and women who dedicate their energies to creation.

In the same way as this country’s sports policy has consolidated and broadened the value chain in which its various practices are articulated, leading to advances in the health and welfare of all sectors of population, we need a new policy of creation. Let us take as a model the quality of the package formed by high-level studies in Physical Education, the municipal sports facilities found all around the country, the High-Performance Sports Centre of Catalonia, the attention paid to sport by the public and private communications media, the investments made by clubs and federations in their pools of young talent, the many popular sporting activities supported by all of the administrations, and so on. Let us take good note of how, over and above serving as the pretext for an urban transformation (with its good and bad decisions), the 1992 Olympic Games signified the apogee of political stimulation of cultural and economic transformation with extensive social participation, and then compare this with how the Forum of Cultures (the apogee of shop-window culture) laid bare the lack of social cohesion, self-esteem and civic commitment which, in the field of cultural creation, we suffer in this country.

Just as in our Protected Nature Areas (such as the Medes Islands or the Volcanoes of La Garrotxa) we see an act of positive state interventionism that operates in accordance with our contemporary collective knowledge of the ecology of the planet, limiting the interests of developers in the property, hotel, fisheries, forestry, agricultural, livestock and tourism fields, the ecology of culture demands that we preserve, promote and protect the so necessary cultural diversity that we still enjoy: cultural diversity and wealth that are the fruit of the effort of resistance by the creators against the unifying dynamic of consumption and that we now see, paradoxically, in a state of deterioration and threat of extinction as striking as their capacity of constantly regenerating themselves and regenerating us. We know about the perils of speculation and the use of art by neo-liberal investors as a shelter commodity (in parallel with the occurrence of the same phenomena in the property business). There is evidence of connivance on the part of certain museums, foundations, galleries and ‘free riders’ of the sector who act out of civil irresponsibility and with clear goals of illicit enrichment and electoral profitability at the cost of the occupational exploitation to which creators are subjected. This exploitation is clearly seen in the scarcity of written contracts, the lack of respect for moral and economic rights, and the low salaries and social benefits suffered by creators when they perform their multiple professional and civic tasks as trainers, researchers, experimenters, producers, disseminators or receivers of contemporary creation.

To sum up, Catalonia urgently needs a policy that will promote creation in a socially just and responsible manner that is truly accessible for the public as a whole: a cultural policy that will situate Catalonia as a top-flight laboratory of creation in the Spanish State and in Europe. It may be that no political party will find the way of justifying the interventionist policies and the considerable increase in cultural budgets that are needed to remedy our deficits and attain these goals. This is why it is necessary to complete the process of creation of a true Arts Council that will overcome this state of paralysis and party instrumentalisation that I have commented on in this brief analysis.

Roc Parés i Burguès
Artist