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Terry O' Rourke, Chair of Dorset Visual Arts

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“Embracing a strong cultural strategy can produce massive benefits for an area and give it a much more sustainable long term economy.”

by WebAssistant — last modified Jul 21, 2010 12:58 PM

About the chair

Name: Terry O' Rourke

Chairs: Dorset Visual Arts

www.dorsetvisualarts.org

Job: Architect

Interview Date: 15th December 2009

About the interview

The underachieving English

Terry is a softly spoken ex town planner and architect from Dorset with a message to the arts world in these times of economic strain.

As chair of Dorset Visual Arts and trustee of various other arts, cultural and governmental bodies, Terry is concerned that Dorset is not achieving its true potential.

“It’s a British characteristic that we don’t aim as high as we ought to and we dont expect to achieve what we’re aiming for,” he says. “We have a long history in this country of underperformance as a result.”

He wants to encourage people to be ambitious for things, to realise that: “embracing a strong cultural strategy can produce massive benefits for an area and give it a much more sustainable long term economy.”

This however is a hard message to get across to government funders, and unfortunately culture is the first thing to be cut when times are tough.

“That’s a very foolish cut to make,” Terry explains, “because it’s the bit that potentially earns an enormous amount of money for the area.”

Funding the future

He goes on to talk about funding, and his prediction that private philanthropy will be the way forward for all arts organisations.

“It’s getting a bit fashionable at the moment,” he says, “but public funding is going to be increasingly hard to get over the next five or ten years.” Commercial sponsorship doesn’t seem to offer much hope either. “I find it painful to see how much money is put into some sporting events by organisations who will spend a tiny fraction of that on an arts organisation and think they’re being generous,” he explains.

On a more positive note, he stresses that there is still plently of money left in Britain.

“It’s just getting people to see the value and the pleasure of parting with it for something worthwhile.”

He feels arts organisations simply need to get smarter at what they are offering. Rather than giving discounted tickets or names on programs, they donors need to feel their input and opinions are really valued and are being listened to.

Outsider artists, outisder chair

At Dorset Visual Arts, their other big challenge is improving communication, something which is proving difficult in the face of website and e-mail difficulties. They have appointed area coordinators who report back to one of the trustees and this does seem to be working in improving the flow of information to and from their members.

“We are making progress,” Terry says, “but it's fraught. Artists are difficult people (in the nicest possible way), because they’re individual and they have strong feelings about things. We walk a delicate path. So far we haven’t fallen off...”

Terry describes himself as something of an outsider:

“I dont paint, I dont create pottery, I dont sculpt,” he says, “I’ve told them that my objective is a very selfish one: I want them to put on more events that I want to go to!”