Business as Usual in 2030
If we continue Business as Usual, by 2030 Totnes and District may have a fragmented art and cultural community due to severe under-funding and problems with transportation. Dartington Art College students may be long gone and resident artists based in the rural hinterland may no longer be able to bring their art to the public eye or acquire art materials to create their works. High-energy prices will mean that sculptors and ceramicists are likely to experience difficulties firing their kilns or moving their larger art pieces. Public art will remain minimal and continue to suffer from low investment. The deficit of people with knowledge about making paints, handmade papers and the lack of producers in place is likely to create a gap in supplies and some of these skills.
Performance art is likely to remain strong although there is likely to be less variety of visiting performers and musicians etc. as travel costs may be prohibitive. The lack of late public transport services will also affect audience size. The rising cost of energy and raw materials will impact the arts just as it impacts all other areas of life. A new genre of writing, celebrating the positive aspects of Transition, starts in Totnes and takes the publishing world by storm.
The local media will continue to compete for a smaller pool of buyers and advertisers, but with rising energy costs it is likely that most printed media will not survive to 2030. Bookshops selling new books are unlikely to have available such a wide choice of books to sell and with paper, printing and distribution becoming more expensive their bookshelves may be carrying more used books than new ones. Some of the larger bookshops start their own local imprints, small print runs by local authors, which become very popular.
There is, however, little reason to believe that in a more energy-constrained future the community’s artistic impulse will simply evaporate. There is every reason to believe that actually a slower, more local, less energy- and carbon-intensive world would actually be a more creative and artistic time, with people rediscovering the role of beauty in everyday life. Such a future may be based on the following principles;
- Creative thinking and methods will need to be more widely shared and placed at the centre of how we think about our lives, our education system, and how we plan for our future
- Visual and performance art is fully resourced both at the national level and the local level through education, adult education, art, drama, creative writing and music schools and investment in public art works to nurture society’s creative talent
- Visual and performance art should be used to influence our understanding of how the community can respond to peak oil and climate change
- TV, radio, the internet and printed media use and support, through their stories, documentaries and programmes, the visionary story of transition, helping people understand and enter the new paradigm with a positive approach.
- Printed media will need to consolidate to reduce the excess of paper and its high energy-dependence. New ways of recording and dispersing the writings of journalists, creative writers etc.; perhaps through libraries, electronic billboards or more use of the internet (if it can continue to exist).
What follows is one version of how our arts and culture might become more localised and sustainable over the next 21 years.
Leave a comment
If you wish to comment on a particular paragraph
and quote the relevant number in your comment.