WIREDGOV

To help kick off the discussions at the State of the Arts 2011 conference, the Arts Council and the RSA have commissioned four provocation papers from leading thinkers within the industry to examine topics such as funding, collaboration and technology.

Read the papers by following the links below, then have your say on the State of the Arts blog.

Arts Funding, Austerity and the Big Society: Remaking the case for the arts

In this paper, Matthew Taylor (RSA) and John Knell maintain the arts sector urgently needs to strengthen its funding case. Otherwise, it will be ill prepared to fight its corner during the tough fiscal decade ahead. The report calls for more precise definitions of artistic excellence; new approaches to engagement; and a better account of the relationship between artistic participation and individual and social outcomes.

Collaborative Arts

Peter Aspden, Arts Correspondent for the Financial Times explores how the complementary nature of arts bodies' activities might be harnessed to produce a genuinely collaborative atmosphere; one that will steer through forthcoming financial hardship and perhaps produce a new creative synergy.

Rethinking Cultural Philanthropy,Towards a More Sustainable Arts and Cultural Sector

Diane Ragsdale of Erasmus University, Rotterdam examines how the internet can help raise funds for arts projects, increase transparency and ensure a broader representation of community interests on the governing boards of arts institutions.

Look Out... Look In

Moukhtar Kocache of the Ford Foundation in Cairo maintains that the arts are out of kilter with an increasingly interdisciplinary and connected world. He argues that what's needed on both sides of the Atlantic is a new social contract for the arts in which the artistic community embraces itself within new models of creative production and artistic activity.