Nottingham City Council Supports Nottingham Culture....oh

Nottingham City Council has paid £22k for a photograph by the artist Sam Taylor-Wood, to be exhibited at the the Castle Museum from yesterday.

The piece, called 'Escape Artist (multicoloured)' is, apparently, both "ambiguous and playful". So that's alright then.

You may remember that I recently highlighted NCC's attempt to save a few bob by shamelessly exploiting flickr members, asking them to provide their work for free to be used on a campaign on the city's bus stops. Not surprisingly this latest move has triggered off a little bit of discussion.

However, never let it be said that I'm not a fair man so I must point out the lion's share of the cost was covered by external grants. However this still left NCC covering £3000 towards the cost. Flickr members were asking for payments in the region of £50 per shot. For most it would have been their first 'commission' and as such could have been a source of pride rather than exploitation. It would also have meant that NCC was supporting Nottingham artists and would have bought them a huge amount of goodwill. £3000 would have probably also paid for a decent end of campaign exhibition which was the other 'benefit in kind' that flickr members were suggesting as an alternative to a direct payment.

A backdrop to this is the recent announced intention to close the Industrial Museum. Now of course grant aid is very specific and only the £3k from NCC's own coffers could have been potentially available for the Industrial Museum. But applying for grant aid is time consuming and I wonder what on earth NCC's culture staff are doing running round after grants to buy trophy art with no connection to Nottingham instead of working on keeping Nottingham's heritage accessible to us all? Who decided that should be a priority?

Interestingly, the local history bods I linked to above note that the 2009/10 budget proposes possible trust management arrangements for cultural services. This has been tried in a number of areas but I'm not sure its gone that well. Certainly when I was working at Leicester City Council there was an attempt to transfer cultural services to a charitable trust. However, the savings expected would have been wiped out by even the tiniest overspend and the idea was quietly dropped. This is one to watch I reckon.

Can I have something of yours for nothing?

Nottingham City Council has joined flickr, the photo sharing website, for the express purpose of scrounging photo content for their promotional campaigns without having to pay for it. Here's their profile.

What happens is you get a message on one of your photos asking the following;

"Hi,

Nottingham City Council would like to use your photograph on the back of city bus shelters - can you please confirm that you are happy for us to do so free of charge? We will credit all photographs used and therefore can please let us know what credit you would like to appear on the photograph?

Many Thanks"

Sadly, a few people appear to have fallen for it.

This hasn't gone down particularly well with Nottingham flickr members with a long discussion thread on the matter appearing. The general consensus seems to be that its a bit of a cheek not offering payment and that people should respond to requests in the positive only on the condition that a payment will be forthcoming.

NCC on the other hand thing they are doing the togs a favour;

"Nottingham City Council does have a photo library and images from this library were considered for the purpose of the bus shelter poster locations. However after some team discussions and given we are aware there are many photographers in the city, we felt it would be a great opportunity for you to show your work and for us to recognise your creative approach to photography."

However one of the contributors described his experience of applying for a job for NCC as a photographer for the 'Arrow';

"In March 2008, I applied for a job with the NCC (namely, The Arrow) as a photographer. They were interested after seeing my work, and asked me if I was a published photographer, to which I said yes. They wanted to see my portfolio, and what works I'd had published. I showed them copies of the NEP which had used my pics for stories several times. When they asked how much I'd been paid/charge for usage, I said "Oh, I let them use them for free", they suddenly lost interest."

So, it seems that letting NCC use your photographs for free isn't that much of a 'great opportunity' after all.