Posting my own response to

Who’s making the economic case for the arts?
a blog post by Graham Hitchen

http://directionalthinking.net/whos-making-the-economic-case-for-the-arts/

raises important points often lost as the politicians carry on the conversations that artists should be leading...

my own partial note:

Viewed in the context of strategy she accepts a false premise and starts behind the line. Oopsy.
Yes, leadership is important.
Too often institutional survivors end up being leaders as too often the kind and decent Bohemians spend little free time having a life. Over here 20 years the dominant culture has stripped out all funding from schools, “no child left behind”, yes its retrograde to forget real research, too bad. That research represented 30 years of prosperity. We now have had 20 years of optimizing. What we have over here are the instrumentalist real estate developers that see culture as sexy revitalizing, what that begets is more tactical institutional art leadership and facile thin crappy art. Real infrastructure takes years and multiple areas of expertise working together. Too often the dominant culture rightly sees Bohemians as a threat, has done an easy job of dividing and dividing. Leadership is now who can best sell the culture option as safe entertainment, the most calculating salespeople, not stewards of anything related to culture.