"Prophesying catastrophe is incredibly banal. The more original move is to assume that it has already happened" - Jean Baudrillard

As I write this the arts college I have been associated with for over thirty years is under threat of closure. Or rather, the leadership of Dartington College of Arts, Devon, England, is now seeking "relocation" and "merger" (as the current Newspeak has it) with another college over eighty miles away. The details of this catastrophic fracas need not concern us here. The fact that an arts college is involved, however, is of general importance.

The management and governance of the arts in Britain and elsewhere has slowly but inexorably become immersed in buzz-word culture, in bad faith about art itself, in art as a use-value rather than as a combined affective and intellectual force, and in economistic, functional thinking. Au courant, but increasingly inaccessible power elites, wearing hyper-democracy as a cultural fashion accessory, now advocate "the arts" as a form of social policy. Dr. Johnson's aphorism about patriotism might well be re-cast: "Arts administration is the last refuge of a scoundrel."

As long ago as the 1970s, partnerships of business and the arts began to be openly advocated to funding applicants to the Arts Council without any sense of oxymoron. Somewhat parallel trends also occurred in education, in higher education in particular. This said, however, each local unfolding of a general catastrophe has its own unique details. We cannot let the Dartington debacle off the hook simply because it follows national trends. Narrow focus often illustrates wider views, puts the big picture into the purview of the everyday.

Purely locally then, what is at the root of the catastrophe? The "close-the-college" lobby, the powerful few, maintains that economics and the facts of higher educational life are to blame. The college is too small, they say, to be a serious player in a real world in which small is not beautiful - despite a college named after Schumacher actually being located on the same estate. Small is not sustainable - a word whose usage, incidentally seems to have almost reversed in recent times. It now seems to mean "not ambitious enough".

To be clear: there are always challenges presented by material factors - infra-structure, finance, accommodation and so on. These should not be pooh-poohed, but it is not they which, at root, constitute the real catastrophe - whether locally or further afield. We are also dealing with the spiritual barrenness of economistic, managerial, expansionist, entrepreneurial thinking which, alas, has been seeping into the world of the arts (and now education) for some decades and now reigns supreme. It would be tempting to call it Blatcherism, but the rot set in before the Big M came to power, and long before the days of Phoney Tony. It is more a case of what could be called "conditional aesthetics". Artistic endeavour, in such a view, is actively encouraged if and when it acts as a front for other agendas - the aspirations of a sponsor, political correctness and the servicing of minorities, community and educational programmes, the image and ambitions of a business firm, government ideology, civic pride, and so on. This is a far cry from John Cage's dictum that art should defend its right to be useless. The arts, historically, may have been many things, but their most worthy role in present day society concerns how we shape our lives, not about how others shape them for us. Honestly, I believe there is now little use for them outside this framework.

It is, therefore, to current attitudes to the arts themselves, and by extension arts education, that we need to turn if we are to get any handle on what is really going on and, whatever the fate of the college, arm ourselves for the future.

THE ARTS AS CHAMELEON
In all the polemic and rhetoric surrounding the local college "art", or "the arts", is an ideological chameleon. It wears many guises and proves numerous points. It has supporters on all sides. These include the college board of governors, the Principal, the appalled citizens of the locality, the members of the Save the college campaign, the Member of Parliament (a keen musician himself), local politicians of all persuasions (none of whom wish to be seen as against the college and thus the "arts" it teaches), the relevant representatives of the Higher Education Funding Council for England - and not forgetting the students of the college and practicing artists themselves.

This diverse range of supporters suggests, at least on the surface, some broad agreement about what "the arts" are and their worth. Indeed, some sense of the general validity and desirability of "the arts" might appear to be the only point of agreement between all parties.

Yet there is something odd here, for "the arts" themselves are capable of being constructed to sympathize with any viewpoint. The viewpoints might all be different but, seemingly, "the arts" straddle them all without difficulty. Given that Stalin, Mao and Hitler had firm ideas about "the arts" this is not really so surprising. This apparent universality perhaps suggests "the arts" as a meta-myth - a myth beyond myth, a supra-mythic archetype which consists of ingredients but not recipes. Yet, of course, to support arguments, to invoke the widely supposed moral power of "the arts", or to create actual artistic practices, recipes have to be put together largely out of these ingredients, although a gradual erosion of some ingredients and addition of others makes historical and cultural common sense.

In one sense our local college crisis is merely a local tussle about the future of a college although convincingly masked by issues of economy, finance, government policy, "sustainability" and being up to date. The importance of this tussle, however, is its ramifications beyond the purely local. It is about values as seen through the lens of "the arts". It is about "the arts" in society today, the ways in which they can be supported and promoted, the values they may embody, the ways they can be funded, and perhaps most importantly what they are. It is, in short, political, ethical and cultural. On this level it is not a local tussle, more part of a general battle. In fact it is one of the most important battles in a war to defend the imagination, and to attack entrenched social and cultural positions which - spun out to their ultimate - threaten our very survival. The common currency in this battle, the ideal that all sides seem to invoke, is "the arts" themselves. However, far from being innocent and neutral "the arts" is at best an ambiguous concept and at worst an obfuscation masking issues of power and control.

The ambiguity of "the arts" is generally unexamined. Many disparate advocates of "the arts" use the same word ("art"), but understand it differently and attribute conflicting values to it. These values are not passive. They are the motive force behind agendas, policies, and actions - political, financial and artistic. It would be comforting to believe that in the midst of the current mess at least we're all agreed on one thing: art, "the arts", what they are and their value. How nice it would be to believe that art is basically a matter of beauty, ethics, humanitarianism, expression, or getting on well together. Scrape away a little beneath surface and it becomes clear that this is not the case.

SNAPSHOTS FROM A CRISIS
Let us observe a few snapshots of this value-laden, negotiable concept as it has appeared in the local context in the last few months. One of the major expenses which make up the mythic figure of £20 million is a proposed large, new, modern reception area. This is, perhaps, not hard to imagine. It would be designed, undoubtedly, to project an air of confidence, professionalism and success. It would be an exterior sign pointing to similar qualities supposedly found inside - inside the college itself, that is. Such a concern for a well-organized, highly competent image would suggest certain values which would be assumed to overspill into "the arts" themselves as taught at the college. To inspire this kind of confidence is to project "the arts" as a worthy and competitive component of the contemporary world. It sees them as an ingredient in culture as it is lived. It recognizes the realities of the challenges they face in order to survive in the cut-and-thrust 21st century world. Such a reception area would also imply placing Dartington College at the epicentre of local artistic activity. It would be a visible, definable entrance into its realms, a ceremonial "arch" through which one would pass into the specialised area of arts education, buzzing with secretaries, personal assistants, office workers and busy, purposeful members of teaching staff.

This centralised view may be contrasted with an intriguing rescue package which emerged from the local business community, and which proposed an almost opposite prospect. This plan, although only concentrating on provision for student accommodation, amounted to an alternative vision of a collegiate style town on the model of Oxford or Cambridge, with no central campus, but with departments (colleges) all over town. The values inherent in this plan turn the reception area idea on its head. The college would be de-centralised. It would be in the community. Images of professionalism and success could possibly be replaced by a "workshop" mentality. The arts would be spread and integrated around town, making the town itself, rather than a centralised college, into a cultural hub. It would be good for the town business-wise. It would acquire a reputation as the "Oxford and Cambridge of the arts" - as it was recently phrased (I forget who by).

It takes very little to comprehend the different values represented by these two proposals. Nor does it take much savvy to realise that both approaches have built into them a form of co-option. On the one hand "the arts" are co-opted into a broader agenda - that of the thriving, dynamic, up-to-the-minute centralised college which attracts substantial funding, prestige and thus many students. On the other hand we have the charismatic, culturally edifying small town with a big profile, drawing visitors, artists and much kudos. Both views, of course, have economy and finance written deeply into them. The alternative view is also pragmatic.

Dartington Plus, an organisation which refers to itself as "one of three national centres of excellence in music and the arts which are core funded by Arts Council England", quite possibly has the potential to incorporate both the centralised and collegiate models. In its outer aspect it has a missionary flavour. It seeks (and I quote its website) to encourage "long term participation in music and the arts for all people (all people, mind you - my italics) in the southwest". It aims at beginners and experienced professionals alike, at practitioners and audiences. It organises conferences, arts programmes, and all manner of initiatives. If Dartington College of Arts were to take the centralised route - the central campus with lavish reception area - Dartington Plus could happily work with this. The collegiate town, likewise, would present no problems. Nor would a mixture of the two. If Dartington College were to close, similarly, Dartington Plus, according to what its director Matt Griffiths has declared in public, could continue its missionary work. Being a people-friendly enterprise rather than a venue-based arts centre, Dartington Plus will, and would, simply go where the people are. Its surface ideology, then, is simple: "art is good for you" - whoever you are, whatever you do, and wherever you live in the Southwest - Falmouth would be as good as Dartington. It is not clear whether this remains the case if you happed to be a dispossessed, disenfranchised college lecturer or student.

Other snapshots from the current crisis suggest quite different approaches. The various plans and suggestions for the college"s future, as well Dartington Plus, all spring from official arts culture. An unofficial element can be found, for example, in the students who recently spent a considerable amount of time and exertion erasing the three letters A R T from all the local road signs pointing to Dartington. (Actually some of us have been referring to Dington for many years. After all, it begs for this treatment.) This student protest, in itself, might be construed by some as, in itself, a form of art. Those who know their 20th century art movements might relate such subversive acts of erasure to the Fluxus Group or the Situationists, both radical arts groups from the 1960s. Or maybe the illicit inscribing of official or public surfaces has a strong whiff of the graffiti component in hip-hop culture. None of these antecedents, incidentally, would cut any ice with Police Sergeant Steve Hopper who, in a column in the local newspaper, resolutely and somewhat stodgily refused to see the joke, and condemned these student ruffians for wasting tax-payer"s money. His suggestion that they might have used white tape which could have easily been removed when the dispute was over is more worthy of Monty Py_thon than a modern police force. Whether or not the perpetrators of the dastardly deeds regard their efforts as "art" or "protest" is perhaps beside the point. There is enough precedent for such gestures in art contexts.

We might also cite the save Dartington College campaign song written by Shane Roe of the South Hams Boogie Band. It is an engaging concoction - a protest song slung together with all the roughness of traditional agitprop, and drawing attention to the possibility of the arts college being kicked off its medieval estate in rural Southwest England. Despite all these signs and symbols of Englishness the recorded version is sung in a cod-American accent to a gentle rock beat, with a nice bass line, bluesy phrases and strong hints of gospel and country styles. Agitprop, perhaps refreshingly, rarely concerns itself with the niceties of arts philosophy or aesthetics, so it simply gets on with its job - subtle as a sledgehammer.

Totnes residents did not know what to say
Dartington Arts is gonna leave town, a report claimed.
It was shortly before the graduation of the best
That Members of the Public heard about the pest (who wants to)
Stop! Teaching People Performance and Art
Stop! Teaching People Performance and Art
College principal Andrew Brewerton
Brewed this double trouble all on his own
All this was revealed last week by the Totnes Times
On the eighth of November, so start beating the chimes
So Totnes feels hostage to a pen pusher from outside
Who wants a great career himself, but wants everyone else denied
It"s happening on my doorstep: But I can see a way through
So let"s get to Dartington Castle Gates so he hears me and you
And to Householders who might want these youths to go
Think what a dull place it would be if it were so
You might not like longhair and ugly street rockroll bands
But it concentrates the mind when house prices fall by twenty grand

This lyric has some odd moments. The idea of getting to Dartington Castle Gates suggests the medieval imagery of a Peasant"s Revolt, demanding to meet the king who, unlike the petty officials, will listen to the case and, of course, be fair to his subjects. The appeal to "Householders" to tolerate "longhair and ugly street rockroll bands" in the name of house prices is decidedly pragmatic, as well as being both defensive and vaguely threatening: put up with a few of us roughnecks for the sake of your house prices!

This song belongs in a long history of street, industrial or folk poetry which, unconcerned with the niceties of "the arts", sees itself in "instrumental" terms - not referring here to musical instruments, but to song as an functional instrument, or tool, with a direct, definable aim - to collect money for striking workers, to publicly open debate, to voice opinions, to recount facts (albeit from a partisan viewpoint), to lobby those in power, to rally public opinion. If this kind of thing is art, which it is although not for all uncontroversially, it clearly inhabits a different world to that of Dartington Plus or the various schemes to save or shut the college.

Finally, we might also recall the various musical contributions which were offered on January 28th, the Save Dartington College Day. The sound of the Torbay Symphony Orchestra, conductor Richard Gonski, playing extracts from Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony as demonstrators approached the Civic Hall was as stirring an artistic event as I've witnessed for a long time. Shostakovich, having been attacked for "petty-bourgeois innovations" in Pravda of January 1936 allowed the work to be subtitled 'A Soviet artist's reply to just criticism'. The perhaps tenuous parallel between Shostakovich's struggle with philistine party-line Soviet arts critics and the campaign to save Dartington College from a bureaucratically induced collapse was not lost on a few aficionados who happened to know this snippet of subtext. The most astonishing feature, however, was the very fact of an entire symphony orchestra playing in a more everyday, democratic, indeed overtly political setting than would be usual. The music was comprehended not by obedient sitting in rows, stifling coughs and the need to uncross one's legs soundlessly without dropping your programme, but by a well behaved, committed crowd shuffling into the hall, settling down to listen in an atmosphere of commitment rather than reverence, respect rather than enforced awe.

This kind of respectful informality also characterized the Totnes Jazz Collective"s benefit gig in the evening - which wasn't all jazz, incidentally. Various bands, various performers, did short spots - an open-to-all local jazz workshop, a small jazz combo playing danceable tunes, a student band - with plenty of support in the audience, a fast, gritty student rapper (Tom Grant) accompanied by jazz-type riffs, a player of the Turkish saz, a stretch of freeform improvisation, an ex-student jazz singer, and finally some exuberant collective blowing to finish the event, the Sun Ra riff "Strange Celestial Road". A sense of participation, exhilaration and allegiance filled the hotel ballroom as drinks, dance and passion merged with the music, some of which was skilful and inspiring, to say the very least.

IDEALS AND VALUES
Admittedly this is a synchronic assortment, but no matter how disparate a selection, each of these expressive events or ideas strongly suggests its own values. The reception area suggests a buoyant economy, efficiency, and centralized power. The collegiate idea is devolutionary, civic, and likewise concerned with economy. Dartington Plus is missionary first and foremost but is aware of its power even amidst its claims to empower. Its rationale is that of a nerve centre and thus is linked to issues of control.

The altered roadsides signs take us into a world of subversion and resistance. The erased A R T mocks the designs of the college principal, the Dartington Hall Trust, and anyone else in the local official world of the arts. In purporting to defend art it strikes an anti-art pose, thus creating irony all round. It transgresses legal and social boundaries thus offending the police sergeant who predictably and on cue saw it as "a mindless series of criminal acts that will cost the district and its council tax payer"s money that could have been better spent elsewhere". (Totnes Times, February 14th, 2007) It also, incidentally, caused many smiles. The ambiguity of whether or not it is art is one of its most engaging features, for its pose is entirely opposite to that of the proposed expensive reception area. It not only makes its immediate statement about the closure of the college, but also derides the official values and mentalities of those who advocate such closure. Art thus becomes provocation, mockery, satire, irony, and politics.

The campaign song makes the same points but in a blatant manner. Art becomes a matter of straightforward protest, anger and self defence. The rock format roots this protest in a vernacular idiom. Its straightforward address to the college principal has a kind of "the people versus Brewerton" feel. He is put on trial and found guilty. The values here are those of giving voice to resistance, despite the momentary lapse into a peasant tone, but also of popular appeal and accessibility.

The symphony orchestra"s performance at a protest meeting was a surprise element which mixed the usual expectations of two genres - orchestral concert and protest meeting. The conjunction was intriguing, suggesting the seeds of a more democratic, affable, everyday presentation of classical music than is general. This constituted a pointed, transparent, statement of a simple message: art (and thus arts education and thus Dartington College) is for everyone. It was an unambiguous, unmistakable offering without any sense of do-goodism.

The jazz gig had a feel of grass roots. A key value here was that of participation, although not mere participation for its own sake. The music had quality, and despite an over-crowded room some dancing did happen. Even the freeform improvisation - no the easiest music to programme in such a context - was afforded some kind of hearing.

My rationale for describing and discussing this selection of local events and ideas goes beyond the observation that each represents a distinct value system and that some of these are incompatible. We can hardly imagine, for example, the erased A R T as a suitable partner for the expensive reception area. However, significant though such differences may be, the implications reach further into issues of tradition and control. Traditions invoke histories: for example that of anti-art as opposed to institutional history, popular culture as opposed to populism, and the street origins of hip hop and rap as opposed to the ceremonial passage through the reception area to an arts establishment. These parallel, sometimes clashing histories are a microcosm of the bigger picture.

There is, indeed, a history of "the arts", one in which its modern formulation originates in the 17th and 18th century struggle between old aristocratic power elites and the rising bourgeoisie. That background of privilege, displays of power and "the arts" as signs of supposed sophistication and high culture hangs around theatres, galleries, concert halls and funding bodies even to this day. The self belief of high culture is notorious, and the tension between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie has a faint but uncanny echo in the tension between Dartington Hall Trust and Dartington College of Arts.

Given the existing histories of "the arts" as signs of official, dominant culture (from the historic bourgeoisie to today's hyperdemocracy, Mozart to Damien Hirst, high opera to Piss Christ) it is inescapable that certain items in my local selection seem to sit more naturally in "the arts" category than others. The reception area of a centralized college, the collegiate town, as well as Dartington Plus feel congruent to the concept of "the arts", as would the symphony orchestra in its usual setting, although a little less so as a curtain raiser to a protest meeting.

Thereafter, however, we enter worlds in which the concept of "the arts" is either contested, irrelevant or simply not part of the language commonly used. Rapping, an example of which figured at the jazz gig, only figures as an element in "the arts" when official culture gets hold of it. One can imagine local arts centres programming rap workshops, but this suggests a considerable distance from the streets and popular culture. The erased A R T recalls anti-art. From Duchamp onwards this has developed from a wry intellectual game to mainstream Saatchi-ism, although as politicized in the D'ington example it makes a sharp point more typical of Situationism or graffiti. Whether or not it is art is irrelevant to its purpose. More pertinent (because more urgent) is the gesture itself - a form of trespass or civil disobedience. This is a customary way in which the dispossessed or disenfranchised reclaim some temporary sense of control.

THE CONTROLLERS AND THE CONTROLLED
Issues of control lie at the heart of the use of "the arts" in the Dartington crisis. Dartington Plus, for example, establishes its control by functioning and speaking in the manner of modern management, the aim being to create efficiency via consensus. The Dartington Plus website makes odd reading. Were it not for its frequent references to the "music industry" it would be hard not mistake it for almost any other kind of business. "Unique and exciting partnerships" abound. Dartington Plus "delivers a wide and eclectic portfolio". It develops "local, regional, national and international partnerships". It strives "to inspire, to innovate and to motivate". It runs "training courses, projects and seminars". Just about everything it does is "unique and innovative", and it has twenty five people listed on its staff. It has development aims and enabling aims which include maximizing "income generation and fundraising opportunities and leverage in additional funds" and working "with partner organisations to support their complementary strategic initiatives". This is not Natwest or Tesco or Television Southwest. This is an arts organisation.

Control is established via agenda setting, hierarchies, access to funding and the higher echelons of governance, property and the law. It is also established via uses of language, the assumption of normality or universality, and by the use of symbolic codes such as "the arts". This is all the more effective if others can be persuaded to enact these codes on the pretext of self development, self expression, or equality.

"The arts", then, is not a neutral concept. It has an historical route to its contemporary condition, a route whose imprint remains, sometimes faintly or strongly, despite the apparent revolutions of modernism and so-called postmodernism. Attempts to democratise the arts, their funding and education, such as the 1970s rise of "community arts" or an increased awareness of vernacular traditions, have been partially successful although such campaigns have always, of necessity, been waged against the hegemony of the established concept. Both the historical and recent unfoldings of the loaded concept of "the arts" are stories of dominance and assumed dominance, dominance challenged, challenge recuperated and, especially in recent years, new forms of dominance re-established.

It is this awareness of means of control and systems of power that lies behind the dream of an expensive reception area for a centralised college. Similarly, it is a refusal to relinquish power (or perhaps an inability to see power in other terms) that lies behind the notion of reinventing Dartington College in Falmouth - or elsewhere. The plan is for a new arts department (posing as the spirit of the old college) to be dumped on the Falmouth campus, thus maintaining the basic outline of the successful, contemporary, high-powered arts college able to compete in the present-day world. The two-year refusal to invite anyone outside the immediate power elite to discuss the college crisis begins to make sense in this light. It was, indeed, a matter of control. For the power elite, led by the Principal, to admit it had no solution might seem "out of control" or simply inept. Allowing other staff and local opinion the scope to contribute to possible solutions could be seen as weakness. Claiming that secrecy was a means of preventing alarm is ethically dubious and again points to issues of control. To claim that an insecure image would be bad for student recruitment turned out to be a delaying tactic and is self evidently duplicitous in the extreme.

"Unofficial" solutions to official problems - such as the supposed lack of student residences - also shift the focus of control away from the power elite. Newly devised, ecologically sound, genuinely sustainable accommodations do not seem all that subversive in the Dartington context with Schumacher College (named after Mr. Small-is-Beautiful himself) just down the lane as well as all the current talk of Transition Town Totnes. Yet the problem with such solutions is that inherently they move power away from the centre and thus from centralised control. This, too, might conceivably be the "flaw" in the local rescue plan which is undoubtedly devolutionary in principle. Despite a high level meeting with college authorities the impression is that the college was barely interested at all.

The exaggerated, extravagant sum of money (the £20 million) said to be required to save the college is touted as a neutral, value-free, objective figure. We are called upon to believe that it takes so-much to renovate buildings, create student residences, build a bigger library, and the new reception area. What is not challenged is not only the supposed need for such mod cons, but the values they reflect with regard, specifically, to "the arts". What is effectively being said is that "the arts" cannot be taught without these things. This is not entirely surprising when the fate of "the arts" in Britain in recent times is considered.

"THE ARTS" AS AN IDEOLOGICAL FOOTBALL
The historic collapse of religious and aristocratic patronage was for "the arts" a Faustian deal. Freedom of expression was to be paid for by marginalisation, alienation and, for survival alone, the need to be noticed by the arts establishments. This Adorno-esque story of artists" increased estrangement applied mainly, however, to certain aspects of those artistic traditions which had derived from the bourgeois world view which had freed artists as individuals but had also reserved the right to ignore them, especially the more modernist developments. In the realms of vernacular traditions the story was different. In music, for example, in the twentieth century grass roots "folk" traditions often changed so much that the Romantic view of folklore pronounced them dead or dying, often wrongly. Popular music, however, audibly and visibly thrived as did jazz and jazz-derived forms. Across the spectrum of genres popular forms vibrated with new life: movies, popular fiction, TV and radio, popular music, song and dance, animation, photography, cartoons and comics, mass circulation journals and newspapers, fashion and design - the list could be very long.

Because these popular and grass roots forms of expression seemed either to exist profitably unsupported or, as in the case of many older traditions, simply died out un-mourned through natural wastage they were not the focus as public and commercial schemes to fund "the arts".

The origins of public arts funding in Britain reflected this overwhelming bias in favour of "high art" established, bourgeois forms. The Arts Council, initially under John Maynard Keynes, was an outgrowth of the 2nd World War government policy of sending chamber concerts, plays and art exhibitions around the country to local halls, factories and other community and work places. The missionary element, a distant but clear precursor of Dartington Plus-type centres of excellence, ignorantly assumed a lack of cultural sophistication and "the arts" on the part of the masses. "The arts" were narrowly proscribed. Both the Arts Council and the Dartington Hall arts centre of the 1950s reflected this ignorance and almost irredeemable cultural snobbery.

Especially since the 1970s, various inroads were made by those involved in community arts and vernacular arts, often forcing arts establishments, notably the Arts Council itself, to recognise such practices despite their often transparent preferences for the older "arts" paradigms - including the modernist and even postmodernist developments.

In this time also the "cutting edge" of the arts became blunt. Rebellion and shock, once a pointed element in anti-bourgeois arts movements, lost their sharpness as they became mainstream and somewhat routine. Duchamp's ready-mades were reinvented regularly as provocation descended into sensation, Situationism into smart-alec gesturing, art itself into showbiz - as Damien Hirst famously said. The unmade beds, sliced cows and Piss Christs served to titillate the art world at best, and, and worst, triggered off outbreaks of boredom or ridicule. Saatchi-ism, an arts landscape emanating from the self same company that marketed Margaret Thatcher when she first became Prime Minister, reigned at one end of the artsbiz. If not in the thrall of commerce and careerism "the arts" became dependent on funding. An entire culture of funding opportunities, guidelines for applicants, fund raisers, arts administrators, policies and paperwork moved in on "the arts". Projects, education, collaborations, community, and endless innovation became the buzzwords. Arts projects and programmes began to be designed with funding in mind. (I once complained to a contemporary dance company that my name as composer was not on their posters. Their reply: the posters were designed and printed before they"d got the funding and, indeed, before they knew what the performance was going to consist of.) Ideas that might have had some future were often abandoned with the shrug: "I didn"t get the funding". One wonders what the ghosts of Van Gogh or Erik Satie were making of all this.

To recap: the marginalisation of commercial popular culture (either for reactionary or radical reasons); initial ignorance of community and vernacular practices subsequently taken over by funded missionary elements; the Saatchification of "showbiz" art posing as chic; the overwhelming dead hand of funding structures, and the subsequent acceptance of all these positions in arts education from primary school to university all contribute to the current Dartington crisis. "The arts" have lost any moral or ethical force they may have had. It is not only the Dartington Hall Trust that seems to have lost its nerve in the face of value-laden sums of money. This loss of nerve suggests a more general timorousness and uncertainty about "the arts" as a whole: who controls them, how, in whose interests, why and even (in Dartington's case) where - Of course, ventures such as the Summer School of Music may continue for a while on their establishment paths and there is nothing essentially wrong with this. However, at the very heart of the college - in other words amongst the students - new buds are beginning to show.

There are clear signs that new artistic paradigms, practices, attitudes and developments are now set to flourish within the college, reflecting the realities of twenty-first century culture in new and very lively ways. The tragedy is that the college and trustee power elites are set to execute this new groundswell before it has had the chance to make many waves.

THE REAL TRAGEDY OF DARTINGTON
I have mentioned a number of catastrophes all of which, in true Baudrillardian spirit, have already happened. Among with other crises these have led, directly or indirectly, to the current problems at Dartington. Alongside the collapse of the Elmhirst vision of integration of arts and community which has, admittedly only been sporadically achieved but always remains as potential, there is also the general cultural disaster of the rise of a pervasive funding mentality as the motive force of "the arts" in general. There is also the ethical and substantial ineptitude of the remains of high art, the well intention but often patronizing ineptitude of Community Arts, and an increasing crisis of confidence in "the arts" themselves. This latter is due mainly to the minimal degree of faith placed in them as themselves and their co-option into other non-arts agendas. Despite this all this catastrophe, however, in the present cultural landscape there is some evidence of a kind of rebirth, a min-renaissance, emerging from the wreckage. It is nothing short of appalling that Dartington College of Arts is preparing to pull out at this precise moment, possibly to attempt to regenerate itself by incorporation into a much larger institution, one that embodies the very catastrophes that Dartington could possibly avoid by staying put as a small, independent-minded college with the potential to develop strong local links. With an ancient Greek dramatic gift for things happening at just the wrong time the Dartington tragedy, if it occurs, is set to nip in the bud the most hopeful groundswell of student creativity to have happened for a long time. It might be a groundswell of national proportions, but Dartington College of Arts is ideally suited to witness and encourage it - meaning Dartington College as it currently is, of course, not a virtual version in Falmouth or anywhere else.

Let music stand for recent history: the 1970s with its undeniable and, especially for the young, cloying sense of being just post- the tumult and counterculture of the '60s, was socially and politically both volatile and fragile. In the world of popular culture the defiant anger of punk rock was one of the most significant creative trends of the decade, ABBA, glam rock and the Bay City Rollers notwithstanding. Punk, however, suffered from an end-of-the-baby-boomer sense of desolation. Likewise in art music, minimalism, whilst powerful and significant made a style out of paucity of means. The multi-coloured, abundant, even Dada-esque excesses of the '60s (Cage, Stockhausen, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix - not to mention Rauschenberg and Johns, Living Theatre, Tinguely, happenings, auto-destructive art, experimental film, Fluxus, free improvisation, arts labs, anti-universities, Warhol and Pop Art) were paired down to a handful of ridiculously simple structuring techniques (repetition, additive rhythm, phasing). By the time the first wave of Generation X reached its teens and twenties there was, it seemed, nothing worth standing up for. Art and its funding structures had become a pose that no authentic person could be bothered to adopt. Worthy social and political agendas were doomed to obscurity or co-option. Self esteem wasn't worth the fight. Outside popular music all that was left of once glorious traditions, or so it seemed, was cast-offs, shards, shells, ruins, crisis, remains.

In the 1990s, new directions all too often appeared to involve mere playing with gadgets. There seemed to be little else. Keynote popular songs like Nirvana's "Smells like Teen Spirit" or Radiohead's "Creep" peddled a gritty message, brutally honest, disillusioned, and bleaker than "Waiting for Godot".

In other artistic spheres the Saatchification of art, high on chic and sensation, provided little more than gimmickry and entertainment. Tabloids could be counted on to re-enact the worn out shock scenarios that were old hat by the 1930s; a handful of indignant voices wondered what arts was coming to, and the rest of us, as usual, couldn't really give a damn. What was left of the avant garde could be relied on to be out of date and irrelevant and, as ever, classist. White, French American, chic, Orlan made having plastic surgery (as well as flashing her magnified pussy)into an "art form" and won yuppie acclaim for it, while black, popular, working class and obviously in trouble Michael Jackson became derided as whacko for doing something essentially similar. This drab scenario does not, of course, constitute the entire picture, but the outline of a landscape low on integrity, scope and genuine innovation is clear enough. In Britain the funding of vast numbers of middle class arts ventures began to depend on whether or not sufficient members of a largely working class public had a weekly flutter on lottery tickets. That is how deep the lack of integrity had sunk to. It is not altogether hard to estimate why Baudrillard sees the contemporary arts from Warhol onwards as "null" - meaning with little real validity where it matters, in the social sphere, or as spiritual/ethical paradigms.

Within the very depths of the arts in crisis, however, new directions had been, and were being, forged by a generation or two of young people who were coming of age and had therefore grown up with new precepts. It is these post-Generation X-ers and their allies who now make up the majority of the student body. Dartington students are, in some ways, typical, although grounded in the unique location and opportunities of the Dartington campus the potential for clear, exciting and explicit explorations is immense. The smallness of the campus, alongside its obvious visual difference to mainstream institutes of education, engenders an attitude of independence, experimentation and genuine community. This, of course, has always been the case with Dartington College.

Technologies are part of this renaissance. To those for whom technologies are new and novel they are little more than gadgets. To those who have grown up with them, however, the techno-savvy post Generation X-ers, the mystique has melted. In its place has come ease and effortlessness, power and articulation. MySpace is an egalitarian, accessible way of networking. Sampling, scratching, turntable-ism, although retaining some of the feel of being freshly unwrapped, are simple examples of democratised technologies which rewrite aesthetics due largely to their different concerns to those of the old craft orientated , exclusive paradigms of "the arts". The emergence of new vernaculars, but without the self conscious good intentions of 1970s-style Community Arts, is a wholly positive development. At the Save Dartington College benefit concert organised by the Totnes Jazz Collective student rapper Tom Grant, with his call and response rap about DCA (Dartington College of Arts) was a wonderful example. While the old paradigm gazed in impotent envy Tom Grant took back control.

The new direction is not only, however, a matter of technology. It also has much to do with attitude. There may be many sources of a new breeze blowing through student minds but four seem pre-eminent: first, a new sense of immediacy - which does, indeed, relate to technologies. Second is a welcome sense of nous about the relationship between "the arts" and money. The Dartington College crisis is presented as being largely about money. The sub-text seems to be: find us the money and then the arts can thrive. If the £20 million can't be found around Totnes we'll go elsewhere - for European funding, for example. Wherever the money comes from it will lead "the arts" boldly into the twenty-first century. The most encountered student attitude about money for "the arts", however, reverses this notion. "The arts" come first. No significant artistic venture is "created" by money. The work comes first - and let it lead where it may.

The third and fourth powerful forces are related: 9/11 and a genuine multicultural outlook. 9/11 spelled the end of the hypocritical relativism that justified itself as an outgrowth of the disappearance of grand narratives. If all viewpoints are equal and relative there is nothing to stop those who chose to do so from flying planes into skyscrapers. 9/11 - and subsequent smaller instances of terrorism in Britain and elsewhere - spun this argument to its logical extreme and thus demonstrated its utter paucity of ethics or even plain intelligence. Its opposite was therefore thrown into existence - responsibility. A sense of responsibility, and a willingness to locate "the arts" in responsible alignments, now begins to emerge. Its complex enmeshing with the brutal realism of Generation X is fascinatingly paradoxical.

A new, genuine multiculturalism, but now devoid of crude, postmodern, minority-obsessed correctness, is now emerging from the post 9/11 scene. It may be that technology has helped this along. Asian dance mixes, sampling the sounds of various ethnicities, plus the absolute need to co-exist, have all played their part. In the new vernaculars unofficial solutions to official problems are not unusual.

The political background to this emerging, admittedly fragile, consciousness is what Noreena Herz called "the silent takeover", the erosion of a culture of democracy in light of the fact that "the sound of business is drowning out the voices of other interest groups" - which certainly rings true in the current Dartington situation. The long flirtation with the free market has produced remarkably little trickle down. The gap between rich and poor widens globally, and even in one wealthy country such as the USA. An entire worldview based on the control and domination of nature, linked to consumerism and high capitalism, now needs to change radically if the challenges of climate change and environmental chaos are to be confronted. The post Gen X, post Thatcher/Reagan/Friedman, post free-market-gone-insane generations hold within their experience of living at the outset of the twenty-first century an array of attitudes, informations, technical abilities and technologies. For young musicians and many other artists these have lead to new expressive developments which are now current but not yet quite traditional. This new hope, this guarded optimism with savvy (unlike its '60s predecessor), is the greatest prospect we currently have. It was very much in evidence throughout the Save Dartington College day on January 28th, but particularly so at the jazz gig in the evening. It is generally current. It may be observed elsewhere, but it's enmeshing with the traditions, aspirations and the rural but cosmopolitan retreat style of education that has been Dartington College of Arts since the 1960s is particularly compelling. It is this that we are set to lose.

THE BODHISATTVAS OF THE EARTH
There is an old Buddhist metaphor that has always appealed to me. The Buddha is said to have told a gathering of his spiritually advanced followers that his message will be carried on in the future. The followers are keen to know who will carry this message. They all hope it will be them. However, the earth opens up and a host of ordinary folk, known in the theology as "bodhisattvas of the earth", emerge from the earth itself. This metaphor suits the Dartington situation. The controlling elites, those who consider themselves important and powerful, are not the ones who bear the messages for the future. They are an outmoded, historical, worn-out elite whose aesthetics and ethics belong to a fading era. The "bodhisattvas of the earth" are the students, those who now live in a framework of post 9/11 responsibility, respect and tolerance. They are beginning to become politically informed, are savvy enough to understand the recent past and determined to control their own fate. MySpace is like a mass underground. These are people with faith in art rather than in externally imposed agendas.

Institutions and great ideas go through three phases, an almost inevitable life cycle, it seems: mysteries, morals and welfare. In the early stages, the mysteries, the new idea is all important. This is partly because no one yet fully understands it. Therefore the excitement and commitment of the new thing over-rides all other considerations, including material ones. The modern Dartington Hall, the early Christian church, the Labour Party, rock 'n' roll, are all good examples. It is usually only a small coterie of dedicated individuals who are engaged in the mysteries.

Once the idea becomes established and accepted beyond the initial coterie it is proselytised often on the basis of how good-for-you it is. This is the morals stage, a phase in which the seed now begins to grow and becomes known beyond its immediate sphere. This is a flourishing, a blossoming, although it inevitably involves moving on from the mysteries. This phase can last a long time, but eventually a form of degeneration generally sets in when the idea moves beyond the morals stage and into welfare. No longer a mystery, the idea becomes involved principally in its own perpetuation. The dedicated pioneers and initiators are cast aside. Often they are dead by now and their spirit is endlessly invoked - the Elmhirsts are a good example. Like the Bible you can find a quote to suit any argument. A typical current welfare scenario involves funding, bureaucracies, hierarchies, and endless fashionable attitudes and postures.

The modern Dartington Hall is now at the degenerate end of this cycle. It is difficult to imagine the kind of dedication which characterised the early days of the college, Dartington's mysteries. For example, all tutors also acted as "black tutors" without extra pay. A block was a small cross-subject group of students who had weekly meetings to air their grievances and propose new ideas. Your block tutor, who might be the Principal of the college (as in my case), would invite his block round to his house a couple of evenings every term. You got food, drinks, conversation, dialogue - even about plans for the college. If you deeply disagreed with a member of staff, or had a grievance, or thought the whole place was up to no good you said so outright and got listened to. What a difference! These days the college authorities suspend you for insubordination for the crime of making jokes - a much more militaristic model than the old Dartington.

Once this final stage sets in there are two ways forward. One is the Blairite model of re-branding. "New Labour" was an attempt (a cynically desperate one in my view) to start again with the welfare stage as the ground. It may or may not succeed. It may or may not last.

More interesting, more vigorous and more dynamic, however, is to notice where and how new mysteries are beginning to emerge. It is these which can regenerate the old institution. The new wave of Dartington students who I have referred to as emerging from the earth is, indeed, an invocation of mystery. What is utterly impossible is to assume that the missing essence, the old mystery which is now only a brand, can somehow be bottled and removed - the current suicide pact to move Dartington College elsewhere. However, it is the branding mentality which needs its new reception area and its centralised premises. It is the welfare stage which focuses on how to attract new students, government diktats and the impossibilities of budgeting.

If only a single person in the whole current crisis could even begin to appreciate that this is precisely the worst time to make irrevocable changes, to close the college and pretend you can re-open it elsewhere, the madness could stop. If one person could see that the seed, the new mystery, the new student consciousness really could be pointing to the future of Dartington, the whole sorry story could be halted and reversed. Indeed, if one person within the power elites were to have the slightest inkling that crumbling Dartington could be poised to be regenerated not by fancy funding for old buildings, but by the very students themselves, all would be different. Such an awakening would involve the recognition of the values and attitudes embedded on the practices of "the arts" and, finally, the removal of the quote marks. For the arts would be seen as an historic category, a loaded, value-laden term serving specific interests, and would be replaced by - the arts. The king is dead, long live the king. That sort of thing.

The Buddhist metaphor of emerging from the earth might be followed by another one. The new messengers are, indeed, poised to emerge, but the time and all other conditions have to be right. This is the only doubt that sometimes creeps in. Perhaps the personnel, the understanding, and the timing are wrong. If this is the case the extent of the catastrophe will be truly appalling.

Sam Richards