By James Doeser
This is the third and final essay in a short series written for Words @ Arts Analytics, prompted by the contributions of Joanna and Doug and their guests throughout 2025. The first was a reflection on the predicament of cultural policy equipped only for the disappearing world of scarcity, the second described my experience and ultimate failure as a research and data advocate. This one strikes a more personal and confessional note, after two years of “retirement” from research and consulting in the sector.
I do not recommend moving through the world with a cultural sociologists’ perspective. This particular pathology will feel familiar to some of you… I remain incapable of enjoying any cultural activity without abstracting and analysing what I am doing and what others are doing around me. I cannot walk into a theatre without segmenting the audience or speculating on the sublimated psychological forces that have brought them to the auditorium. I am creatively paralysed by the deep knowledge of how the cultural economy is likely to treat anything I produce, especially so if it has come from a place of vulnerability or sincerity. Lamentably, I see no more subversive or authentic move for an artist today than withdrawal from the great content machine and the platforms, devices and legacy institutions that churn through it for their own benefit. Dance like big brother is watching.
I do not understand our culture’s fear of mortality. Death can be sad; death can be bad. I get it. But immortality is a fate worse than death. Our “vitalist” prejudice warps the cultural sector in mundane and insidiously bureaucratic ways. Throughout my consulting career I found myself working to preserve or revive organisations which in all senses should be left to expire. They had outlived their purpose: what was once avant garde had become mainstream; or a founder’s vision had expired with the founder; or “mission accomplished” had been declared long ago. New entrants to the cultural sector suffocate under the weight of the undead. There are too many medics and too few morticians. A more sanguine approach to institutional mortality would generate space for refreshing new ways of doing things. The alternative is a zombie sector.
The most credible and curious philanthropic foundation chose to enact a glorious suicide. In my final year of consulting it became fashionable to look at systems thinking: exploring tough solutions to tough problems. A leading voice in this work was a philanthropic foundation called Lankelly Chase. Their research reports and how-to guides were rich and provocative. I frequently used them myself. It was therefore a surprise and not a surprise that they chose to call it quits in 2023. You can read for yourself the details of the affair and the justifications given for their decision. In short, they concluded their ongoing existence as a foundation distributing dividends while sitting on a pot of gold won through extractive capitalistic forces was undermining the goals they had set for themselves. They are now liquidating and distributing the endowment. Their closure was inspiring, as well as a backhanded challenge to their peers.
Claims for more or better research turned out to be largely synthetic. There is obviously a deficit of seriousness and curiosity in our culture generally: just turn on the news for five minutes. When a cultural policymaker or the CEO of a cultural organisation says “I would like to know how to achieve this or that goal” I do not believe there is any sloppiness or mendacity, although they may be following a script set by fashion or external obligation. Overall my former clients seemed genuinely interested in solutions to their strategic and operational problems. But I also believe they were unprepared for the sacrifices required to implement the solutions presented to them. Your friend may wish to quit smoking, but are they truly ready for the vacancy that this will reveal in their soul? The challenge of executive leadership in the sector, within our wider culture of unseriousness and incuriosity, is to build the muscle that allows people to make those sacrifices: to egos, to reputations, to friendships even. Those with the muscle deserve applause not excommunication.
It feels as if we are sloughing off the last vestiges of modernity and nobody knows quite what to do about it. Evidently, the future is not evenly distributed, and this may be by design rather than historical circumstance. But everywhere I see “death of God” type technological breakthroughs and various priesthoods in crisis. The advent of GLP-1 drugs has done it to the diet industry, just as generative AI has done it to the arts. There will be countless other instances you can think of. Meanwhile, people are valiantly trying to confect or recover meaning where there is none. (You still pay more for “natural” diamonds though they are indistinguishable from those grown in a lab.)
I do not envy the policymaker of today and I worry about the artist of tomorrow. If it can be reborn or reconstituted then maybe the cultural sector will be the place where humanity playfully explores the vanguard of our vertiginous new reality. Nobody knows what will be left by the time the last of the Boomers is playing pickleball in heaven. There will still be rich folk in search of a reputational laundromat. And the cultural sector continues to attract record numbers of new entrants. But I’m happy to make some space in my own small way. Out with the old and in with the new. Out with me and over to you.