On four separate occasions last Saturday I was approached by complete strangers bearing clipboards and a beaming expression. These people were not the usual types rampant in Leeds city centre, sidelining the unsuspecting pedestrian with well rehearsed tales of woe designed to shame us into adopting a dog, fostering a feline, or taking out a time-share on an endangered species. For once the question was not how much I could afford or what time of month was best to set up my direct debit. I was asked my opinion about some art. Canvassed for feedback about an event that took place in the city over the weekend. This got me thinking.
It got me thinking here was an opportunity. Consider this for a moment; here was an event that cost a pretty penny (not that I’m pulling the ring on that particular can of premium worms, thank you very much!) and employed some of the best artists, musicians, performers and organisers we have. It took years to conceive, devise, rehearse and coordinate. It was an imaginative extravaganza. Totally out of the ordinary.
And yet we were asking ordinary members of the public to pronounce judgement. People who almost certainly hadn’t heard about it, weren’t prepared for it, and were quite possibly antagonistic to the whole idea. Shoppers, hen party goers, granddads, street preachers, novelty whistle sellers, Saturday drinkers, moochers, adolescents, horse race gamblers, bricklayers – the whole gamut of the pastie eating, Primark wearing, soap consuming, culture indifferent public.
Which strikes me as a bit of a waste.
An incredibly inefficient, haphazard, pointless exercise. One that may end with entirely the wrong result. The event may not receive the feedback it so richly deserves.
Couldn’t we do better? Just as artistic production is best left to the most gifted, most talented, most educated amongst us, ought we not to expect a similar standard in aesthetic appreciation?
This is what set my mental cogs a-whirring. Why should great art trouble the general, gormless, egregious public at all? Why not a specialist feedback service to supply the monitoring and evaluation needs of the culture industries at so-much an event, performance or installation? Such a service, if suitably qualified, could turn a decent profit.
Which is why I have set up Opinion Hire: Creative Responses to Art Projects.
OHCRAP offers solutions to all your art feedback needs. Our mantra here at OHCRAP is “comment is free, but positive feedback is priceless!”
OHCRAP aims to be a one stop shop for a wide range of opinion requirements, providing bespoke opinionation on demand. OHCRAP can supply reaction on tap, instantly if not before.
OHCRAP has developed a number of packages tailored to the particular type and amount of funding your arts project receives.
Opinion Lite is our entry level feedback solution. For a negligible monthly fee OHCRAP will supply generic answers to up to ten individual questions – “nice,” “really nice,” “very good,” “really very good,” “ace,” “a bit shit,” “total crap, what the fuck are you playing at, you talentless morons!” “a religious experience . . . pity the religion in question was Satanism.” OHCRAP can supply up to a hundred feedback forms with this package, making it suitable for most small, pitifully funded projects.
Opinion Plus is OHCRAP’s mid range feedback solution. For a reasonably enhanced monthly fee we can supply our industry approved generic answers plus an extra five that may or may not involve extravagant swearing and a choice of quotations from Barthes, Baudrillard, and Gramsci. Suitable for the smaller organisation with greater pretensions.
Opinion Plus Extra is same as above with added Nietzsche. Only fifty more quid a month. Think of it as an eternal return on investment.
Finally we offer Opinion Gold, our premier feedback option, suitable for RFO’s and lottery funded projects. With Opinion Gold OHCRAP promises to actually turn up to your event, performance, show etc. and spend the last hour filling out a shed load of feedback forms. Opinion Gold is costed in alcoholic units per response so the price is prohibitive for most small to medium sized organisations. Opinion Gold is worth its weight in opinion.
Obviously OHCRAP is still in the initial stages of development and looking for investment. If you think OHCRAP can help you with your artistic dreams please get in touch. OHCRAP is a company limited in responsibility.
OHCRAP . . . because your opinion doesn’t mean much to us.
Ha. Well you know what they say.. opinions are like arseholes everyone’s got them. Although come to think about it I have never actually fact checked that.
Of course you miss the real point here Phil: the way in which our decision making processes remain gummed up with an outmoded, sentimental attachment to the charade we call democratic process.
Where vainglorious politicos abase themselves to Joe and Jill public to win their votes and achieve what, a mandate? A mandate from dull witted mouth breathers, with barely an ounce of political savvy in their prosaic little souls? A mandate from people who don’t know who these politicians are, what they stand for, or even where they fall out of step with the party line? Who vote for a dimly-remembered political brands rather than from respect for their ideological scar tissue? It’s a patronising waste to keep kidding them they can and should make a difference. Better to be honest than to carry on this sad affair much longer.
After all, in these times of austerity – think of the waste! Not just the cost of elections themselves – but the collateral damage of these 5 yearly transitions: the hiring and firing of special advisors, and the endless u-turn of the policy merry-go-round.
My modest proposal, then, is to excise the decision making process from grubby mitts of human landfill that laughably refer to themselves as an electorate – and restore it to those connoisseurs of constitution who know their Trollope from their Trotsky. Let’s stop asking them. They really don’t know what’s good for them. Some of them even have the temerity to expect accountability in matters of foreign policy, how their taxes are spent, and how decisons are made.
And where do this lumpen mass glean their understanding of the art of decision making? Have they ever suffered the exquisite pain of having one’s closest held beliefs amputated by the Chief Whip? Do they know the torture of selling out one’s friends in the name of short-term advantage?
Of course not. What people want is strong leadership. And that’s precisely what we should give them.
Our motto shall be “Leaders in the Lead”
Arts and Politics make strange bedfellows indeed.
Thank you for make critically posts to publish with valuable topics satire for city ambush in culture. Anyways now I am always follow many more swift interventions along.
最後的意見是公正的天才。它是真正令人振奮的知道我的努力並不總是浪費
一品脫純是你唯一的男人
OHCRAP could be an employee owned mutual with membership being made up of the cities cultural social media ‘guns for hire….’
I’m a pop (culture) gun for hire . . .
Love it….question is…did you attend the event they quizzed you about?
OHCRAP you miss the point of the exercise Phil, it was number gathering, you became grant app fodder.
Numbers / info stats, for grant bids by people for people who then use this data, info to angle careers in the Arts, the music industry is swamped by ex over paid music industry bods, “creating” pointless, crappy new music concepts and events and groups and collectives, with one aim.
To secure a weekly wage for themselves, as consultants, or experts.
Makes me puke.
Sure you knew that at the time when answering the questions? It was merely helping tick the box’s for some grant app somewhere down the line. So I guess you did your bit that day …but I recall Yorkshire Forward / Screen Yorkshire many such organisations sending employee’s on jaunts to SXSW industry events.
People who never been to a gig in their life, coming up with concepts for the future of music in the region…..and guess where £3 million quid went? To the North EaSt, TO an out fit that then relied heavily on local promoters, and music activists HERE to engage the Yorkshire musical community, and sell their ideas to them, in turn to attend pointless “networking” sessions….where…yup…you had to fill out a form, tick box’s that helped them gather the info needed to continue their important work…ie keep them in the job they had created for themselves by knowing how to scope through and apply for tenders posted out for short periods to non public website sites.
“And yet we were asking ordinary members of the public to pronounce judgement. People who almost certainly hadn’t heard about it, weren’t prepared for it, and were quite possibly antagonistic to the whole idea. Shoppers, hen party goers, granddads, street preachers, novelty whistle sellers, Saturday drinkers, moochers, adolescents, horse race gamblers, bricklayers – the whole gamut of the pastie eating, Primark wearing, soap consuming, culture indifferent public.
Which strikes me as a bit of a waste.”
AGREED!!
OHCRAP…where do I sign up? lol