NESTA PROJECT: FINE ARTSITS AND INNOVATION

Close or strong networks seem particularly important in the
early stage of an idea, where intense experimentation and
collaboration require close contact and constant
communications. Ideas at this stage are often not properly
formulated, much less written down; risk is high and rewards
uncertain. The supportive environment and local, tacit
knowledge are vital in helping with everything from finance
to premises or staff. Once ideas are more developed and
can be ‘coded’, loose international networks and peer
review become important. Supply chain networks, often
more ‘visible’ than peer to peer relationships, take ideas or
concepts through a series of phases, drawing on different
resources at each stage.
From the outside, the networking involved in cultural activities
often seems incestuous and exclusive, posing a problem for
public policymakers keen to open up the cultural sectors to
a more diverse range of producers (Oakley, 2006, Andari et
al., 2007). In addition, there is often a tension between the
trust needed in the risky, experimental stages of creation and
the need to be sufficiently porous to allow new talent into
the system (Bilton, 2007).
In the next section, we will look at the literature, both on
artists’ working lives and on their training and education. In
doing so, we are trying to consider artists both as individuals
and to the extent they form a definable ‘community’ of
practice (Wenger, 1998).
As Gertler (2003) argues, while the ‘communities of practice’
school of thought stresses community knowledge and norms
as conditions for knowledge exchange, it sometimes
neglects the social context and the relationship between
tacit and codified knowledge. In other words, the ability of
workers to absorb and deploy tacit knowledge may depend
inter alia on their level of education and the common
socialisation processes that have produced them.
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