I love this idea – the Arts Council England is funding two artist placements at the BBC, one of whom will be working with Creative Archive licensed material, releasing their work back into the wild, with the other having more unrestricted access to BBC archive footage, releasing their works internally to the BBC only.
I love this because it represents a fundamentally different way of thinking about the way in which artists are funded. Usually, artists are expected to have to make a living from selling their works (or copies of), for bands this means record sales, for visual artists it means sales of work or prints, for photographers it means sales or image licensing, and so on…
Publically-funded artists are a whole different dimension though – with the taxpayer giving them a guaranteed living wage, the artist can concentrate on producing the work and getting it out to an audience. Creative Archive, and similar licenses, are a perfect match for this, allowing the public maximum use of the work.
I wonder if this model could be extended? Could we create the first publically-funded rock band, who give away all their MP3s for free and allow fans to print their own merchandise?
Meanwhile, I wonder which of the two placements – which the Arts Council is calling Unlimited Access and Unlimited Distribution – will get the most applications?
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