It's been a while since I set up this blog and have so far posted nothing so I figured I best start now or else I'd be better off forgetting about it altogether. Despite using Twitter a fair bit I'm not a massively 'online' person, I've always just written things down in sketchbooks or thrashed out arguments with whoever was around and seemed remotely interested. I prefer face to face interaction as I dislike the feeling that people can hide behind what they say online, but do appreciate the value of a space like this in that it allows you to interact with a wider group of people. In any case, I've come to the conclusion that this space can really just work like a sketchbook in itself. 

At the moment I'm at what I feel is quite an exciting stage but also pretty daunting considering I've little to show for myself. Having begun my PhD in October, I am just beginning to figure out the process and get some decent reading done. In a way, I'm somewhere I never expected to be but that is part of what makes it exciting for me and I'm up for the challenge. 

When thinking about cultural value, as I have recently started to read into, I feel like I cannot escape my own history and that my views are so much shaped by the experiences I've had and the way I've experienced the world. I have only begun to scratch at the surface of what is a wide debate on measuring cultural value, what 'culture' and 'value' even mean, and I am more aware than I've ever been as to why my views on cultural value are as they currently are, the more I read, the more I question them. For example, having been an art student I'm firmly in support of arts funding, but on the other hand think in the case of individual artists certainly, there is something to be said for making your own way, regardless of what the government and funding bodies or whoever else chooses to provide funding think to it, or how they may or may not value it. Evidently, this is only one small aspect of the arts and the wider world of culture, but as it is where my experience lies it is easiest for me to illustrate in these terms. 

There seems to me to be the overarching debate about why the arts should be funded at all, then there is, within the arts, the debate between who gets arts funding and why. It will be interesting to discover on what terms elligibility for funding is currently judged. In a sense, there will always be some form of inequality in the allocation of funding, at least felt by some, as there is no clear way to make value judgements at all, I feel, which raises the question of where this debate will end up... 

An interesting article about Jeremy Deller: 

"Jeremy Deller: 'I'm more interested in ideas than money'"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/jan/29/jeremy-deller?INTCMP=SRCH