The London Art Scene 2011-2041 - a history
Welcome to the Rational Rec Academy on 24 March 2041
Today we have recreated for you an exhibition that took place at the Barbican Art Gallery in London 30 years ago, which recreated the 1970s Downtown New York Scene.
In our presentation today, Rational Rec reports on the history of the London arts scene from 2011 to the present day. We will also trace what happened to the artists selected by the Barbican Art Gallery as representing the London art scene of 2011.
Rational Rec began in 2005 as an artist-led initiative to present interdisciplinary art in a social context. It survived the public funding crisis of 2018-22 through the support of its audience, and is now a major international commissioning and research academy, funded through a Technology and Science Outreach grant, with a remit to preserve obscure parts of artistic social history through digital technologies. Our work is cited in many peer-reviewed sociology papers worldwide and our recently initiated PhD programme will soon provide over 75% of our annual income. We keep our audiences up to date with our latest programme initiatives through a combination of social network presence and augmented reality seminars. Our regular audience of 25million people worldwide in over 30 countries regularly comments on our work on a moderated online social forum.
2011 was the year that saw the concept of crowdfunding become a reality - where members of the public are asked to financially support arts activity through pledging micro donations. This has perhaps been the most significant change to the way the arts have been supported in the last hundred years, and has also served to encourage audiences to interact with the arts in an unprecedented way. Not only do people comment on arts activity, they can actively become involved through pledging more significant sums and taking a hand in the design and production of any art form they are interested in. Funding the arts is now one of the most important leisure activities in the UK. Currently, our Rational Rec core programme is funded through small online donations of between €25 and €140 and makes up around 40% of our annual turnover. 
After all public funding to the arts was removed by successive governments during the period 2011-2018, the arts faced a period of upheaval. Historically, the arts in the UK had been majority supported by government programmes through an Arts Council, but after this was abolished in 2022 artists and organisations had to work in a different way to carry on. Although a certain portion of the arts disappeared, artists and the artistic drive in human beings meant that some activity will always take place; similarly, the still-entrenched Renaissance notions of the genius, individual artist and the egotism that comes with it ensures that the arts will continue to flourish for all time.
Regeneration and social renewal are two very important aspects of the arts which have been strengthened by new technological advances. As well as Government-backed schemes to encourage traditional workshops to move to regeneration areas, the upper echelon of successful artists are increasingly diversifying in to branded luxury goods to go along with their virtual, manufactured and hand-made offerings. The more successful artists have become, like the company Nike in the late 20th century, branding agencies who produce and sell ranges of perfumes, fashion, cars, pop music and holidays. At its apex, a few very successful such agencies are now collaborating with the Government on social projects and town planning, making explicit the link between artist residency in a neighbourhood and regeneration. As art is seen as a major growth factor in determining the success of regeneration projects, this kind of activity is sure to increase.
Being an artist is now one of the simplest ways to earn a living. Once traditional arts fell out of favour in the early 20th century - helped by negative media interpretations of art and artists, and the increasing professionalisation of arts careers. Almost every month from 2018-2022, there was a public campaign to discredit the value of the arts, with mass ‘unliking’ of projects that receive public funds, causing Facebook audiences to collapse.
To call oneself an 'artist' now reflects a career as a multi-disciplinary consultant, working with Government, industry, education and social care. Although now only very few people make a living from their work, this is not such a radical shift from earlier economies of the arts - since the start of the 20th century, artists have always needed other forms of income from outside the arts to survive. A majority of people now who describe themselves as artists make no money at all from traditional artistic activity; instead, to brand oneself as an artist is simply to advertise the fact that you have attended an art school and have a professional skillset in marketing, production technologies, sociology, lateral thinking and philosophy.
Of course, some arts organisations survive, and some public funding of these organisations is still available, but not for artistic activity directly. Public funding is available for the useful arts only: art hospitals catering to mental illnesses, art schools themselves, management consultancy by artists in industry and commerce, counselling, and, of course, regeneration and town planning are all well-paid and well-funded aspects of an artists career.
Due to budgetary constraints, formal art education changed dramatically in the first quarter of the 21st century to focus almost exclusively on theory and history, assessing students' ability to assimilate the concepts and ideas of historical movements into their own practice. Apart from some training in computer assisted manufacturing processes, art students were liberated from the grind of having to perfect their hand making skills, which many reported to find difficult and cumbersome. Responding to successive Government calls from the period 2016-2038, art schools instead began to focus on primarily teaching students the business skills, innovation, employability and enterprise they would need to compete in the creative industries. As in 2011, only around 3% of arts graduates still have a career in the arts 3 years after graduation, but now many more are able to support themselves through knowledge exchange with private enterprise and consultancy on social and regeneration projects.
Naturally, some artists, as is still the case today, were dissatisfied with this approach and began to found their own art academies based on traditional making techniques. The numbers of students these academies can take on is limited by health and safety issues around using potentially dangerous machinery, the expense associated with traditional techniques (around 300 laptops can be powered using the same energy as one ceramic kiln), the cost of musical instruments or staging a full theatre production with live actors, and the fees required to sustain these institutions. As with the art business apprenticeship model, these institutions are seen as a sound basis for economic regeneration and social improvement around the country, with tourism around academies providing an increasing boost to their local economies year on year since 2027.
Due to the Peak Oil Wars of 2024-7 and the delayed start of serious investment into renewable energy sources, there exists, as we all know, a gap between energy supply and demand. This has been most acutely felt in international public transportation, where a ticket to cross the Atlantic now costs around the same as a one bedroom flat and increasingly tight visa restrictions prohibit most people from entering any other country outside of Europe. Fortunately, the internet has been increasingly invested in and continues to become an even more sophisticated way to communicate, interact and critique culture, particularly the visual and performing arts. Where globalism is expensive, the local area, typically within a 20-30 minute walk, becomes again a real choice for ordinary citizens to experience culture.
After the last practical workshop in a UK art school closed in 2016 with the sculpture department at Cornwall Amalgamated University, the focus of art education became, other than simple revenue generation to support science and technical subjects, the theory and history of art movements during the 20th and 21st centuries. Art students no longer made objects by hand: this outmoded concept working with dangerous machinery was replaced throughout the UK by computer assisted manufacturing technologies: 3D printing, computer controlled milling, rapid prototyping and robot enhanced lathes now account for around 83% of all previously manufactured art goods. This industry has also served to regenerate large post-industrial areas, with manufacturing and research now major growth areas in the North-East of England. These technologies also allow art works to be sent digitally to galleries overseas and printed out locally, greatly reducing transport and exhibition times and, of course, avoiding increasingly prohibitive transport and insurance costs. And some artists, keen to bring their works to ever larger audiences, license their works in the virtual 3D galleries that are now appearing for consumption at home.
The breakthrough in 2024 of near-perfect computer modelling of human beings, along with 3D projection technology, voice recognition and vocal simulation, also made great improvements to theatre and film, with actors replaced by computer-generated avatars who can produce the full range of human emotions and interact with individuals within an audience. Theatre and film are now among the cheapest art forms to produce, requiring only a suitably trained technician and a director to conceive, script and produce a performance. Moving image work now accounts for over 80% of artistic activity. With the advent of large-screen 3D projections in almost every UK home, and ever faster internet access, theatre and film have proved to be the most accessible artforms, which can be enjoyed in the comfort of one’s own home. And with social network plugins, you still get the feeling of being in a live audience with streaming comments from your friendfeed and multiple hashtag conversations.
When one of the world’s digital pioneers affirmed the positive psychological and medical effects of abstract sound in 2020, thousands of sensory rooms with tactile highly directional speakers were built by local communities across the country. Based on designs made with 3D printing technology, each sensory room is an immersive sonic environment, programmed with an algorithm that automatically collects and composes with sounds from the surrounding community, without any human intervention or need for aesthetics. Due to the untimely death of a number of notable traditional instrument makers and composers at a conference celebrating musical craft on the Isle of Wight in 2034, conventional musical instruments are extremely costly and rarely used, with musicians preferring to work with digital sound. Although concert halls, stadia and venues still exist, the thirst for live music dried up in the late 2030s. Music performances continue to be produced - these are disseminated to a mass public as an entertainment subsection of film and theatre practice, beamed directly into one’s home.