The plans for the day developed in response to radical changes taking place in patterns of funding for the visual arts. At the time, developments in the funding and support of research in higher education, stemming from the Research Assessment Exercise and the establishment of the Arts and Humanities Research Board, were occurring alongside momentous changes in the public arts funding system, significant shifts in the pattern of Lottery support for the arts, and increasingly high levels of patronage for contemporary visual arts from trusts and foundations.

Emerging from this ferment of development and change were significant opportunities for greater dialogue to occur between the various bodies involved, all of which had an important role to play in supporting innovative and world-class research over the next decade, and amongst which there had been very little real exchange. The symposium acted as a stimulus to greater understanding of shared objectives and priorities in the future, encouraged by a publication of its proceedings.

The symposium was convened and chaired by Antonia Payne and contributors included artists Michael Baldwin, Stephen Farthing, Brighid Lowe, Maud Sulter and Richard Wentworth, Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton (Director of Visual Arts, Arts Council of England), Patricia Bickers (art historian and Editor, Art Monthly), Professor Pavel Buchler (Manchester Metropolitan University), Siân Ede (Assistant Director, Arts, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation), Anthony Everitt (writer and journalist and former Secretary-General, Arts Council of Great Britain), Martin Freeth (Deputy Director, National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts), Professor Charles Harrison (art historian and contributor to Art & Language), Michael Jubb, Director of Programmes, Arts and Humanities Research Board), Lynda Morris (Norwich Gallery, Norwich School of Art & Design), Dr David Pilsbury (Head of Research Policy, Higher Education Funding Council for England) and Professor Jon Thompson (University of Middlesex)

The symposium and book were made possible through money awarded to the Ruskin School of Art as a shortlisted nominee for the Prudential Awards for the Arts 1997 with additional support from Southern Arts.