There was a program on TV last night about the Own Art scheme funded by the Arts Council England. Own Art is all about trying to get more people into buying contemporary art by offering interest-free loans of up to £2000 for purchasing anything from paintings to furniture.

I was first told about the scheme a few months ago when I was mooching around Art Republic, a hip gallery in Brighton with a nice line in Banksy prints and gigantic pop-art posters. I found myself intrigued by the work of Graham Carter—a local artist, as it turns out—and particularly by a print called Mist Bather. When the woman working at Art Republic saw my interest in the print—and my hesitation to drop £150 on a pretty picture—she gave me an Own Art leaflet and enticed me with the prospect of taking the print home that day and paying just £15 a month for the next 10 months to make it mine.

I didn’t wind up buying the print (and I’ve since become even more intrigued by a different Graham Carter piece called Quiet Carriage, which brings up fond memories of our train ride from Tokyo to Kyoto last year), but I’ve kept the Own Art leaflet on my desk and certainly haven’t ruled out making use of the scheme in the near future. I think it’s a fabulous concept; it’s good for artists, it’s good for galleries, and it’s good for people like me who love art but find it difficult to spend big chunks of money on it in one go.

Incidentally, the program about the scheme was really good, too. It consisted of interviews with various people who have made use of Own Art loans to buy or commission original artworks. Even when the art they bought wasn’t to my taste at all, it was fascinating to see the types of things people had fallen in love with and just how much it meant to them to be able to have these artworks in their homes.

Art for ordinary people—some things are just fundamentally a good idea.