Events | 2010.03.25
Culture Capital: how arts funding became a live issue | Lyn Gardner
A new campaign aims to place the arts centre stage ahead of the general election – and not before time
In an upcoming election in which every vote will count, the arts vote potentially takes on even greater significance. Given the way they\'ve been courting the arts since the start of the year , it\'s clear that all three parties are aware of this. So far there are plenty of fine words but no promises . This is hardly surprising given the post-budget commentary, which maintains that if the books are to be balanced, whichever government is in power is going to have to find £30bn of cuts over the next five years.
The great and the good, including Neil MacGregor , Nick Serota , Alan Davey , Jude Kelly and Nick Hytner, were out in force at the British Museum this morning for the launch of Cultural Capital , a document laying out how "investing in culture will build Britain\'s social and economic recovery". It calls itself a manifesto, but in fact it\'s little more than a welcome reiteration of the economic and social benefits of the arts, necessary because politicians have short attention spans and prefer kissing babies to kissing artists. In case anyone has forgotten, the economic impact of theatre on the economy is £2.6bn, with every public pound invested earning a return of £2. Liverpool\'s year as European Capital of Culture brought £800m into the city, and last year\'s Manchester international festival generated £35.7m. No wonder everyone wants an arts festival.
It\'s good to see the case being made so vociferously. The tragedy would be if the investment that has gone into infrastructure over the last 15 years were wasted because of insufficient funding to make the infrastructure work. We might just as well have stood around burning £50 notes. Good, too, at one of these "men-in-suits" occasions, to hear Hytner being loud and generous in recognising that the National Theatre is completely dependent on smaller institutions and companies, saying that there would be "no National without Punchdrunk", or indeed other companies "on whom the spotlight often doesn\'t fall". One hopes that if push comes to shove and there are savage cuts (some suggest the figure could be 15%), that the Arts Council and big institutions will remember this and not just divide the cake among the men in suits and Jude Kelly at the Southbank. Innovation and tomorrow\'s artists have already been disproportionately hit by the slashing of Grants for the Arts .
It\'s important to keep making the argument for the arts, because although the amount of money invested in the creative sector is tiny and therefore would not offer any government looking for cuts a significant saving, it may start to look a more proportionally attractive candidate for cuts as other areas of government spending are slashed. What Cultural Capital largely fails to address is the major contribution that local authorities make to the arts and to theatre buildings in particular; and that while the arts may escape significant cuts in public funding via the DCMS, they will not be immune when local authorities are looking to make savings. The lobbying needs to take place as intensively at a local level as it is at the national level, demonstrating the benefits that the arts can bring to communities. As Hytner says: "There is no sense of entitlement. In return for very limited public investment, we can deliver."
Nobody involved in the launch of Cultural Capital wanted to talk about what would happen to the arts in the event of cuts, and it seems a sensible approach to keep the dialogue fruitful in the pre-election climate. The battle may yet be won, and once the starting gun is fired, every one of us should be quizzing our local candidates on the arts. Of course, there are potential pitfalls in making the arts more central to the political script. As Paul Kelly recently argued in Arts Professional , by raising their profile with politicans, "knowingly or not, the arts have signed a Faustian pact that allows politicians to discuss what and who the arts are for, as well as how they are funded and by how much". I for one think that it\'s a risk worth taking.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreb[...]5/culture-capital-arts-funding
