Economy: Culture and the Arts

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws]

My Lords, I, too, express my warm congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, on securing this debate. Like other speakers, I have had a variety of roles that reflect my own passion for the arts. I have chaired the British Council, I have chaired the London International Festival of Theatre, I have chaired Arts & Business, I was on the board of the Hampstead Theatre, and I am currently a trustee of the Man Booker Prize and the Hay Festival.

I had the great pleasure of getting to know the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, as co-trustee of the British Museum and I now count her as a friend. She will agree with me that to be a trustee of the British Museum is one of the greatest privileges that anyone can have. It is an extraordinary institution that is recognised internationally as one of the great wonders of the world. It is why travellers from around the globe make it a first port of call. It belongs not just to us but to the world, housing products of the world’s cultures. Yet Britain has the honour to be the steward of those collections.

To wander in its halls is to go on a great journey through the history of humanity. Its collections tell us what it means to be human and confirm that the peoples of the world are indeed one. A day in the museum leaves you with one overriding sense: what distinguishes the human from animal life is our creativity—our invention of things, our thinking of things, and then our making of things. There are at the museum displays of that incredible creativity from the earliest of times, back to the ice age, as a recent exhibition showed. That making of things—human creativity and invention—is a national asset that is beyond price. Here we are a nation that is small in size—a quarter the size of France—but which dominates the world in the creative industries. Caroline Norbury, CEO of Creative England, said that our inventors think the unthinkable—from Logie Baird to Tim Berners-Lee. We have some of the world’s most successful brands—from James Bond to Harry Potter. We have the largest commercial theatre operation in the world with ticket revenues of £535 million and 40 million visitors a year. It all depends on artists, makers and performers.

Why are we so good at this? It is because we have had an environment that has allowed for experimentation and, at times, for failure. We have in the past invested in the science and technological research that supports and respects artistic talent. There is a delicate ecosystem—an interplay between science and the arts and the cross hatching of the private and public subsidy—that has allowed talent to flourish in this country. When people are asked to think about the arts—theatre, film, paintings—they too often think of them as an add-on that are affordable only in times of affluence. The folly in such limited thinking does not need rehearsing in this House. What is forgotten is the knock-on effect on other sectors that work with the arts to create innovative products and services. All the design elements in our lives feed off art. Architecture looks to sculpture for form; graphic design looks at visual art and photography for new style; advertising looks to film. Steve Jobs was fond of saying that he did not employ geeks but hired poets, musicians and artists who were interested in technology. From that came Apple. However, even the economic value, which is estimated at £50 billion to the economy a year, is forgotten in our efforts to deal with the current debt. Yet a great deal of growth is to be found in unleashing the fund of creativity in this country.

I used to chair an organisation called Arts & Business, which created bridges between the arts and the world of finance. It was not just about sponsorship. It started its life in that way but it became about bringing the skills of the business world to creative endeavours. It was invariably to the advantage of both because there was reciprocity. People in the City loved being brought together with creatives and it changed how they functioned in their own milieux. Creative businesses are small and fragmented, undercapitalised and in need of constant reinvention. They face substantial problems accessing finance and have real problems getting banks or venture capitalists on board. It is a problem that we should recognise. They would often be the first to admit that they lack business skills and need good advice, but once they get the motor running, they can become huge financial success stories. However, we are in danger of doing what we have done in the past: losing out because we fail to capitalise fully on exploiting and distributing our inventions and intellectual property.

The arts have been described as the research and development laboratories of some of our most exportable products and brands. Yet while we are publicly proud of our investment in research for science and innovation, we are petrified at seeming too indulgent with creative people and the arts. We are sidelining art in the curriculum and squeezing the life out of our art and drama schools, while those without private incomes are finding it almost impossible to survive. We have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Grade, about those from different backgrounds who have the opportunity to find release in the arts, but I am afraid that this does not happen as frequently as we would want.

Somehow art is seen as risky but banking is not. We worry about the risk of investment in the arts, yet have no problem about investing in high-risk derivatives or space travel. I should like to refer to video games. They make £2 billion for the UK in global sales. In some of our new universities there is a great deal of creativity in making those games. The sector is now bigger than the film or music industries. The United Kingdom also leads in visual effects—all that amazing, fancy stuff in action movies. It is the fastest-growing component of the UK film industry, but I am told we are starting to lose our cutting edge because of skills shortages in the UK. Why is that the case? The answer is that we are not supporting appropriate technical training in our schools and universities.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, I started by speaking of the British Museum. It was through spending time among the ancient sculptures of the frozen north that Henry Moore took inspiration for his contemporary work. The old feeds the new. There are real anxieties that any significant downturn in public spending for the museum and other arts institutions will have a very damaging impact, which will not just be on the wonderful exhibitions, but on all the incredible scholarship that takes place beyond public view. I echo the plea of the noble Baroness that there should be no short-sighted cuts.

I make a general plea, too, for the places which nurture the ideas and the creativity: our schools, art schools and universities. Subsidising the arts should be up there as a high priority along with health. I also make a plea to Government to encourage banks and investors to support the initiatives. When Roosevelt responded to the Great Depression, he was persuaded to sustain the arts even in the worst of times. New projects were created, public art works for railway stations and post offices were commissioned and creative endeavours were encouraged. The payoff was immeasurable then. It would be now.