Economy: Culture and the Arts

Baroness Sharp of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, for initiating this very important debate. I will speak about one relatively narrow aspect of arts and culture; namely, the conservation and preservation of our cultural heritage. I do so because some time ago I chaired a sub-committee of the Science and Technology Committee, which looked at the role of science in the preservation and conservation of our cultural heritage. Since then I have retained a considerable interest in the subject and continue to play a part. The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, talked about the delicate ecosystem between science and the arts, and, indeed, there is.

Like other noble Lords, I will not go into detail about the role of cultural heritage in the economy, because others have mentioned it. The noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, in particular identified the importance of this sector for attracting tourism and £115 billion annually; tourism is the fifth largest industry in the country. Somewhere in the region of 70% of people who come to this country do so because they want to visit our cultural heritage: our historic towns and villages, castles, stately homes, museums, art galleries, theatres, and music and other festivals.

I will concentrate on the issue of preservation and conservation. Why do we want to do it? One answer is that we would not reap the economic benefit from our cultural heritage if it were not there. Further to that, it is of course an essential part of our culture. What do we mean by cultural heritage? Essentially, it is those parts of what we value in our arts and artefacts, and in our ideas, that we want to pass on to other generations. Conservation is vital—and not just of material things such as paper and textiles. I remember the director of the Natural History Museum, Michael Dixon, telling me, “We have a great problem because insects eat insects, so we have to keep the insects away from our collection of insects”.

Even stone degrades over time, as we know so well from what is happening here to our own Palace of Westminster. That is a great problem. Increasingly, many of the things that we create are transient. We are corresponding, not by letter—which can be kept these days—but by e-mail. We record notable events on YouTube or on Facebook. We gather information from websites. The preservation of our digital presence is an increasing part of conservation, and a great problem posed to the British Library, which, for example, has to keep a record of all the websites that are created.

I have an interesting example of the transience of all material things. The noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, mentioned the David Bowie exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Some time ago, the textile conservation centre at Winchester was charged with repairing a pair of Freddie Mercury’s pants, the bright red ones he wore at a gig in 1979, which sadly were made out of faux leather and had begun to wear away. Later, it was also charged with conserving his famous yellow jacket and white trousers. On one level it was doing this because it was preserving his memory for potentially millions of Queen fans, but on another level, it was undertaking important work into the longevity and vulnerability of degradation in modern materials. As one of the conservators put it,

“everyone has this idea that modern fabrics are indestructible ... But in fact there are some that are very unstable—and polyurethane happens to be one of them”.

Conservation and preservation help to preserve more than just memories and artefacts. They also provide us with a great insight into attitudes and behaviour. We learn so much about Tudor England from Shakespeare plays or, for that matter, about Egypt 3,000 years ago from such artefacts as the Book of the Dead, which was displayed so admirably at the British Museum a couple of years ago. These are not only the things we enjoy looking at and value; they are the stuff of our history and help to explain our present. We did not inherit the past but hold it in trust for our children and our children's children. It is therefore important that we value these things not just because they contribute to the economy, but because our children, and their children and their children’s children should also be able to enjoy them.

I end therefore with a plea that, while recognising the value of these assets, we do not neglect the need to put resources—that means money—aside for their maintenance and conservation. It is too easy in these days of austerity to forget that, as I said earlier, even stone degrades. Unless we are prepared to put money and effort into conservation and into developing new methods of conservation, we shall not be in a position to hand them on to our children. Yesterday, my noble friend Lord Lee raised the question of the possible closure of the Science Museum Group museums in the north of England. The Minister himself noted that last year 19.1 million people visited these regional museums and that they are often at the heart of their region’s creative industries, preserving artefacts and skills which characterise their local history. It would be a tragedy if these museums have to shut. But if we want the Science Museum to continue to maintain and preserve its collections, it has to be given enough money to keep them all in good repair. I hope that the cultural and economic importance of such museums will be considered carefully in the forthcoming spending review.