Arts: Funding

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Aberdare]

My Lords, I am delighted to speak in this debate and congratulate my noble friend Lord Clancarty on initiating it. I shall focus on classical music, which, of all the arts, is closest to my heart. Music is a great success story for the UK. We have world leading orchestras, performers and conservatoires recognised across the globe and generating substantial benefits for the nation. These include economic benefits from employment, tourism and overseas earnings, estimated at 7 per cent to 8 per cent of GDP for the creative sector as a whole. The arts is one of the major reasons for tourists to visit London and other parts of the UK.

The less tangible benefits are perhaps even more important. Those of your Lordships who watched the BBC's “The Choir” programmes with Gareth Malone will have seen how choral singing can build confidence, discipline, teamwork, aspiration and a sense of achievement, even among seemingly unpromising groups. Above all, music is an essential part of a good quality of life for an enormous number of people, and surely is central to the big society and to our nation, as the noble Lord, Lord Moser, said.

The UK's strength in classical music is founded on our mixed funding model, with support coming from a combination of public funding, commercial income and private support. All of those are currently under stress. Orchestras and other music bodies have shown creativity in expanding their earned income through initiatives such as the London Symphony Orchestra’s own record label, LSO Live, or the Royal Opera House’s live cinema relays. Orchestras already generate 50 per cent or more of their income through their earnings.

The Government are also, rightly, keen to increase arts bodies' income from private sources, but the latest figures from Arts and Business—which is itself losing its Arts Council grant—show that business support fell by 11 per cent in 2009-10 and seems unlikely to resume its previous upward trend before 2013. Individual philanthropy also fell by 4 per cent, and private support as a whole was down by 3 per cent in real terms to £657 million.

The UK does not have a culture of philanthropy like that in the US, where as much as 90 per cent of arts funding comes from private sources. Incentives are needed to drive the growth of private support, such as new tax concessions, matched funding or improvements to the gift aid scheme. Individual giving is often focused on specific projects rather than on core activity. So private funding will remain a supplement to, not a substitute for, public support. Continued public support is essential to maintain the health of the arts and music and to protect their huge contribution to the UK.

Arts Council England supports 15 symphony orchestras nationally, which receive about one-third of their income from public sources. Germany has no less than 129 professional symphony orchestras with anything up to 80 per cent or 90 per cent public funding. The returns generated by that funding are several times greater than the investment, as noble Lords have already mentioned. A recent study valued the impact of the Welsh National Opera on the Welsh economy at £22.5 million, more than five times its annual grant from Arts Council Wales. The funding of classical music represents incredible value for money.

The Arts Council England subsidy is being reduced by 6.9 per cent in 2011-12. Orchestras and music organisations accept the need for that, and will find ways to manage it, but they have also been asked to show how they would manage cuts of 25 per cent to 30 per cent, which would be far more damaging, facing some major institutions with a real possibility of closure. Local authority funding is equally important, not just for many orchestras but for the venues where they perform, which are equally subject to cuts.

A crucial factor in the UK's arts leadership is the quality of its education at all levels, from schools and regional initiatives to the elite arts training bodies and conservatoires in London and other major cities. I add to the list of names cited by the noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood, major UK revenue earners such as Sir Elton John, a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music, and Sir James Dyson, from the Royal College of Art. Because they need to provide intensive one-on-one tuition and attract leading international artists and musicians, their costs are too high to be recovered entirely through student fees, and they depend on a small but vital quantity of exceptional funding from DCMS. That must be retained to avoid putting any of our great music and arts education bodies at real risk.

At a time when all elements of the mixed funding model are under threat, and until private and lottery funding start to grow again, we must be sure that public support is managed in a way that protects our leading arts bodies from the possibility of irreparable damage. As Jo Cole, head of strings at the RAM, said in a letter to the Times last week:

“The Big Society isn't going to have much of a soundtrack unless it acknowledges the exceptional part music could play in building and defining it”.