Government Support for Artists

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I join others in congratulating the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, on initiating this debate and all other noble Lords who have spoken in it. Many pertinent questions have been raised, so I do not envy the Minister who is going to answer them. I also want to say thank you for the briefings that I received from the BBC, the Arts Council and even the Mayor of London. They were very impressive and I am grateful for them, as I feel much better informed. What I looked for in those briefings was evidence and an assessment of the impact of the organisations’ support on hard-to-reach groups, underrepresented people and those with talent but disadvantaged by their background, geographical location or lack of support. This was alluded to by the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter.

The Arts Council tells us in its briefing us that it is increasing its investment to £210 million from 2015, which will mean an increase from £63 million to £70 million to support important work that artists do across all art forms. It says:

“Grants are available from £1,000 to £100,000 to help artists in England carry out their work and split into two categories”,

those above £15,000 and those below £15,000. The council goes on to say:

“We are developing an advice framework which will provide support to underrepresented applicants (key groups include individuals, first time applicants, BME and disabled artists)”.

I would like to know the timetable for this initiative, which, to be blunt, I was surprised to see was not already happening as an integral part of the Arts Council’s work. When will it be rolled out and how will its effectiveness be monitored? As the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, said, knowing the effectiveness of the support that is given is extremely important. We all know that the existence of small galleries, for instance, is a crucial part in the support and development of artists. Since we also know that, due to the lack of commissions and sales, small galleries face increasing overheads, has the Arts Council taken into account the increased challenges faced by young artists starting out?

Noble Lords will be aware that the Rebalancing our Cultural Capital report and the PLACE Report have recently pointed out big postcode disparities in the spending per head on arts provision. They found that Londoners benefited from £69 per head, compared with £4.50 in the rest of England. As my honourable friend Chris Bryant MP said recently, making sure the English regions have enough funding for culture is “the direction of travel” for Labour, as indeed we are certainly linking education and arts in our current policy development.

Without doubt, one of the challenges is the London and south-east bias of the institutions that historically received direct grants in aid or money through the Arts Council, along with the dependence of regions outside London on support from local authorities, which of course have seen dramatic cuts in their funding from central government. Since the support for arts is discretionary in this matter, there is a terrible knock-on effect on regional and local arts in the creative industries. It is not good enough that DCMS Ministers fail to engage with local councils and councillors, a matter that I raised in Questions to the Minister a little while ago when a CMS Select Committee report said that it was “staggering” to learn that DCMS Ministers were having no conversations with local councillors. I hope that the Minister can say that that has been remedied. We need to think about the pivotal role of the leaders of the core cities, including Bristol, Sheffield, Newcastle, Birmingham and Manchester.

Noble Lords have raised some pertinent questions on a wide range of issues. I congratulate them on that and look forward to the Government’s response to them.