Arts: Funding

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved By

[The Earl of Clancarty]

To call attention to public funding for the arts; and to move for papers.

[The Earl of Clancarty]

My Lords, I am very pleased that we have the opportunity today to discuss the public funding of the arts. I look forward very much to the maiden speeches of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, and the noble Lord, Lord Wasserman. I look forward as well to all the other contributions to be made, including from those here today who are experts in the arts and the media. I notice that broadcasting is particularly well represented. I am confident that the debate we have ahead of us will be not only a good debate but a highly necessary one. I thank the Library for providing an excellent briefing pack.

There are several good reasons to have this debate at this time. First, there has not been a full debate in this House on the subject of the arts for more than 18 months since the debate of the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, in June 2009. In that period the landscape has changed, with a new Government and a new—although not entirely new—political philosophy, as well as the economic problems that we face. Secondly, this debate complements the debate of the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, on philanthropy on 2 December last year. Thirdly, there is a timeliness in the light of the speeches and comments made by the Secretary of State, Ed Vaizey and others in just the last few days on corporate sponsorship, which now bring into focus a little more clearly the Government’s intended direction for the arts for the next few years.

My own background is as an artist. I have been a beneficiary of a free arts college education and Arts Council funding. I am a beneficiary also in all the other ways that every person in this country still, to a great extent, benefits both directly and indirectly from public arts funding.

It would take a book with many volumes to write the story of modern post-war public funding of the arts in Britain. It has been one of huge and continuing success, with our important national collections protected, maintained, conserved and now once again permitted free admission to; a state-aided national theatre and ballet; and considerable help given to orchestras, artists and companies working in many forms, supported often through difficult periods and—although more so in former years—when there was little thought either of an audience or necessarily of commercial return. More recently, there has been the provision of arts centres and of larger-scale projects in the regions, achieved often through lottery funding; of education and outreach programmes; and, in the 21st century, the expansion of funding of new media, as well as the establishment of the national theatres of Scotland and Wales, and the successful refurbishment of Belfast’s Ulster Museum, with hugely increased visitor numbers. There has also been much more besides.

What of the situation now? We have severe cuts across the board, including a cut of about 29 per cent to the Arts Council over four years, with 6.9 per cent cuts for this year. It has been estimated that one in six arts organisations may lose funding altogether, although the precise figures will not be known until the end of March. The national museums and galleries have received a 15 per cent cut spread over four years. It was announced just this week that the National Maritime Museum would introduce charges to the Flamsteed House galleries and the Meridian Courtyard—something that the DCMS seems happy with. Perhaps the Minister could give us a hard-and-fast definition of a core collection, and confirm that my concern about the possible creeping introduction of charges is not justified. The effects of the cuts in funding will be more complicated than at first they might appear. Central arts funding cuts come on top of local government cuts described this week by Richard Kemp, vice-chairman of the Local Government Association, as the “toughest in living memory”, and which include, notoriously in my view, the 100 per cent cut to arts provision in Barnet and Somerset.

The interdependence of organisations, individual artists, companies and institutions with each other and their sources of funding are often intricate, so that cuts to one part of the system will affect another. There is also the issue of matching funding, encouraged by the previous and current Governments, which can mean that if one source is withdrawn another may be lost.

There is the abolition of the UK Film Council and of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, the functions of which will be transferred to an already overstretched Arts Council England. These will include the significant Renaissance programme of museum regional development, which will have a 15 per cent reduction in funding. There is reduction in funding for library development, alongside the prospect of the closure of hundreds of libraries across the country.

I turn now to the Government’s so-called localist agenda, which has important implications for the arts. It is a long-standing issue that the arts have been more poorly served in the regions outside London. The Arts Council over the years has produced more than one report on this. The Government’s intention is to devolve powers and responsibilities down to the community level. This appears to be the thinking behind asking the eight non-national museums sponsored by the DCMS to lose their central funding by 2015. One of these is the Horniman Museum in south London. On the one hand, it has collections of an international standard, such as its musical instruments collection, to which the important Boosey and Hawkes collection was added in 2003. On the other hand, it is a museum greatly cherished by the local community; indeed, one can argue persuasively that the Horniman’s depth extending from local to international boosts its significance to the local community, and that direct funding is a validation of that.

The London authorities’ umbrella body London Councils has axed its entire £3 million arts budget, which includes grants to a number of important theatres, such as the Theatre Royal Stratford East. At least, this was the case until last Friday when a High Court ruling decided that the entire cuts of £16.6 million were unlawful because there had not been a proper consultation. This certainly has interesting implications for councils across the whole country, which may now be seen to be in breach of equality laws.

In some ways localism is a chicken-and-egg problem. At present there is a sizeable gap between the local and national tiers of government, and we simply do not— at least not yet—have the strong, stable, responsible regional political structures to allow devolution to take place in a meaningful way. But where real devolution is capable of happening, such as for Wales and Scotland, there is a sense of the emergence of young cultures proud of the importance of their arts to society. The great success of “Black Watch”, shown first at the Edinburgh Festival in 2006, and then at the Scottish National Theatre, is emblematic of this.

Coming to the heart of the debate, I want to pose three questions. First, are the cuts actually justified on financial grounds? Every sector of national life, from health to welfare and the arts, has been warned that it must face less government funding while the Treasury seeks ways to pay down the deficit and build growth. As the Arts Council said in Why the Arts Matter:

“The arts budget is tiny; it costs 17p a week per person—less than half the price of a pint of milk”.

Actually, with recent inflation, that now amounts to about a third of a pint of milk. As actor and director, Sam West, said about the theatre in the Evening Standard of 27 October last year,

“the Treasury is shooting itself in the foot by going after a profitable industry that leads the world. The writer and director of Billy Elliot”—

Lee Hall and Stephen Daldry—

“trained in subsidised theatre; the money paid back in VAT by people buying tickets to watch their work repays that subsidy hundreds of times over”.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool observed in this Chamber just last week that £20 million- worth of public investment has “generated £120 million” in Liverpool’s local economy. In Tuesday’s Daily Telegraph, the noble Lord, Lord Hall of Birkenhead, chief executive of the Royal Opera House, pointed out that this sector contributes,

“£59.1 billion to the economy each year and”,

is,

“growing at a faster rate than other parts of the economy”.

I could spend all afternoon—as I am sure others could, and perhaps will—standing here reciting statistic after statistic suggesting that instead of cutting public funding to the arts we should be increasing it, and by large amounts, and that, indeed, the economic growth so produced would help the country as a whole. But, of course, as things are, the public would not stand cuts to the arts not being made when many important services are being cut.

In January 2010, the Secretary of State, then shadow culture secretary, said that the arts would “not be singled out”. Yet the severity of these cuts to the arts, as well as the length of time over which they are to take place, and the degree of cutting to the infrastructure —50 per cent to Arts Council operating costs—seem to tell another story. We have had severe cuts before. In my view, what is worrying about these cuts—and not just in the arts—is that they are happening at the same time that other forms of funding are being strongly encouraged to step into the void.

This then brings me to my second question, which is: how should we fund the arts? It is a topical question and an important one because there is considerable evidence that different funding models produce quite different results which will determine the arts culture of the future: whether we stay with our current system of one-third public funding, one-third box office, one-third private investment, or effect a shift in these proportions.

Philanthropy, of course, has been with us for a long time and has, indeed, provided the basis for our major museum collections. The Art Fund works exceptionally well in partnership with public funding to secure works of art for the nation, recent examples being the purchase of Pieter Brueghel’s “Procession to Calvary” and Anthony d’Offay's “Artist Rooms”. But, of course, the National Heritage Memorial Fund's grant will now remain at less than half it was before the previous Government's cuts, and there is the longer term danger that such constructive partnerships are threatened. In our mixed system, the Art Fund would like to see more contemporary artwork purchased for regional museums—something that I think should be looked at.

On the other hand, there is criticism of the USA's predominantly philanthropic model as producing a blander, more conservative, less innovative arts scene. Philanthropy is inherently undemocratic in its spread and has a metropolitan bias. Interestingly, there is a sense among most philanthropists, if not all, that philanthropy should be the junior partner in a relationship with public funding. In the Guardian of 21 October, 2010, Dame Vivien Duffield, chair of the Clore Duffield Foundation, one of our most successful and sensitive donors, is quoted as saying:

“Charity ought to be providing the icing on the cake”.

For the moment, of course, in our current economic climate the reality does not meet the Government's hopes and expectations. Last week, Arts & Business confirmed that total private investment in the arts was down 3 per cent. This in itself is an additional criticism—that both philanthropy and corporate sponsorship can be removed at a stroke, effectively putting the arts directly at the mercy of fluctuations in the economy. I am not at all against philanthropy or corporate sponsorship. Indeed, most artists will take what funds are on offer because they have a responsibility as artists to their work. However, I argue that we should retain the balance of the mixed system we have now—a system that was indeed prized over 60 years ago by John Maynard Keynes, chair of the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, the precursor of the Arts Council.

This brings me to my final and, I believe, most important question—more important than the economic one—which is this: what precisely is it that as a nation we wish to support in relation to the arts? I believe that it is the work of the artist and of the arts that is itself the contribution to society, and that if we shift the balance significantly against public funding, we will start to narrow down the options for the accomplishment of that work. The Arts Council has been, at its best, able to fund those who are off the radar as well as on it—quiet art as well as great art. At its best, it is democratic in a way that no other funding means can be. The good news is its intent to be more democratic, with a greatly simplified application form and more flexible criteria for funding, welcoming all comers. Speaking as an artist, I would like to see closer knowledgeable relationships developed between artist and arts officers, and on a more local basis, although the trend has been towards greater centralisation, but, of course, this takes money. Public funding can also look to our links with, and exploration of, other cultures, and the Arts Council's continuing support of literature translation and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize should be applauded.

I have not been able to cover every area. For instance, the threat to higher education courses in the arts and in the humanities and social sciences is itself worthy of a full debate in this Chamber. We are fortunate in the UK to have developed a unique style of funding which has evolved naturally, resulting in such extraordinary creativity in the post-war years. We have all benefited from this phenomenon. This is not art for art's sake, but art for everyone's sake. In the end, it must be said that where audiences exist they will have been created by the art itself, not by politicians. At a time of economic uncertainty it is intuitively easier to scale down public funding, leave it to the private sector and say, “What will be will be”. Maintaining and developing the intricate funding ecosystem we have now is not safe or easy, but it is right. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Clancarty]

My Lords, we have had a remarkable debate today with a nerve being struck not just by the number of speakers that we have had but by their passionate and varied opinions, as well as the considerable concerns voiced about the Government’s commitment to the arts and the direction being taken. I thank all noble Lords who have taken part. In particular, I congratulate our two maiden speakers, the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, and the noble Lord, Lord Wasserman, on their excellent and thoughtful speeches. I am sure that we will hear much more from both of them. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Rawlings, for her considered reply and I hope that we will return to many of the issues raised sooner rather than later. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion withdrawn.