Creative Industries

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, for initiating this important debate. I very much enjoyed the excellent and passionate maiden speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Colville. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, mentioned the Demos report, Risky Business, on the creative industries, which has just been published. The title is slightly ironic since the report, compiled by researchers close to government and with an introduction by Ed Vaizey, seeks to puncture the idea that creative people are primarily preoccupied by their art to the exclusion of a concern for business. Consequently, Demos gives a stronger definition of the creative industries than DCMS in 2001:

“We define the creative industries as businesses that ultimately seek to make a profit through the sale of something that is based on an original creative idea, and the surrounding businesses that enable this”.

The Demos report tries to draw a distinction between what it terms “creative businesses”, such as Studio Lambert, which makes television shows to sell at a profit, and “creative organisations”, such as the National Theatre. It quotes the owner and designer of a fashion business as saying:

“You build a company because you have a vision but you also want to make money out of it … If you don’t—there is no point in doing it”.

That is a long way from the belief of many artists, including fashion designers, that their work is the prime consideration irrespective of financial gain.

It is useful at this moment in time when there appears to be a crisis in the way the political sphere treats the arts to take a look at the terminology that is being used by both the Government and the Opposition in respect of the arts and the creative industries. I have long held the belief that the worth of art is not through exchange into money or art for art’s sake, which is an insular argument, but that the artist’s work is itself the contribution to society. What, then, is the relationship between art and the creative industries? Do this Government see the two terms as interchangeable or is “creative industries” a blanket term that contains, or has perhaps even subsumed, the arts? Does the new shadow Culture Minister Dan Jarvis’s repeated use yesterday on his blog of the term “arts and cultural sector” signal a differently nuanced approach from that of the Opposition? After all, “creative industries” was a term which emerged partly in response to the need to democratise the arts, and the battle between high and low art is now largely over. These are legitimate questions. David Cameron has pledged to help the creative industries which Demos defines as “strongly market-orientated”. This is happening through Creative England. But he has not pledged to help the arts unless they are prepared to become businesses and creatives. I say this with great respect for the significance of the commercial sector. It is impossible to seal off the creative industries from the significant background story of continuing cuts to the arts. As ever, it is outside London where the cuts are felt most. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, has pointed out that the Baltic in Gateshead has had huge crowds to see the Turner Prize exhibition. Entrance to the exhibition is free and that is an investment in the future. That prompts me to ask the Government: are they still committed to free admission for the national museums, considering that the National Maritime Museum continues to charge for some of its sites?

The distinction should be kept and preserved between those art forms which are inherently commercial and those which are not commercial—either because they are not yet commercial or because they never should be commercialised—whether we are talking about the BBC or small performing companies. The non-commercial, subsidised arts, when properly funded, provide a public space or arena, both geographical and mental, in which the public meet and where artists are able to experiment and have the right to fail, as Julie Walters pointed out in the Guardian this week. But if we remove this non-commercial component of the landscape we greatly narrow our horizons and impoverish the culture as a whole.

It is true that the success of the commercial creative industries depends, and has depended in the past, on the subsidised arts and other areas, as countless rock stars and fashion designers have confirmed. A good example of this creative symbiosis is the hugely commercially successful Frieze Art Fair started in 2003, which was made possible only by the opening of Tate Modern. Tate Modern has also benefited from this relationship, not least through purchases from the fair. By the same token, recent cuts to the subsidised sector, such as S4C, have resulted directly in 10 per cent cuts to the staff of Boomerang, one of the largest independent production companies in Wales.

I want to make it clear that my defence of a subsidised sector for the arts is not a rearguard defence of old technology opposed to new. The great majority of artists, as the Design and Artists Copyright Society backs up, strongly supports the proper teaching of ICT in schools, as the noble Lords, Lord Puttnam and Lord Willis, passionately spoke to during proceedings on the Education Bill last week. The Government also need properly to reassess their commitment to the teaching of the arts and creativity at both school and higher education level, a topic that is worthy of a debate on its own. Whatever money the Government allow for the newer industries will in the end mean much less if those industries are not supplied with a workforce that is untrained and unknowledgeable.

Many of the most interesting artists of today are able to arm themselves with a panoply of techniques. It is true, too, that the art, music and fashion scenes have been hugely invigorated by students from abroad. Wolfgang Tillmans, Tomma Abts, both of whom are Turner Prize winners, and more recently Thomas Zipp, are just some of the remarkable artists who spring to mind. The current Government’s insular attitude towards foreign students may well, unfortunately, change this.