Arts and Culture

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[The Earl of Clancarty]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have a long-term strategy for the arts and cultural sector; and, if so, what that strategy is.

[The Earl of Clancarty]

My Lords, the first thing I would like to do is warmly congratulate the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, on his new job and wish him all the very best on the Front Benches. I know that this will be a particular treat for him as he takes an interest in both the arts and sport.

The Cultural Olympiad—as the Arts Council points out, the product of sustained investment over the last 20 years—is currently a great opportunity to celebrate in the UK artists and the arts from across the world. But there is considerable concern that, with no end to the cuts in sight, the long-term future for the cultural sector looks increasingly uncertain.

It may be self-evident that the arts are produced by artists, yet there remains the requirement, in the long term, for a more artist-enabling policy including individual artists and companies, such as theatre companies, even if this is not the whole story of the arts and the cultural sector. A distinction does now need to be drawn between artists and the creative industries as defined by last year’s Demos report Risky Business, to which Ed Vaizey wrote an approving introduction, and which I referred to last November in the creative industries debate but is worth reiterating in an arts debate:

“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 point here is that this is a significantly narrower definition of creative industries than the one which the previous Administration used and which was more encompassing of all artistic production. The arts by motivation are not primarily or ultimately a business, although at times they may have much to do with business; they are not an add-on but an integral part of the way in which society criticises and communicates with itself and other cultures.

Some say the arts need “to get real” in difficult times. But it will be unrealistic in the long run to shoehorn all the arts and creative industries alike into a business model that will not only be ultimately ineffective but inappropriate for much of the arts and the cultural sector.

The assessment of risk and more objective evaluation exercises are some of the strategies which have already been introduced into the arts, but—as the actress Julie Walters recently pointed out, as others have before her—failure and experimentation are part of the very nature of artistic practice, and we tamper with those aspects at our peril. I know from my own experience of local arts centres and services outside London that the network of services for the visual arts, music and theatre is not only already being thinned out but what remains is, out of necessity, becoming more commercialised, with, little by little, less room for innovation.

The great irony is that while the funding of individual artists, companies and organisations inevitably carries risk, the large-scale financial support of the arts sector as a whole is not only risk-free but of massive benefit to society, artistically and economically, and could make a significant contribution to kick-starting growth. However, I believe that this can only properly—that is, most efficiently—be achieved through public funding, because you need to support the grass roots as well as the mainstream, because philanthropy will only ever target the most prestigious organisations, and has a metropolitan bias.

For two years, the arts establishment has been patient and felt that it should wait its turn in the queue. But this is a false situation. The same government policy of ideologically driven public funding cuts is cutting back on state allowances, benefits, libraries, museums and symphony orchestras alike. The most devastating news last week was the prediction by the Local Government Association that a shortfall of £16.5 billion would mean an almost complete eradication of funding at the local level of arts and cultural services, including libraries, by 2020 unless there is a radical change in policy.

I will now turn to some specific issues. I have made the argument that the arts are distinct from the creative industries as now defined in that a financial goal is not the prime objective for the majority of artists and artists’ companies. At the same time central government needs to protect and encourage proper payment for artists in all disciplines, and on all occasions, as for any working person. This is part of the provision of a space in which the artist can operate and work.

There are numerous long-term concerns facing artists with regard to income, royalties and copyright, although a distinction in kind needs to be made between the protection of artists’ work and the obsessive protection of copyrighted logos such as the Olympic rings and London 2012, which has proved to be the most distasteful form of corporate bullying. For authors, among other issues, there is the concern about the public lending right, which ought to extend in practice to audio books and e-books, as provided for in the Digital Economy Act 2010.

There is also the question of proper royalties for visual artists. The upper threshold on which royalties administered by the Design and Artists Copyright Society are based is €11,500 for an artwork, irrespective of the sale price above that, a price set specifically to help the art trade. But there is a concern over a desire in some quarters to raise the current lower sale threshold from €1,000 to €3,000, which would affect many artists whose income is not high. I hope that the Minister can say that the Government will resist this and affirm their support for artists.

In the wider cultural sphere, on libraries, Ed Vaizey has queried the figure of 600 libraries under threat that I gave during Oral Questions last month, saying that this is simply a figure bandied around by the media. The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals produced that figure. If I am at fault, it is in not realising quite how many libraries have already closed recently. Some of the 600 will be among the 122 that have closed in the single financial year 2011-12, according to the Public Libraries News website, which lists every single one of them. This independent website run by librarian Ian Anstice is certainly a much better source of information than the DCMS, which is not keeping a close enough eye on the situation, even though it is the Secretary of State who, under the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964, has the power to intervene. A library professional tells me that the figure of 600 threatened if the present cuts continue will soon be, in his words, “a gross underestimation”. For Ed Vaizey to say, as he did in his speech on 28 June at the Future of Library Services conference, that the libraries are “thriving” when many now have staff shortages and greatly reduced opening hours, suggests to me a Government in denial about the huge problems that libraries face.

On free admission to the national museums, I am very glad that last week the Evening Standard reversed its position. It now supports free admission and I hope that the Government will continue to maintain a policy that is so successful and popular with the public.

I understand that the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, will devote her speech to the hugely important area of arts education, which at school level should properly include both old and new technologies. I will just say that the EBacc still does not contain an art and design element.

The Cultural Olympiad is a festival of cultural exchange, so important for the long-term development of British art, and a real opportunity for sharing ideas between artists of different countries and cultures. It is good that the UKBA has been working closely with the Cultural Olympiad in facilitating the admission of the many visiting artists. I thank the Government and the UKBA for introducing the permitted paid engagements scheme outside the points-based system, which started in April and goes some way to answering some of the concerns around visiting artists. However, it is not perfect and significant improvements should be made. The one-month maximum time for a visit is too short. That artists should be full-time is simply not realistic; visual artists, poets and concert pianists, for example, have jobs in related or other areas that inform their work as artists and one paid engagement per visit is too limiting. It is also important that the details of the scheme are made more widely known both externally and internally, especially to front-line staff.

It is normally the Home Office that answers questions on this issue, but I wanted to raise what is primarily an arts matter in an arts debate. The DCMS should be taking a lead on these issues, and indeed the current Artists International Development Fund, jointly administered by the Arts Council and the British Council, may be very helpful to British artists’ career development.

Arts administrators are full of ideas about negotiating these difficult times, although public funding that addresses core functions and the day-to-day running of services is what is most urgently required. There is no more unhelpful cliché than that “the arts are resilient, they will survive”. The kind of government we have has a significant effect on the nature of our arts culture. A Government can be either a friend or a foe to the arts. The current reality is that government policy is causing companies to fold and hampering particularly young and emerging artists from carrying out their work effectively. I also believe that we in Parliament and certainly those in government are directing too much attention towards a more powerful centre and big business, when artists and those working in the arts and the cultural sector elsewhere are being neglected. In the long term this must change for the good of a thriving arts culture throughout the UK.