Economy: Creative Industries

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I want to focus on the arts, education and the BBC. As many have already pointed out, the creative industries as a whole are becoming increasingly successful. Yet because the current definition of this group is wide, these industries are also dizzyingly various in character. The successes of some are not necessarily the successes of others, and the problems of some are not necessarily the problems of others, although—as I will come to—there are significant overlaps. It is becoming all too easy for some of the so-described creative industries to get lost in the mix. I cite in particular the arts and cultural sector as an area which, in contrast to some others, has been neglected of late.

The arts and cultural sector is of course important in its own right for its intrinsic value, for its contribution to what we might term an all-important cultural economy. I will return to this, but the arts and arts education also have another value within the context of this debate as part of the engine which drives many of the creative industries. We neglect that engine at our peril. For example, Jo Twist, the chief executive officer of UKIE—the UK Interactive Entertainment Association, the trade body of the UK’s games industry—has said that what the games industry is crying out for most is people from the arts: fine artists, musicians and film-makers. The industry has to go abroad to find these people, which is a crazy situation. As Jo Twist says, the reason for this is that:

“In all parts of creative industries there is not often as much crossover as you’d like to see”.

The Arts and Humanities Research Council analysis called the Brighton Fuse project, which was carried out in the Brighton and Hove area, looked at 500 new digital businesses. It discovered that those businesses containing a good balance between employees with backgrounds in arts and backgrounds in technology were growing three times faster than those without this balance. All the evidence points to the importance of the arts to the new digital and tech industries, but our arts education in schools and universities does not reflect this reality. Instead it is suffering from the cuts in general, which in schools have particularly affected arts departments. Moreover, too many arts departments, despite the dedication of arts teachers, are treated as isolated outposts within schools.

Ofsted needs to report on the quality and presence of the arts within schools. It is crucial that STEM becomes STEAM, so that we will grow an education culture which protects the integrity of science and art subjects but also allows them to talk closely to each other. Each must understand the relevance of the other in order to allow that cross-over to take place which Jo Twist advocates. This imbalance has also dragged down design and technology, which should be a bridge between sciences and the arts, and which is another significant subject of relevance to the digital industries. However, in the past 10 years there has been a 50% fall in the number of students studying it at GCSE level.

Sciences and the arts must have parity as subjects within schools, and all performance measures must be reformed to reflect this. The Education Secretary is wrong—yet again—when she said this week that the EBacc, whose core subjects exclude arts but include a science,

“sets every child up for life”.

If any kind of education is to set up a child for life, if indeed one believes in such a thing, then it ought at the very least to be a rounded education.

Rohan Silva, who was involved in the early stages of the development of Tech City, made the case in the Evening Standard this week for a new campus in east London to service the new tech companies, like the one that is planned for New York. This is an interesting idea, but a trick is missed if it is only about computer science and engineering. If it were to happen, it should be a campus for computer science, engineering, art and design, with each getting equal billing. Then we really would have the edge. In some ways this would be no different to what I understand is now happening in China, where new art and design colleges are being located near to a town’s manufacturing centre.

The arts and culture sector of the creative industries is important in its own right, both for its commercial return but also, I think more importantly, for its inherent value and its contribution to the cultural economy. Because of their particular character the tech industries have needed tax breaks to get going, while the arts, through their very different character, often need public subsidies or public investment. I do not mind which term is used, but they need most particularly that core funding which enables day-to-day maintenance. That is the very money that is being denied to them, although the influx of additional Lottery money is of course welcome.

I have never understood the argument that the DCMS has had to do its share of cutting, perhaps because it is quite simply wrong. The Arts Council has said that £1 of public money invested in the arts will give a return of at least double that, because the multiplier effect is greater than for any other industry. The more the arts are funded, the more will be given back to the country. I am whole-heartedly anti-austerity, not just for the arts, and I believe that cuts to the arts should be reversed. It is curious that in Germany, which is the arch-architect of austerity, subsidies to the arts have continued to increase year by year. There has been none of this false heroism or this idea of the department doing its bit by cutting. This has happened in Germany for two reasons. First, Germany has a strong belief—it seems to be much stronger than we currently have here—in the democratic value of the arts, or in other words in its cultural economy. Secondly, people in Germany are aware of the degree to which the arts help their financial economy.

In the UK those who are suffering most are those on the front line: those artists, writers, musicians and theatre companies, for example, who now struggle to survive. They can less easily afford to produce new and innovative work which, within what should be a balanced ecology, feeds into the established commercial arts. Individual artists, writers and musicians, while themselves on decreasing incomes, are now more and more being asked to work for free. This is an unacceptable pressure.

In terms of the regions, we desperately need cuts to local authorities as well as to the Arts Council to be reversed. In the longer term, if real power is given to the regions—the idea of the northern powerhouse is a step in the right direction—and cities gain tax-raising powers, this would tremendously boost our creative industries. However, what worries me in the longer term are not just the cuts themselves—which are bad enough, and any further cuts of whatever size will be bad news—but the more deep-seated and possibly less easily reversible changes that are taking place.

I have always been a supporter of our museums, and I am glad that we have free admission to national museums in this country. They are great institutions with marvellous collections—which we own—which also put on exhibitions which are often wonderful. However, it is in the interests of our cultural economy that the dedicated staff of the National Gallery should be supported in their strikes against the privatisation of gallery staff. I support the reinstatement of Candy Udwin. Gabriele Finaldi should step in to ensure that staff are not privatised. Such privatisation would diminish the National Gallery as a public space, notwithstanding that this has already happened elsewhere, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, has pointed out previously. It is still a creeping privatisation of our national museums.

The other thing I want to say about the national museums is that the kind of issues that partnerships with Shell and BP have thrown up are not going to go away. That is the reality, whatever one may think, and there are respected artists among others who defend these sponsorships. I think it is worth future Governments bearing in mind that public funding is neutral and not tainted.

Yesterday morning, while sitting down to breakfast and listening to the “Today” programme, as quite a few of us do, I heard a discussion about the planned memorial for Philip Larkin in Poets’ Corner. “Who is Philip Larkin?” asked my 10 year-old daughter, which set off a discussion about whether Larkin would in fact have approved of such a thing as a memorial in Poets’ Corner. This is just one moment among millions across the country that the BBC enables. If there is one single entity which has had a massive influence or even the greatest influence throughout its existence on the creative economy, on the culture of this country, on literature, drama, poetry and music of all kinds and on the visual arts, then that entity is the BBC. It continues to have that influence to the good of the whole country in big and seemingly little ways. It has done so because of its unique structure, its set of ethics and its particular commitment to quality through its internal production teams. I hope very much that there is not a significant hollowing out of the corporation in that respect.

It is because of this ongoing contribution to our cultural economy in the broadest terms, for the good of all, that I think that the introduction of a German-style household broadcast levy is a good idea. A subscription fee would be the end of the BBC because it would destroy its essential universality. If, heaven forbid, we lost the BBC, we would have a much less diverse and significantly poorer broadcasting culture. I would also add that I suspect that television in its traditional format—in the home, as a big screen in the corner of the sitting room, however the programmes get to it—will be around longer than perhaps some people think. Watching television will remain for some—indeed, on certain occasions, for all—a communal experience. That is precisely why cinemas and concert-going have survived, in the face of earlier doubts about both.

Whereas one can have optimism for the creative industries in general, I fear for the arts, which are in danger of being subsumed into a wider grouping that is now being treated as essentially, if not wholly, commercial in character and which seem to be travelling in a BIS direction. I fear also for the existence of an arts or culture department that has traditionally and rightly been there to protect and develop a necessary cultural economy. If the arts are to survive and thrive, these trends must be reversed. That would be good for the rest of the creative industries, too.