Regional Arts and Culture

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Paul Blomfield]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and I will return to the point she makes in the context of my experience of some of our institutions in Sheffield.

There is also under-investment in the visual arts sector in Sheffield. I am told that Sheffield has the largest number of practising artists per capita outside London, but we have limited provision for the exhibition of contemporary and visual art and do not have the resources to take advantage or to make the most of the opportunities they provide. We need to invest to reap the rewards. Our core cities provide a platform for artists on the way up: three of the four Turner prize nominees for 2013 had exhibited at Sheffield’s Site gallery in the past six years.

The Arts Council is at pains to point out that 70% of lottery funding is spent outside London, but that does not take us back even to the 2009-10 level of spend outside London, which was at 76%, and lottery funding is one-off funding. The lottery has supported some excellent capital developments, not least the stunning Persistence Works in Sheffield, but Arts Council funding has not matched that ambition with programme funding, which would enable us to animate these spaces to fulfil their potential.

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for this debate. I declare an interest as a director of the Hay festival. Does he agree that there is a difference between regional urban centres such as Sheffield, which have a distinct set of issues relating to the arts, and rural areas such as mine, where there is a need for an infrastructure to be maintained which would not exist without public support? I am thinking of Flicks in the Sticks in Herefordshire and the Monnow Valley arts centre—places that are very rural and do not have the advantages of an urban context.

[Paul Blomfield]

I would certainly not want to counterpoise the arts in rural communities against those in urban communities. We face different and distinctive issues. One that we face is the challenge for local authority funding, because we are facing a disproportionate hit from the reduction of local authority funding.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton. I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on securing the debate. It is always a pleasure to join colleagues from across the House in celebrating the huge contribution the arts make not only to our sense of well-being and pleasure, but to the economy, in the way that the hon. Gentleman laid out so well. Everyone in this Chamber and in the House will wholeheartedly recognise the huge contribution of the arts. I am delighted to have recently set up an all-party parliamentary group, along with Opposition colleagues, to recognise the huge and growing role the arts have in our health and well-being. I shall enjoy working with Members from both sides of the House on promoting a greater understanding.

I am here because I represent, in Cornwall, one of the most creative parts of the country. I am pleased to represent Falmouth, which has a wonderful arts university that this Government enabled to exist. The hon. Gentleman was right to highlight some of the statistics and on the face of it, they do not make very good reading. The south-west has 12% of the national population and contributes 20% of the gross value added, but Arts Council and lottery expenditure there is well below that. On the face of it, it looks like we are not getting a fair crack of the whip. Regions with remote, rural, sparsely populated communities such as the one I represent have to compete with great centres such as Plymouth and Bristol, so in percentage terms we probably get even a smaller share of the money. However, focusing only on those statistics does not really paint the whole picture.

Over the past year or so I have been pleased to meet our regional Arts Council representatives, who have developed a deep understanding of the challenges faced in enabling rural communities to access the arts in the broadest sense, and of the opportunities for places such as Cornwall. They have been enabling partnership working, which is key to the future, and such funding is enabling really positive changes in Cornwall.

I want to highlight two recent examples. Last year, the For Cornwall museum partnership scooped more than £250,000 from the Arts Council. It is a partnership between Falmouth art gallery, the National Maritime museum in Falmouth, Penlee House gallery and museum, and Porthcurno Telegraph museum. They have been joined by the Royal Cornwall museum, which got an additional £253,000 from the Arts Council strategic fund. In the words of the really excellent Alison Bevan, the director of Penlee House gallery and museum, who led the partnership:

“With support from Cornwall Council”—

so working with partners in Cornwall—

“we worked up a Museums Strategy for the county...The benefits of partnership working are obvious and we are trying to spread those benefits to other museums within the county. We have learned a lot from working together.”

Cornwall is well suited to such partnership working, which enables small and medium-sized organisations to work together.

[Jesse Norman]

I agree entirely with the powerful case my hon. Friend is making for partnership working. Our great institutions were founded on the basis of being universal—not just for this country but for the whole world. Despite the excellent work already being done by the Tate, the National Maritime Museum, the National Gallery and other places, is there not even more scope for the great collections to feed out more into rural areas? In Herefordshire, we would willingly and delightedly host a great work of art alongside the Mappa Mundi, for example, in Hereford cathedral. There is so much scope for partnership working to increase.

[Sarah Newton]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent case. I know from my conversations with the Arts Council that it very much has that in mind. There will be a lot more touring of exhibitions and theatre groups. As already mentioned, not only the London-based organisations will be touring the regions. We have fantastic theatre companies born and bred in Cornwall that are now touring the rest of the UK. Culture can be exported around the regions from anywhere that excellence is produced, and I understand that funds allocated by the Arts Council should make that possible. I am sure it will apply to works of art as well.

In January, we in Cornwall were lucky enough to benefit from a new sort of partnership working: the cultural destinations programme, which will make available sums of money for working with arts organisations in my constituency. We will receive more than £340,000 to build a new partnership that will add value, appeal to visitors coming into Cornwall and help us grow our local economy in a sustainable way. It will create a unique identity, promote the extraordinary cultural wealth we have in Cornwall and enable the people who live in Cornwall, as well as visitors, to benefit from increased access to the arts.

The organisation that secured the money, the Cornwall Art Centre Trust, is led by the excellent Ross Williams. He says that the huge investment in Cornwall will significantly increase the cultural engagement of visitors and those living there. As we can see from those two short examples, lots of small and medium-sized organisations are coming together, rather than competing as they have in the past. They are now collaborating and understand that by working together, they can leverage more funds into the area to the benefit of visitors and residents.

On 15 February I will be welcoming to Truro Sir Peter Bazalgette, who will accompany me to watch the English Touring Theatre’s acclaimed production of “Eternal Love”, and I will be lobbying hard for further investment in the excellent Hall for Cornwall and other arts organisations in Cornwall.

A lot more needs to be done to make sure that we attract investment into Cornwall, and we need to tackle the unfairness and some of the anomalies that have crept into our system. However, I am encouraged by the new approach taken by the Arts Council, as evidenced by the money we have received over the past two years. We will be able to grow and appreciate our arts even more in Cornwall.