Economy: Culture and the Arts

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton]

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, for airing this important subject. I will keep my speech short. I was pleased to read in recent speeches by government Ministers a declared belief in the value of the arts and their importance to the economy. However, by their deeds shall they be judged for, like all good artists, we must be not simply self-congratulatory but also self-critical. Of course, we must applaud and highlight the returns in terms of tourism, reputation and jobs that the arts create but, please, let us not overlook the social dividend, as so eloquently stated by the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam. I will not repeat my recent pleas in my maiden speech about those rewards—human, educational and vocational—which are of course available in Hansard, but will stick to the economic remit of this debate.

Only today the Guardian carries warnings that many small-scale and regional arts companies face losing their grants altogether. This is going to be nothing short of catastrophic for the future of culture in this country. The cultural scene that has been built up since the end of the Second World War is now, as the noble Baroness mentioned, the envy of the world and that feeds, ultimately, into the success of the big flagships—the Royal Opera House, the National Theatre, Aldeburgh which is currently under way, the Sage and Tate Modern, for example. Understandably, they reap the lion’s share of money available to the arts. Probably among your Lordships I have had a pretty unique view of the dilemma that arises since I am a composer who was for a while on the Arts Council music panel where I would regularly wonder how we could justify such a large slice of the cake going to so few august centres of excellence. Then I was on the board of the Royal Opera House where I saw that, in order to be among the best in the world, we needed every penny of available funding. Now I see this dilemma from a wider perspective, and I do not mean simply these distinguished and comfortable Benches, although there are many noble Lords who, I have discovered with great pleasure, feel passionately about the arts, as we have heard today. I look forward to hearing my friend the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Finsbury, who fought so valiantly for free admission to museums, something that I profoundly cherish.

Your Lordships may have noted the point made so recently by my friend and colleague, the actor Sam West—indeed, one noble Lord already has—who said that in terms of the theatre it was dangerous simply to look at the return of large-scale productions in glamorous venues, for it was in small-scale regional theatres that many of our Oscar winners, who are vaunted as being at the forefront of artistic success, cut their teeth and learnt their trade. It is there that innovation and adventure can be tried. The value of small-scale investment may not be immediately obvious but in fact it is vital. “War Horse” was mentioned, but for every war horse there are 12 ponies that fail to make the final fence.

I shall extend this lesson into my own field, musical composition. As a result of devolution, a considerable commissioning cake was cut into tiny slices. This was then compounded, from the point of view of small-scale festivals, performing groups and composers, by the Arts Council’s decision to hand commissioning funds to favoured clients—the big guns, the centres of excellence—and let them decide who to commission. That is not without merit if one wants to keep at arm’s length from artistic policy, but there is a rub and even a contradiction. It in fact creates a policy, an unlevel playing field, so that smaller festivals like Cheltenham and instrumental groups like the Nash can no longer find the funds to carry on the vital work that they have been achieving at the coal face of music-making. There is a disconnect that means that commissioning is confined to a circle of well established names and, for the sake of full disclosure, I have sometimes been among their number. However, some really wonderful and acclaimed composers are actually on the breadline at the moment, names that are very famous in the musical world, and performing groups who would like to commission them find it impossible to access funds because they are not favoured Arts Council clients. This process really must be looked at and I urge the Minister to relay my concerns to the DCMS and the Arts Council—always assuming that it is still in existence in the coming months. Indeed, I suspect that information on its current health would be of interest to the House.

On that subject, I note that a large portion of lottery money was diverted from other areas to finance the excellent Olympic Games, in which I am sure we all delighted, but I gather from Ed Vaizey’s recent speech that this money is to be returned to the arts. If that is the case, surely these small-scale ventures could be protected.

In the arts we are, corporately speaking, a success story, but I beg the Government not to pull the plug on the boiler room where so many ideas, so much training and so much outreach and educational work is started, and where otherwise starved communities are nourished. It is this art for all that makes us a civilized society, and it is so very precious. We are approaching the centenary of the First World War where, writing in the trenches where he was about to be killed, Wilfred Owen asked:

“Was it for this the clay grew tall?”.

When I hear or see a beautiful work of human creativity, I think, “It was for this the clay grew tall”.