Arts: Government Support

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 16th November 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to speak in this debate and, like others, I congratulate the noble Earl on bringing these matters to our attention, although not for the first time. I expect that during my time in your Lordships’ House I shall hear him bring them to our attention again.

In speaking at this moment it is not my intention to make the obvious points, as they have already been made. Of course the arts are important. Why do we have to say that? Of course they are underfunded. Why do we have to say that? Of course they are fragile at the moment. Space is difficult and so on, and we draw attention to that. Of course our museums need extra attention. I ran a museum until earlier this year, with two completely professional curators, 100 volunteers and a throughput of thousands and thousands of people per annum. I know what it is like to market. I know what it is like to change the exhibitions and attract new people or people who come a second time. So I do not want to state the obvious, because others who are far more qualified than I am have drawn attention to those facts.

We meet on a day when our news is dominated by two things that I heard about this morning. First, $400 million has been paid for a painting by Leonardo, and, secondly, fewer and fewer young people are going to football matches because they have been priced out. I speak as an Arsenal fan, and of course that is top of the range. While young people feel that it is too expensive to go to matches, the players they are going to watch, who get £200,000 per week, are pressing for half as much again. In a monetised economy where these aesthetic matters are quantified and measured in this way, we pitch our little debate into a context which we must not ignore.

A young Ghanean boy with good A-levels who did not want to go to university was asked, “Why, Kevin, don’t you want to go to university?”. The answer came back, “Because you’re going to tell me that I can become a barrister, a journalist, an accountant or something like that, but it takes time to do that. We know of five ways on the street to make quick money: crime, drugs, music, fame or football”. That was 15 years ago; he is now a tennis coach, although he did cut one or two CDs.

We must remember the context in which we are arguing this case. Fifty years ago, Jennie Lee was appointed by Harold Wilson as the first Minister for the Arts. She and Aneurin Bevan, her husband, were both the children of miners. How I remember working men’s institutes, the annual opera put on in the little town I came from, and all the other things done out of voluntary effort and by people who had sensed, somewhere, something that they would like to have a go at themselves. Jennie Lee was on to that. Is it not fantastic that she and Aneurin Bevan were husband and wife, one looking after a system for the bodily well-being and the other a system for the spiritual well-being of the nation?

Jennie Lee published a White Paper, like the one I have been reading in preparation for this debate, but she was also instrumental with Harold Wilson in setting up the Open University. My angle of view in this debate is from the bottom up, because all my life has been spent on the streets and in communities. If I have any expertise, or at least experience, that is where it is. However, I was a trustee for many years of Art and Christianity Enquiry, which I think we might know something about, and was involved in commissioning quite a number of works of art—and, with a Roman Catholic priest friend, several more. I could dilate on those; I see that your Lordships are a captive audience and I am very tempted. For all that, it is not in that area that I wish to make my point.

I must declare my interest. I am the chair of trustees of two secondary schools that come under the aegis of the Central Foundation Schools of London: a girls’ school in Tower Hamlets and a boys’ school in Islington. One of them specialises in drama and the other specialises in music. I have seen the boys’ school head teacher, because of the relationships that he has fostered at the Wellcome foundation at the Barbican, get his boys to exhibit their work in those prestigious places. Once a child has exhibited his efforts, he gets an idea of what the thing is all about. Similarly, I can never forget watching the girls at the Shaw Theatre on the Euston Road. Eighty-five per cent of the girls at our school are Muslim and wear the hijab. Of all the plays they might have done, they chose “Macbeth”—just imagine a macho play like that with Muslim girls. Their mothers were in the audience alongside me, whooping with joy when they saw their daughters coming on either as witches or as tyrants. It was most instructive.

We can do that because, as beneficiaries of the Dulwich Estate—we do not get as much as the big Dulwich schools, let me tell you; if I were a true subversive, I would want to do something about that—we have money that we can disburse to the two schools to help them foster their small group. We have just bought 10 pianos to help people learn to play, to form small groups and to help with the choral music and the rest of it. If you had seen our two schools at the Mansion House celebrating their 150th anniversary just last year, you would realise that you can tap into the energies and imagination of young people, and that is the prime task. It is important that this debate must relate to that. Of course we must have our institutions; of course we must take our kids to museums, artistic experiences, exhibitions, concerts and all the rest of it, because only when things happen like that can they relate what they are doing to a bigger and wider horizon.

I have been rather personal in this little speech of mine. Let me end personally too. I have a little grandson who is eight—or he will be in March, although he thinks he is now. I take him for a walk and he says to me, very simply, “Grandpa, you know I’m a chatterbox, but I’m going to be quiet for a minute or two and I don’t want you to be worried”. “Oh, Thomas, why?” “Well, you see, Grandpa, it’s like this. My head just at the moment is bursting with imagination”. We must have an educational system that is not merely utilitarian and functional. It is not only about measuring results through league tables and all the rest; it is about firing the imagination by helping a child to see the wider world.

This is my final remark. I used to live across the road from the grave of William Blake. I want all children to be able, as he put it, to see the universe in a wild flower, heaven in a grain of sand and eternity in a single hour, and to hold infinity in the palm of the hand. That is the challenge and our grand schemes must be seen to be organically related to the fundamental task of opening the minds of children and young people.