Tourism: Music

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Thursday 11th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haskel]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord on organising this music fest. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, told us that now is the time when music tourism is at its busiest. I quote the words of the Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, Ed Vaizey, who said that,

“our creative and cultural sector is such a vital element in delivering economic growth, by encouraging economic investment through tourism and business”.

As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, also reminded us, when responding to a debate last month in your Lordships’ House, the Minister told us that four in 10 leisure visitors to the UK cite heritage and culture as the primary motivation for their visit. This means that in 2011 more than 10 million inbound visitors to the UK engaged in some form of arts and culture. How much is related to music? UK Music commissioned research from Bournemouth University’s International Centre for Tourism and Hospitality Research. It told us that music contributes £864 million a year to the national economy with an amazing 19,700 full-time jobs. This, of course, includes all kinds of music. My particular interest is in tourism and classical music, partly because I have always felt that festivals of classical music are less disruptive and classical music tourists seem to spend more and stay longer. Also, like the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, I just like classical music.

There are classical music festivals all over the country. The Manchester International Festival is on at the moment. The Proms start tomorrow. Music festivals at Edinburgh and our other great cities certainly attract people who would not normally come. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, told us about Liverpool and there are a large number of smaller music events at stately homes, churches and cathedrals, and other buildings in towns and villages. My noble friend Lady Liddell told us about such events in Scotland and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby told us about the festival in Buxton, which I attended last year. All of this illustrates the power of music to increase the number of people who come to a tourist destination.

Certainly, Arts Council England is aware of this. It is investing £3 million in cultural destinations to boost international and domestic tourism to these special places, both to stimulate the local economies and to provide visitors with world-class cultural experiences. Surely one such destination is Aldeburgh, a place mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare. Of course, Aldeburgh would attract tourists without music because it is a charming seaside town on the Suffolk coast in an area of outstanding natural beauty, but music has transformed it into a world-class cultural and learning centre that attracts tourists throughout the year, contributing to the excellence of our musicians, about which the noble Lord, Lord Black, spoke. Music sustains a whole infrastructure of places to stay, eat, shop, play and hear music, learn and improve musical skills and develop talent, as well as all the other fringe activities—and all this with the attraction of being in an area of outstanding natural beauty.

The point that I wish to make is that 66 years ago the festival was started by Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears as a two-week event. Through hard work and clever and innovative management, Aldeburgh now attracts tourists not just for the two weeks of the festival but throughout the year. There is a prom season during August for holidaymakers, with proms featuring every kind of music. There are residences, masterclasses and orchestral and vocal development courses, and all of these involve concerts and are themselves a tourist attraction because of their excellence.

The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, spoke of the need for hard facts. I shall give him some. To give a measure of what happens at Aldeburgh, the number of tickets sold during the two-week festival is 25,000. The number of tickets sold through the year is 100,000, music bringing tourism all year round, and not only from Britain. At this year’s festival alone, audiences were from more than 20 countries. Some 117 journalists visited the festival, with 43 from abroad representing 16 countries.

I hope that the Minister will join me in welcoming this successful model and congratulate the staff on turning a two-week festival into a year-round attraction. However, that has not been easy. First, Aldeburgh is away from the amenities of London and other major cities. Secondly, overnight the Government removed its co-ordinating structure, the only one available in this rural area, by abolishing the regional development agency. It was abolished at a time when the year-long Britten centenary celebrations, as well as all the other activities, were being planned in association with various arts organisations, the BBC, tourist organisations, schools, transport and the 101 other things that you need to co-ordinate arts and tourism successfully—just the kind of local co-ordination about which the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, spoke.

Therefore, in addition to planning the music, a new organisation had to be set up—a destination management organisation to promote tourism on the Suffolk coast. Indeed, Aldeburgh Music must be one of the few arts organisations, and perhaps the first, to become involved in setting up such an organisation. Yes, the work is being endorsed by the Norfolk and Suffolk local enterprise partnership, but it is new and still pretty embryonic. Perhaps the regional development agency had its faults but, instead of removing it on an ideological whim, the right thing to do was to rectify the faults and maybe reinvent the RDA to build on what was there. I hope that the Minister can assure me that in future more thought will be put into these changes, and that the institution that is now being built up will be sufficiently independent so as not to become a political plaything with an uncertain lifespan but, hopefully, can look forward to 10 or 20 years of life to develop arts, heritage, culture and tourism on the Suffolk coast.

My noble friend Lady Liddell said that we have to do better. That may mean money but, in the overall scheme of things the amounts of money are small. So I have two suggestions. They have been made before. After taking money from the lottery for the Olympics, I hope that the Government will review the lottery distribution and be generous to music. There is also the question of tourism and VAT, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare. The Government are looking for growth. As other noble Lords have spoken, I have tried to show how music and tourism can deliver this. I hope the Minister will tell us how the Government will enable this. The right reverend Prelate reminded us that music raises our quality of life. There is another advantage. Music has shown itself to be an extraordinary driver of social mobility. We should all welcome that.