Regional Arts and Culture

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to open this debate, Mr Caton, particularly with you in the Chair. I am pleased to have secured it, not simply to highlight the disparity between arts funding for London and the regions, but to make the case for arts funding in general. I will argue not for regional versus national institutions, but that the whole country is strengthened by a more equitable distribution of funding.

We cannot consider the matter in isolation from wider economic trends. Last week, we saw reports that between 2010 and 2012, 217,000 new private sector jobs were created in London, whereas my city of Sheffield lost 7,500. We are clearly not alone: private sector jobs have been draining away from the north to London and the south-east. There is a direct relationship because arts funding is important not just for our social life throughout the country, but for our economic growth. The arts provide nearly 1 million jobs in the UK economy every year, and 67,000 cultural businesses contribute £28 billion a year. In addition to that direct contribution, the impact of a vibrant cultural offer has a decisive impact on those who are choosing where to invest, where to start businesses and where to study. It is hugely important.

The report, “Rebalancing Our Cultural Capital”, which was published just before Christmas, sadly contained figures showing what many of us already knew, but in much starker terms: that arts funding from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Arts Council is massively tilted towards London, which received £68.99 a head compared with just £4.58 in the rest of England in 2012-13. The issue is not just about the Arts Council and the DCMS, though. Those funding imbalances form part of a bigger picture of disproportionate cuts to local authorities in the most deprived areas, and disproportionate private investment between London and the regions.

I am sure that those of us here today do not need reminding of the contribution made by the arts, but it is worth stressing that the arts shape places and communities, regenerate and energise, and invest in and develop future talent, so it is a problem if the benefits of the arts are not shared equally. “Rebalancing Our Cultural Capital” highlighted that, but the tension between funding in London and in the rest of England is not new. It was one reason behind the appointment of Jennie Lee, the country’s first arts Minister almost 50 years ago, and it was certainly behind her pioneering White Paper, “A Policy for the Arts”.

A great deal has been achieved. In Sheffield, we have some fantastic arts and cultural facilities. Last week, Sheffield Theatres was recognised as regional theatre of the year for the second year running. It welcomed audiences of almost 440,000 through its doors last year; produced 14 shows on three stages, including five world premieres; presented 72 productions by visiting companies; and transferred a new play to New York, as well as touring a large-scale play across the UK—but that success will be challenged if there are continual reductions in public funding. Public funding accounts for only 17% of the theatres’ turnover, but there is a tipping point. Further cuts would force price increases that would push our theatres beyond the reach of many local people for whom travelling to London theatres is already unthinkable. The problem is the same for our museums.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that regional theatres are important as incubators for young talent? In the north-east, in Newcastle, Live Theatre has been a great incubator not just of acting talent, but writing talent.

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I am well aware of the importance of the cultural offering in Newcastle, and I will return to the point about incubating young talent.

Sheffield can report great success for our museums. Museums Sheffield, which is one of our two successful museum trusts, welcomed 1 million visitors across three sites last year, 96% of whom rated the museums good or excellent—but Museums Sheffield has lost 40% of its staff since 2012. It becomes more and more of a challenge to maintain standards against that background, with a declining core grant year on year resulting from central Government cuts to local authorities.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. This morning, I had a meeting at the National Portrait Gallery to discuss, among other things, its work with Tyne and Wear museums which led to the excellent Trailblazers exhibition at the Discovery museum last year and the current Laura Knight exhibition at the Laing. Does he agree that, although it is great to see such working together between London and regional institutions, we need strong, regional institutions with continued funding to foster regional talent and create exhibitions that can perhaps travel to London?

[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.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Does he agree that one problem for regional arts is that we are being hit hard not just by a combination of local authority cuts, Arts Council cuts and so on, but by the sequencing of funding? The Arts Council operates on one set of criteria and time horizons, local authorities face another set, as does lottery funding, and the combination means we are hit by a multiple whammy. The sequencing needs to be sorted out as well as the quantum of available money.

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I will talk about private funding. The way in which different strands of public and private funding pose challenges for the arts is important, because it is often argued that we should look more actively for more private sponsorship of the arts. That is fine, but there too, the picture is weighted against the regions. Private sponsorship is exacerbating the problem, not solving it. In Sheffield, there are many deeply generous people, but we do not have major corporate sponsors. There is no private giving on any significant scale, not least because the London cultural organisations are hoovering it all up. In 2011-12, for example, 90% of all private giving to the arts by individual philanthropists was to London-based organisations. We need the Government and the Arts Council to redress the imbalance.

In its briefing for today’s debate, the Mayor of London’s office claimed that London needs the funds to compete with Paris, New York and Berlin, but Sheffield, too, is competing with European cities and beyond, and with decent investment, we can win. One of my constituents wrote to me with today’s debate in mind, saying:

“When friends and family visit they are always impressed by the quality of the performances in Sheffield. Often friends have never thought of Sheffield as a potential city break”—

quite wrongly—

“but after they visit they always want to come back.”—

quite rightly. It is not just London that needs tourism, and the point is that taxpayers from across the country are contributing to that London subsidy. To attract people to destinations outside London, we need action to rebalance our cultural capital. I recognise that the Arts Council is concerned with the issue, but what sort of message does it send out when the council’s 10-year strategy published in 2010 became the first public policy statement on the arts since 1965 to fail to acknowledge the scale of the imbalance in the distribution of resources?

The figures I mentioned at the start of the debate account for DCMS and Arts Council funding combined. Of DCMS direct funding to our national institutions, 90% goes to London. We can all accept the value of properly funding our national institutions—although they do not always have to be in London—but more can be done to ensure that national institutions, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) said, irrigate rather than drain the arts elsewhere in the country.

There are some great partnerships: Museums Sheffield has great links with the British Museum and the V&A, and there is really positive work between the British Library and our central library. I was at our Weston Park museum for the launch of the “China: Journey to the East” exhibition, which brought some of the best British Museum exhibits together with our own collection, inspirationally presented by our local team, but that was two years ago and it could not happen now in the same way, because many of the jobs have been lost.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Does my hon. Friend also think that, although there are some good examples of collaborative working, there is a London snobbishness about the regions, in that there is a wish to retain certain artefacts in London? For example, the Lindisfarne gospels came to the north-east, to Durham, last year, which was a tremendous success. However, even though Durham university and Durham cathedral could adequately house them and have a permanent exhibition, there was the idea that it was somehow important that the gospels stay in London. Does he not think that moving some of our national treasures around the regions on permanent exhibition would be a way forward?

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. My suggestion, echoing that of “Rebalancing Our Cultural Capital”, that national institutions ought to do more to irrigate the system could be fulfilled through that sort of initiative.

I am conscious that other Members want to contribute to the debate, so let me turn finally to the significance of the decline in local council funding. Local authorities have borne a disproportionate burden of the cuts, and those in deprived areas more so. With less money available and increasing demands for social care and other vital services, where will money for the arts come from? Arts Council funding is rightly based on the principle of additionality, designed to add to the base provided by local authorities, but local authorities simply do not have the resources to maintain core funding at the level we need.

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

One of South Yorkshire’s great cultural assets is brass bands, as is the case in many parts of the country, but at the moment we are losing out to the strength of the brass band movement in Wales. There is certainly a discrepancy in funding for brass bands as far as the Arts Council is concerned, but local authorities, such as Sheffield, are also cutting grants to small village brass bands such as those in my constituency, because they no longer have the funds to give them. Is not our brass band movement one of the most important parts of our cultural heritage in this country and should we not do something to help it?

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[Paul Blomfield]

I am grateful for that intervention from my hon. Friend, who is a fellow Sheffield and South Yorkshire MP. The culture of brass bands is tremendously important in our area. She describes the difficulty whereby relatively small amounts of funding are now beyond the reach of local authorities, which is pushing small cultural groups over the edge. That is a critical problem.

We are facing a real crisis in many of our big cities and in many other parts of England. I conclude with three questions for the Minister. What is he doing to convince others in Government of the threat posed to the arts by cuts in local government funding? What is the Government’s response to evidence of the cumulative impact of cuts hitting more deprived areas hardest, the lack of private investment in those areas, and the failure of public arts funding to redress that imbalance? Finally, what are the Government doing to rebalance the funding gap and ensure more equitable support for arts and culture across the whole country?

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

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[Mr Vaizey]

Exactly. That is the theme: arts funding is doing very well, but it could be better. We have had some fantastic contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) talked about north Cornwall museums benefiting from the support of the National Maritime Museum. Two former Secretaries of State—the right hon. Members for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) and for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell)—spoke in the debate. The right hon. Lady said that the figures perhaps did not give the full picture of how London and the regions are interdependent. The right hon. Gentleman asked the current Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport to speak to local government. I am sure he will be pleased to know that my right hon. Friend will speak to the Local Government Association, and she will, no doubt, make it plain how important it is that local authorities continue to support the arts.

We have heard my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) talk about Aldeburgh, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) talk about the Plymouth theatre and my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall) talk about the power of art to transform political debate. The hon. Member for Blackpool South (Mr Marsden) did not mention the £3 million that is coming to Blackpool and Wyre from the Arts Council’s creative people and places fund. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) talked about the importance of the arts and the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown), perhaps the greatest culture Minister we never had, talked about the Sage Gateshead. The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), who won the seat that I contested in 1997—I turned a 5,000 Labour majority into a 17,000 Labour majority—does not need to tell me about the thriving arts scene in Bristol.

We can trade statistics back and forth, but it is my understanding that 70% of lottery funding goes outside London or to projects that benefit the whole nation. That percentage has increased from 60% before the coalition came into power. It is important to note that the first act of the coalition was to increase the proportion of lottery funding going each to the arts and to heritage from 16% to 20%.

[Paul Blomfield]

Simply to correct the Minister on his numbers, in 2009-10—the last year of the previous Government—the lottery spend outside London was 76.3%. It has fallen in 2012-13 to 68.4%.

[Mr Vaizey]

My briefing from the Arts Council says the opposite: that it is 70% now and was on average 60% under the previous Government. We can trade statistics, but lottery funding has increased and additional funds are available: £45 million for the strategic touring programme, which helps organisations tour outside of London; £37 million in the creative people and places fund, which was specifically set up by the Arts Council to support the arts where they are not well represented in certain regions; and £15 million to support 6,500 apprenticeship places, many of which will be outside London. There is also the £171 million that I secured with the Secretary of State for Education for music hubs. For 2015-16 alone, the Arts Council will have something like £570 million to invest in the arts up and down the country.

It is important, however, to understand why in the pure statistics it looks like London is getting a disproportionate share of the funding. The national museums are based in London, but the Victoria and Albert Museum is opening a multimillion pound extension in Dundee and it works with Sheffield galleries, as I know from my visits. The British Museum only this week sent me a wonderful publication detailing all the work it does across the country with other organisations. Plus Tate works with 26 contemporary art museums in the UK. The Science Museum has homes in York, Bradford and Manchester. The Royal Armouries is based in Leeds. The Imperial War Museum has bases in Duxford and Salford, as well as in London. There are also organisations that tour, such as the English National Ballet. I spoke to the director-designate of the National Theatre, Rufus Norris, about his ambitious plans to support theatre and produce productions outside London and bring them into the National Theatre. That will no doubt be helped by the Chancellor’s generous decision to create a tax break for theatre specifically to support productions outside London.

The list goes on and I could go on and on, but I want to list some of the places that I have visited as culture Minister. I went to Durham to view the Lindisfarne gospels and saw the huge impact the exhibition had on the city. I have visited the Turner Contemporary, which has already welcomed 1 million visitors, the Hepworth Wakefield, Nottingham Contemporary, Sage Gateshead and Bristol Old Vic, which is one of the foremost advocates of arts policy in the country.