Tories lose plot on the arts
May 3 2013
Picture: Evening Standard
Why should governments fund the arts? Here in the UK, the newish Secretary of State for Culture, Maria Miller, recently gave a speech trying to answer that question, and made a fool of herself in the process. She also overturned a decade of enlightened Conservative thinking on the arts, and helped resuscitate the view that Tories are Philistines.
The background to Miller's speech is the forthcoming spending review, during which government departments will lobby the Treasury on why they should avoid deep cuts. Miller's solution to protect arts funding was to radically change government thinking on why government should value arts spending. Her conclusion was that henceforth the government's 'focus must be on culture’s economic impact', and that using the arts as a tool to creat economic growth was the new 'fundamental premise' that the UK's cultural sector must embrace:
[...] we must be clear about the grounds on which this argument must be had and the points that will get traction, not in the press, but with my colleagues – and with the country at large. It is with this at the fore of my mind that I come to you today and ask you to help me reframe the argument: to hammer home the value of culture to our economy.
I know this will not be to everyone’s taste – many in the arts simply want money and silence from Government – but in an age of austerity, when times are tough and money is tight, our focus must be on culture’s economic impact. To maintain the argument for continued public funding, we must make our case as a twoway street. We must demonstrate the healthy dividends that our investment continues to pay.
That’s the argument that I, as Culture Secretary, intend to make in my approach to this spending round – and I need all your help in that endeavour. In going through this period of transition, the Government wants participants – not bystanders – and I need you all toaccept this fundamental premise, and work with me to develop the argument.Unique challenges can also bring unique opportunities, a time for fresh thinking, and fresh approaches. Doing things differently does not have to mean doing things badly. So, over the coming weeks and months, I will argue that our cultural sector can bring opportunities, regeneration, jobs and growth.
Let us consider the idiocy of Miller's view that the arts must now act as a lever for economic growth by placing ourselves in the position of, say, Nicholas Penny, director of the National Gallery. Imagine you were planning the year ahead, and you had Maria Miller's new economic dictum ringing in your ears. Would you, for example:
- continue to stage fascinating scholarly exhibitions like the current Barocci show at the National Gallery, or would you instead target box office takings (and tourists) with repeated 'blockbuster' exhibitions?
- would you approve the conservation of a fragile painting by a relatively unknown artist, or prioritise the display of works by big name artists?
- would you invest in curatorial expertise and research, leading to a wider public education programme, or would you chose to build a new cafe?
It's not hard to see how establishing the wrong priority for arts funding can lead to the loss of those hard-to-value aspects of the arts that are so crucial: scholarship, preservation and above all education. Valuing the arts exclusively for their economic impact introduces inappropriate incentives into the decision making process, and will inevitably lead to a deterioration in the UK's cultural landscape.
The last Labour government made a similar mistake when it decided to value the arts for their social benefits, for their ability to make people healthier and happier, and even to cut crime. But it never worked. Taking Raphael's Madonna of the Pinks all the way to Manchester to bond with single mothers was just a waste of money (this really happened). In those days I was helping to write Conservative arts and heritage policy, and was able to make it party policy that we supported the arts because of their own intrinsic merits - art for art's sake.
As a former Conservative cheerleader for the arts, therefore, I'm profoundly disappointed in Maria Miller's ill-advised, short-termist and plain stupid speech. She should have been brave enough to continue to make the case for supporting the arts for their own sake, for valuing creativity, excellence and education. It so happens that these things do in fact have positive economic benefits - but that should never be the prime reason we support them. The arts can never be a 'commodity'.
More responses to Miller's speech can be found here from Michael Savage, here from Tom Sutcliffe, here from Alex Massie, and here from Professor Mary Beard. Nobody seems to have liked the speech, in which case Miller's cunning plan to protect the arts from funding cuts is going to fail spectacularly - no museum director or playwright worth their salt is going to ride into battle with her. The Treasury will say to the DCMS - 'you asked for your sector to make the economic case for arts funding, but they haven't. The reason you gave for continued funding must therefore be wrong. So we're going to cut it.' I'm particularly baffled by Culture Minister Ed Vaizey's role in all this - he's always been so sound on these questions before. Certainly, his previous, more enlightened view on arts funding seems to have worked well with the Treasury - in the last spending round, his arguments resulted in the arts being cut less than the police.
Update - a reader writes:
Thank you for highlighting the lamentable situation in which we find ourselves over Maria Miller and her ill-judged ‘way forward’.
Chins are hitting the floor across all sectors in the arts.
It’s very alarming, is there a chance she is on her way to another department or is this her last chance saloon ?
Maybe you know ...........
Alas not.
Another reader writes, from the art trade:
I think they had already lost the plot on the arts - viz the extension of Artist's Resale Right which didn't need to be implemented. Put Maria Miller in the same cell as Baroness Wilcox [minister in the Department of Business].
Update II - another reader adds:
The Secretary of State's speech was, indeed, very depressing. Although I can just about buy the line that she needs help in presenting her case to the Treasury who, we can assume, are even less sympathetic to the Arts than she is, one key point seemed to have dropped out of her thinking altogether. Government funding for the Arts is, by definition, a subsidy for bodies whose activities are not self-funding and where there is assumed to be cultural value to society at large from maintaining them. The "economically productive" Les Miserables presumably receives no State funding and for very obvious reasons. Am I missing something?
Update III - Neil Jeffares has a neat summary on his blog:
These are points that should have been demolished in her school debating society, not aired as government policy. But one must wonder how on earth this country – home to the National Gallery, the Wigmore Hall and the National Theatre – has permitted such blatant philisitinism to take over at the highest level.
