In the culture sector: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
Fifty years since the first white paper on the arts was published, many of the same issues are being debated, although politicians are now more reticent to discuss 'frivolous' matters. By Geraldine Kendall
“Tory dossier says Labour will cancel cuts to the arts budget. We won’t.” So boasted the Labour press office last month in one of a series of tweets designed to burnish the party’s austerity credentials – just in case England’s culture sector was under any illusion that a change in government this year might herald a change in the fortunes of the cash-strapped sector.
Labour’s tweet brings into sharp focus the difference between the politics of today and yesteryear; in the run-up to this year’s election, politicians of all hues are wary of voicing too much support for things that the electorate might see as frivolous, but they weren’t always so reticent.
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the first government white paper for the arts, A Policy for the Arts: The First Steps, written by the UK’s first arts minister, Jennie Lee. It is a document that unashamedly argues the case for government investment in culture and the intrinsic value of the arts in “making Britain a gayer and more cultivated country”.
It is also one of the earliest government statements to acknowledge the deep social and geographic divide in arts provision across the UK.
“The exclusion of so many for so long from the best of our cultural heritage can become as damaging to the privileged minority as to the under-privileged majority,” Lee wrote.
“New ideas, new values and the involvement of large sections of the community hitherto given little or no opportunity to appreciate the best in the arts all have their place.”
Alistair Brown, the Museums Association’s (MA) policy officer, says of the paper: “There is no attempt to put a financial value on culture, or weigh up the comparative benefits of different types of cultural engagement. The certainty that arts should play a central part in our communities is unwavering and, in many ways, quite refreshing.”
To say it was a golden age would be misleading, however. The paper did not have universal support; memos released by the Public Records Office reveal that Lee faced a struggle against ministers in her own government, the Arts Council of Great Britain (as it was then known) and some larger cultural institutions, many of which were concerned that the government would water down the favourable funding enjoyed by an elite club of London-based organisations at the time.
But the then-prime minister, Harold Wilson, threw his weight behind Lee, presenting the paper to parliament himself.
Among its proposals, the government agreed to make more support available for an increase in local and regional activity, increasing the arts council’s budget by 30%, doubling purchase grants for local museums and adjusting their opening hours so that more people could visit, and setting up a building fund to empower local and regional authorities to provide more cultural facilities.
Joined-up approach
Lee also strongly promoted the impact culture could have on education and advocated for more joined-up thinking in this area (although the Museums Journal editorial of the time expressed concern that she had not recognised the active role in education already pioneered by many museums).
Since Lee’s milestone publication, arts policy in the UK has progressed in fits and starts. But there is no doubt that the culture sector has expanded significantly and surpassed many of the goals set out by Lee.
However, given that ideology (particularly in England) and public investment have changed so dramatically in the past five years – £83m has been cut from Arts Council England’s (ACE) budget alone during that time – there is a real danger that many of those gains are now being undone.
Not surprisingly, there has been little more than platitudes from most parties ahead of the general election. Labour’s newly appointed shadow culture minister, Chris Bryant, said last month that the party would ensure arts funding was spread more fairly if elected, while Sajid Javid, the current culture secretary, remains committed to the Conservative view that private giving can fill the funding gap, promising more tax breaks for philanthropy.
At the time of writing, it remains to be seen whether the election manifestos of the main players will put forward anything more detailed.
“We will just have to see what is going to happen,” says Althea Efunshile, the acting chief executive at ACE. “There is a mood of concern about the forthcoming spending review, but there is also a huge amount of pride in the achievements of the sector – it has proved that it is resilient.”
The governments in Wales and Scotland have, perhaps, shown a greater commitment to the cultural agenda, although neither sector has been protected from cuts. In Northern Ireland, the situation is difficult, with funding reductions across the board.
Holistic case
ACE is working hard behind the scenes to promote the economic and intrinsic value of culture to politicians in the run-up to the election, says Efunshile, and has published an advocacy resource that makes a “holistic case for culture”.
She adds: “We will be advocating to all the main parties for the continued importance of arts and culture and emphasising its benefits to health, education and so on. Expenditure is so minimal that cutting funding does not make sense.”
But, as one of the key players in shaping and delivering government policy, the white paper’s anniversary throws up some difficult questions for ACE itself. Some of the strongest criticism has come from the authors of the 2013 Rebalancing our Cultural Capital report, which laid bare the continuing imbalance in arts funding between London and the regions originally highlighted by Lee’s paper.
“One conclusion that I have reached is how disastrous it is to have no institutional memory anywhere,” says independent cultural policy consultant Christopher Gordon, who was one of the report’s authors. “[ACE] goes on making the same mistakes.”
According to Gordon, one of the arts council’s biggest errors has been its “hostile takeover” of regional arts associations in 2001 and the gradual re-centralisation of policy since then, particularly as the council’s own regional presence has diminished as a result of funding cuts.
Gordon points out that, despite its stated commitment to correcting the imbalance, ACE recently cut funding for one of its key regional programmes, Creative People and Places, by 46%.
For its part, the arts council is struggling with massive cuts, but Efunshile says that it is committed to rebalancing the historical funding bias and is focused on building capacity and investment from the bottom up. However, this is being complicated by the situation at a local level.
“The big threat for the sector going forward is the drop in local government funding,” Efunshile says. “Our money is a drop in the ocean in comparison.”
Visionary and practical
ACE is midway through its 10-year strategy, Great Art and Culture for Everyone, so it is unlikely that Darren Henley, the managing director of Classic FM who is taking over as the arts council’s chief executive later this year, will bring any major change to its policies.
But as the anniversary of Lee’s white paper approaches, it is striking how many of the issues it raised are still being debated.
The document remains as relevant today as it was in 1965, says David Anderson, the MA’s president. “It was visionary and practical,” he says.
“Its concept of arts excellence was wider than the works alone, and embraced the concept of excellence of experience as the right of every citizen, wherever they live. To read it again is to see how much we have lost.”
The white paper still reads inspiringly as a call to action. What it successfully achieved was to write the arts, heritage and participation belatedly into public policy thinking as a significant element of postwar reconstruction whose time had arrived.
It encouraged the major role that local government and the regional arts bodies advocated in it were to develop in the decades immediately following. Many of the document’s successes are now unremarked, although re-reading it sharpens regret at the losses of more recent years, resulting from ideology and the retrograde over-centralisation that this has led to.
The National Lottery, meanwhile, has done much to help improve the infrastructure envisaged in the report. It is fascinating to be able to read the background documentation in the Public Record Office.
The 1965 civil service memos and lobbying from the arts council and “great national institutions” – routed through a predictably sympathetic cabinet secretary – aimed to water down the regional “spread” that the white paper advocated. They clearly felt threatened by the appearance of a minister who would henceforth come between them and their cosy connections with Treasury officials.
Christopher Gordon is an independent consultant and lecturer in cultural policy
1964
Jennie Lee appointed Britain’s first minister for the arts.
1965
Publication of Lee’s white paper, A Policy for the Arts: The First Steps.
1982
A Hard Fact to Swallow report produced by the Policy Studies Institute reveals an inbuilt London bias in arts council funding.
1984
The arts council publishes its first 10-year strategy, Glory of the Garden, which aims to address regional provision.
1994
Launch of the National Lottery heralds a significant rise in investment for cultural infrastructure.
1999
Devolution of cultural policy in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
2010
Coalition government enacts austerity programme, with culture disproportionately targeted.
2013
Rebalancing our Cultural Capital report reveals ongoing imbalance in arts funding.
Labour’s tweet brings into sharp focus the difference between the politics of today and yesteryear; in the run-up to this year’s election, politicians of all hues are wary of voicing too much support for things that the electorate might see as frivolous, but they weren’t always so reticent.
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the first government white paper for the arts, A Policy for the Arts: The First Steps, written by the UK’s first arts minister, Jennie Lee. It is a document that unashamedly argues the case for government investment in culture and the intrinsic value of the arts in “making Britain a gayer and more cultivated country”.
It is also one of the earliest government statements to acknowledge the deep social and geographic divide in arts provision across the UK.
“The exclusion of so many for so long from the best of our cultural heritage can become as damaging to the privileged minority as to the under-privileged majority,” Lee wrote.
“New ideas, new values and the involvement of large sections of the community hitherto given little or no opportunity to appreciate the best in the arts all have their place.”
Alistair Brown, the Museums Association’s (MA) policy officer, says of the paper: “There is no attempt to put a financial value on culture, or weigh up the comparative benefits of different types of cultural engagement. The certainty that arts should play a central part in our communities is unwavering and, in many ways, quite refreshing.”
To say it was a golden age would be misleading, however. The paper did not have universal support; memos released by the Public Records Office reveal that Lee faced a struggle against ministers in her own government, the Arts Council of Great Britain (as it was then known) and some larger cultural institutions, many of which were concerned that the government would water down the favourable funding enjoyed by an elite club of London-based organisations at the time.
But the then-prime minister, Harold Wilson, threw his weight behind Lee, presenting the paper to parliament himself.
Among its proposals, the government agreed to make more support available for an increase in local and regional activity, increasing the arts council’s budget by 30%, doubling purchase grants for local museums and adjusting their opening hours so that more people could visit, and setting up a building fund to empower local and regional authorities to provide more cultural facilities.
Joined-up approach
Lee also strongly promoted the impact culture could have on education and advocated for more joined-up thinking in this area (although the Museums Journal editorial of the time expressed concern that she had not recognised the active role in education already pioneered by many museums).
Since Lee’s milestone publication, arts policy in the UK has progressed in fits and starts. But there is no doubt that the culture sector has expanded significantly and surpassed many of the goals set out by Lee.
However, given that ideology (particularly in England) and public investment have changed so dramatically in the past five years – £83m has been cut from Arts Council England’s (ACE) budget alone during that time – there is a real danger that many of those gains are now being undone.
Not surprisingly, there has been little more than platitudes from most parties ahead of the general election. Labour’s newly appointed shadow culture minister, Chris Bryant, said last month that the party would ensure arts funding was spread more fairly if elected, while Sajid Javid, the current culture secretary, remains committed to the Conservative view that private giving can fill the funding gap, promising more tax breaks for philanthropy.
At the time of writing, it remains to be seen whether the election manifestos of the main players will put forward anything more detailed.
“We will just have to see what is going to happen,” says Althea Efunshile, the acting chief executive at ACE. “There is a mood of concern about the forthcoming spending review, but there is also a huge amount of pride in the achievements of the sector – it has proved that it is resilient.”
The governments in Wales and Scotland have, perhaps, shown a greater commitment to the cultural agenda, although neither sector has been protected from cuts. In Northern Ireland, the situation is difficult, with funding reductions across the board.
Holistic case
ACE is working hard behind the scenes to promote the economic and intrinsic value of culture to politicians in the run-up to the election, says Efunshile, and has published an advocacy resource that makes a “holistic case for culture”.
She adds: “We will be advocating to all the main parties for the continued importance of arts and culture and emphasising its benefits to health, education and so on. Expenditure is so minimal that cutting funding does not make sense.”
But, as one of the key players in shaping and delivering government policy, the white paper’s anniversary throws up some difficult questions for ACE itself. Some of the strongest criticism has come from the authors of the 2013 Rebalancing our Cultural Capital report, which laid bare the continuing imbalance in arts funding between London and the regions originally highlighted by Lee’s paper.
“One conclusion that I have reached is how disastrous it is to have no institutional memory anywhere,” says independent cultural policy consultant Christopher Gordon, who was one of the report’s authors. “[ACE] goes on making the same mistakes.”
According to Gordon, one of the arts council’s biggest errors has been its “hostile takeover” of regional arts associations in 2001 and the gradual re-centralisation of policy since then, particularly as the council’s own regional presence has diminished as a result of funding cuts.
Gordon points out that, despite its stated commitment to correcting the imbalance, ACE recently cut funding for one of its key regional programmes, Creative People and Places, by 46%.
For its part, the arts council is struggling with massive cuts, but Efunshile says that it is committed to rebalancing the historical funding bias and is focused on building capacity and investment from the bottom up. However, this is being complicated by the situation at a local level.
“The big threat for the sector going forward is the drop in local government funding,” Efunshile says. “Our money is a drop in the ocean in comparison.”
Visionary and practical
ACE is midway through its 10-year strategy, Great Art and Culture for Everyone, so it is unlikely that Darren Henley, the managing director of Classic FM who is taking over as the arts council’s chief executive later this year, will bring any major change to its policies.
But as the anniversary of Lee’s white paper approaches, it is striking how many of the issues it raised are still being debated.
The document remains as relevant today as it was in 1965, says David Anderson, the MA’s president. “It was visionary and practical,” he says.
“Its concept of arts excellence was wider than the works alone, and embraced the concept of excellence of experience as the right of every citizen, wherever they live. To read it again is to see how much we have lost.”
Half a century on, Jennie Lee’s white paper is still a call to action
The white paper still reads inspiringly as a call to action. What it successfully achieved was to write the arts, heritage and participation belatedly into public policy thinking as a significant element of postwar reconstruction whose time had arrived.
It encouraged the major role that local government and the regional arts bodies advocated in it were to develop in the decades immediately following. Many of the document’s successes are now unremarked, although re-reading it sharpens regret at the losses of more recent years, resulting from ideology and the retrograde over-centralisation that this has led to.
The National Lottery, meanwhile, has done much to help improve the infrastructure envisaged in the report. It is fascinating to be able to read the background documentation in the Public Record Office.
The 1965 civil service memos and lobbying from the arts council and “great national institutions” – routed through a predictably sympathetic cabinet secretary – aimed to water down the regional “spread” that the white paper advocated. They clearly felt threatened by the appearance of a minister who would henceforth come between them and their cosy connections with Treasury officials.
Christopher Gordon is an independent consultant and lecturer in cultural policy
Culture policy: timeline
1964
Jennie Lee appointed Britain’s first minister for the arts.
1965
Publication of Lee’s white paper, A Policy for the Arts: The First Steps.
1982
A Hard Fact to Swallow report produced by the Policy Studies Institute reveals an inbuilt London bias in arts council funding.
1984
The arts council publishes its first 10-year strategy, Glory of the Garden, which aims to address regional provision.
1994
Launch of the National Lottery heralds a significant rise in investment for cultural infrastructure.
1999
Devolution of cultural policy in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
2010
Coalition government enacts austerity programme, with culture disproportionately targeted.
2013
Rebalancing our Cultural Capital report reveals ongoing imbalance in arts funding.