Spare us the finger-wagging sermons aimed at ‘luvvies’ – the arts know how to fight back
Some prejudices die hard and one of the most perniciously persistent canards is the idea that arts organisations are populated by airy-fairy ‘luvvy’ types who feel they have a passport to creative freedom that gives them the divine right to fritter away wads of public money. In the vast majority of cases, this is libelously untrue.
Aside from what I have gleaned from my 30 years as an arts journalist, I have some experience on the other side of the fence, as I have also been privileged to sit on the boards of two theatres, a chamber opera company and a historic house with an extensive events and exhibition programme. I can only say that I have always been impressed by the rigorous accounting and hard-nosed economic realism that have shaped their activities.
So finger-wagging sermons from government and pundits exhorting us to be more commercial and entrepreneurial are redundant: the arts know what they have to do to remain viable, and they’ve long been efficiently doing it. In fact, I think they could teach certain government departments a thing or two about controlling costs.
Let’s get some background straight. Before the National Lottery released a new stream of money into the arts in the mid 1990s, our theatres, concert halls and museums and galleries were generally shabby if not shamefully dilapidated. Lottery awards have allowed them to repair their fabric, and provide better facilities including cafés and shops that provide new income streams and promote self-reliance.
This has been an unmitigated blessing, Yet at the same time, government has reduced its overall spending on the arts by about a third, so what has been given with one hand has been taken away with the other. Perhaps this is not altogether a bad thing: I remember the great late director of the RSC and National Theatre Peter Hall saying once: "The government should keep us hungry, but not starving."
There is certainly no feasting. Working in the arts is not a cushy option: the basic qualification for employment in this sector is passionate commitment, in return for which you will receive fairly rotten rewards. Jobs in the sector do not deliver perks or bonuses or payoffs, and the amount that is shouldered by selfless volunteers is staggering – and heart-warming too. So in material terms alone, the taxpayer should be jolly grateful: the Treasury’s modest investment in the hungry arts yields rich returns in VAT as well as contributing massively to local economies.
So spare us the sneering and the bullying, And most importantly, can we please learn to encourage the arts to pursue a spirit of innovation and experiment to balance the prudence and good governance that they already observe? It’s no use thinking that churning out endless productions of Carmen, Swan Lake and The Rocky Horror Show (splendid though they all are) is any sort of answer to the current crisis. On the contrary, now is the time to be inspired by the optimism of youth and the stimulus of originality. We need the arts to tell things that we don’t know already: to challenge as well as entertain and console us.
This morning’s announcement of emergency awards from the DCMS has brought both good and bad news for the arts. Of the two boards of which I currently a member, one is rejoicing, the other is anxious. The chamber opera company run on a shoestring by two insanely dedicated young men has been treated generously; the superbly managed, much-loved but cruelly stretched regional theatre (constituted as a charitable trust) has received nothing, almost as if it has been penalized for its success.
It’s a bitter pill and perhaps there are grounds for appeal, but what I do know is that whatever the short-term pain, nobody is in any mood to compromise or surrender. The arts are fighters and we aren’t going to be defeated.
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