Following the publication of the Warwick Commission report, Rupert Christiansen believes it’s time for the arts to realise that politicians just don't care, and employ its ingenuity and resourcefulness to move things forward.
Cultural policy is never going to be either a keystone of any government manifesto or a significant vote-winner.
Yet as Robert Hewison’s useful study Cultural Capital: The Rise and Fall Of Creative Britain forcefully reminds us, an enormous amount of time, effort, money and ink has been spent over the last quarter-century attempting to persuade our rulers to forge some set of principles that could give arts organisations a reasonable degree of security and also ensure that high-quality music, theatre and art are widely available and accessible.
This isn’t as easy as it might sound, not least because of the usual muddle of good intentions, liberal pieties and blundering incompetence. What makes it harder, however, is that the Right is as deeply sceptical of taxpayers subsidising anything that can’t stand on its own commercial feet as the Left is grimly suspicious of anything that smacks of élitism, and neither tendency can see out of those constricting ideological boxes... Keep reading on The Telegraph
Cultural policy is never going to be either a keystone of any government manifesto or a significant vote-winner.
Yet as Robert Hewison’s useful study Cultural Capital: The Rise and Fall Of Creative Britain forcefully reminds us, an enormous amount of time, effort, money and ink has been spent over the last quarter-century attempting to persuade our rulers to forge some set of principles that could give arts organisations a reasonable degree of security and also ensure that high-quality music, theatre and art are widely available and accessible.
This isn’t as easy as it might sound, not least because of the usual muddle of good intentions, liberal pieties and blundering incompetence. What makes it harder, however, is that the Right is as deeply sceptical of taxpayers subsidising anything that can’t stand on its own commercial feet as the Left is grimly suspicious of anything that smacks of élitism, and neither tendency can see out of those constricting ideological boxes... Keep reading on The Telegraph