Those with long memories or some knowledge of the history of post-war politics of arts funding laughed wryly at how the whirligig of time wreaks its revenges, writes Sue Isherwood.
In the early 1950s the then young Arts Council swiftly closed its regional offices to concentrate its efforts on metropolitan excellence, leaving local organisations in the lurch and local authorities gradually to pick up the pieces. In the intervening years a regional presence has been rebuilt to such an extent that its many voices have threatened to drown the sound of the centre ? so time to knock heads together and annexe the lot. All the long-lived mutual distrust between the centre and the periphery is at the surface again.
Neither the Arts Council of England?s proposals in their second, more consultative document, ?Working Together for the Arts?, nor the English Regional Arts Boards? parallel document, ?Seeking the Best Solution?, can do more than assert that their preferred structures will deliver more coherently and more cost effectively. My personal experience of restructuring with both local government and the formal arts funding system since the early 1970s leads me to conclude that the savings promised never materialise and that by the time the deckchairs have been rearranged there are different people on the bridge viewing the iceberg from another angle.
Unequal opportunity
The debate ultimately turns round a power struggle between central and local control expressed through issues of structure: the obsession with who controls the structures of power blinds us to more crucial points. The important issue is not about structure, it?s about equity. Currently the access that both artists and audiences have to funding support, expert advice and development opportunities varies widely, depending on geographical (as well as ideological) location.
The arts infrastructure of this country, like Topsy, ?just growed?. It didn?t grow evenly. Central London remained, as always, relatively well served, but the picture in the major provincial cities and across the regions varied, depending ultimately on the vision and astuteness of local activists and local authority councillors and officers.
In the 1970s in the Northern region and in such cities as Manchester, Leeds and more latterly Birmingham, local politicians argued for and achieved major funding from both local authority and Arts Council resources to support and develop local infrastructure and fuel local ambition. Other areas and authorities came later to the argument and bidding table when, in the Thatcherite 1980s, there was much less to play for.
So at the beginning of the 21st century we have an arts funding system where some of the Regional Arts Boards have three times or more to spend per capita than others; where some cities spend four times as much on cultural activity as others; and where some counties have annual arts budgets in the millions and others less than £200,000.We also have a system where there are still unresolved tensions between ?arts for arts? sake? and ?arts as engines of social change? arguments, and between ?excellence? and ?access? arguments, particularly at local level.
Funding and standards
Rearranging the deckchairs will not address any of this. We need an arts funding system which firstly ensures a fairer per capita distribution of DCMS funds. Any savings, however doubtful, which reorganisation might bring, should go there first.
Secondly, we need a recognition all round that local authorities are at least equal partners in the funding game and there need to be national standards for arts provision ? a point that was debated and endorsed at the National Association of Local Government Arts Officers? (NALGAO) annual conference last April. At local authority level the arts have the widest remit and the greatest potential for partnership with community planning, regeneration programmes, social inclusion and life long learning agendas at the source of the cultural services. They are at the heart of Local Cultural Strategy, but at the same time are most vulnerable to marginalisation now that Library Services can point to newly established national standards and Museums and Heritage to a raft of Audit Commission national performance indicators.
Closer integration
So what should Tessa Jowell be doing, rather than simply endorsing the Arts Council?s bid to take over the Regional Arts Boards as the answer to fair funding for the arts? She should look at the whole system of arts funding in an integrated way, recognising that both central and local government streams of funding need to be considered together. Both need clear guidelines on standards for equity.
What underlies the Arts Council?s suggested restructuring is a long impatience with the uneven development of Regional Arts Associations, later Boards. Some it trusts and so funds ?to deliver the goods?; others it sees as ?second division?, but by its lack of support tends to perpetuate the divide. It also underestimates, despite a rhetoric of partnership, what the relationship between the Regional Arts Boards and local authorities has and could become.
Local authorities are essentially democratically accountable bodies. Their elected members expect to exercise executively, not merely in an advisory authority, in partnership with Regional Arts Boards, Regional Cultural Consortiums and Regional Development Agencies. A centrally controlled organisation will find it harder to maintain the level of partnership currently brokered by some RABs. The existing subscription system, which the Arts Council sees as continuing, is inconsistently calculated across the country and already well past its sell-by date. Most local authorities are developmentally well beyond needing to subscribe to a support service. They have plenty of expertise in-house to enable the wise spending of such monies, either locally or within the context of regional challenge funds. The priorities for these would be set more in relation to local and regional cultural strategies than to national directives.
Finally, if the Minister wants a coherent arts funding system where central and local government funds are integrated equitably and coherently, then she also needs to strengthen liaison between the two. The key connection with the Regional Development Agencies? planning frameworks needs to be promoted and the membership of the Arts Liaison Committee widened. The Local Government Association provides important links at member and general cultural policy level. But the action planning and delivery of arts development on the local ground is done by arts officers and their economic development, education and social services colleagues. Well over 80% of local authority arts officers and many of their colleagues are members of NALGAO. Our practical expertise gives us a vital perspective on both the current range of local delivery and regional partnership issues. NALGAO is well placed to take a seat at the planning table.
Sue Isherwood is Chair of the National Association of Local Government Arts Officers e: sisherwood@somerset.gov.uk