Platform – Intervention at any cost

There can be no doubt that investment in the arts has increased dramatically in recent years. The financial support which withered under successive Conservative governments has been restored, and arts organisations are starting to “thrive not just survive”. Yet, the ongoing politicisation of arts administration is now causing fundamental discord between policy-makers and deliverers, jeopardising the arm’s-length principle. Governments in England and Wales (and Scotland will be next) believe it’s pay-back time for the arts sector, and any lip-service previously paid to an ‘art for art’s sake’ rationale for funding is now a thing of the past. This appears to be the issue at the very heart of Arts Council England’s damaged relationship with the DCMS (p1).
Meanwhile in Wales, defending his decision to oust the current Chair of the Arts Council of Wales (p3), Alan Pugh, Minister for Culture, Sport and Welsh Language, has voiced his concern that “If you are in a managerial or professional occupation you are three times more likely to benefit from public money invested in the arts than if you live in a Communities First area.” He goes on to list the deprived areas in Wales where people are least likely to attend arts events, and states “I don’t believe these huge differences in participation are acceptable…” Well, acceptable or not, it’s about time the Welsh Assembly Government faced the fact that deep-rooted cultural norms and educational background have a huge influence on arts consumption. Is it really likely that the few millions of the Welsh arts budget will be enough to override decades of cultural imbalance over the course of one parliament? The ambition to change historical inequities is a valid one for any government, but the arts budget is small beer relative to the vast resources available to health, education and social services to target these priorities. If the cost of using the arts to pursue this social engineering agenda is the collapse from under-funding of the arts infrastructures that are already working to diversify and extend audiences, then this surely can’t be a price worth paying.

Liz Hill and Brian Whitehead, Co-editors