From Roger Tomlinson, ACT Consultant Services
In defending the arms-length principle (AP issue 114, 30 January) are we missing the bigger argument that the government can change its policy for the arts? In Scotland and Wales politicians seem to be assaulting the principle because of the outcome of current policy.
Labour politicians have argued for the arts to be delivered according to where people live since the 1950s, often comparing access to the arts to access to education and, particularly, libraries, and often wanting more to be delivered through local authorities, as is now proposed for Scotland. That current Arts Council practice does not deliver representative audiences, and that the good Chairman of the Arts Council of Wales should lose his role because of it, is unfortunate but we cannot say we have not been warned.
The very first Arts Minister Jennie Lee argued passionately for equitable access to the arts in the 1960s. In the 1980s, the then Welsh Arts Council was hauled before parliamentary Select Committees because the distribution of the organisations it funded did not relate to the population distribution (and those Welsh Community First wards probably had more arts provision then than now). And New Labour has made the need for social inclusion and diverse audiences absolutely clear since 1997, writ large in the EU since the 2000 Lisbon Council. Now politicians are questioning how the arts quangos are delivering for their constituents, and proposing the greatest changes in policy, structures and practice since the Second World War. In the argument between instrumental versus intrinsic value, we need open debate on the policy for delivering the arts as well as the chance to defend the arms-length principle.