The news that the arts sector has fallen short of DCMS targets for arts participation and attendance is seriously unwelcome (p1), not only for Arts Council England (ACE), but for arts organisations all over the UK, who are the ones ultimately charged with delivering on Government targets. But what exactly is going on here, and who is really to blame? Often cast as the villain of the piece, ACE is surely in a no-win situation here. Consider the facts. ACE has been charged by the DCMS with increasing arts attendance by 3%, and arts participation by 2%, among traditionally under-represented groups. As anyone with a commercial bone in their body will know, in a mature and stable market such as the arts, increases of that magnitude would entail not only the allocation of vast financial resources, but also a fundamental cultural shift in our societys approach to the arts. With the arts barely surviving on the fringes of the National Curriculum, there is little in the way of an educational or cultural infrastructure to support such a shift, and we dont need to remind you of the current status of financial resources within the sector.
ACE is therefore in an impossible situation; victim, it seems of the Governments vaulting social engineering ambitions, and of a measurement-obsessed political system that it can do little to address. Unbelievably the next raft of targets, for 2005-2008 raises the game still further, by adding 16-20 year-olds to the mix (excluded from earlier targets). The suggestion that a significant percentage of people of that age, and from traditionally under-represented groups, are suddenly going to abandon their usual pursuits and interests and embrace the arts, is a complete nonsense. The meeting of such targets in the short-term can only be achieved with what we might politely term creative accounting, but if thats the case then why bother setting such targets in the first place? ACE is caught between a rock and a hard place, and its carefully worded response to the PSA news, suggests it knows it. By setting its PSA targets for the arts so high, the Government has set ACE up for a fall, none of which does any good for the arts sector in general, as it is asked to deliver the impossible and is then publicly seen to fail.
Nick Jordan
Editor
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