For what it's worth

Does money make the world go around? Or is it love that makes the world go round, and sets our hearts aflame? Whichever old song you prefer, you’re bound to find that money is the preoccupation of a disturbingly high proportion of the arts sector in the current financial crisis (ping! – one for your game of Recession Bingo). Arts Council England has cannily let us know in advance that it is under a potentially very big cosh (p1). Its officers are arguing fit to bust that the arts, as part of the soaraway creative industries (ping!) must keep their slice of the pie in order to keep contributing to the life of the nation. While there must be very few AP readers who would disagree that the arts should keep their tiny share of public cash, there are probably quite a lot who find the current arguments even more unsettling than the ‘instrumental’ view of the arts which the McMaster Report seemed to have scotched, if not killed. The arts are being increasingly positioned as the feeder of the creative industries, and therefore worthy of support because they produce people who can make money for UK PLC (ping!). It’s undeniable that arts graduates do end up in vast numbers in the creative industries, but the link between actual arts practice and the other creative industries seems a trifle more tenuous. The splendidly gutsy letter to Scottish Culture Minister Mike Russell from a group of 66 artists and educators (p3) reads, rather wonderfully, like a return to the protest culture of the 70s and 80s. The signatories state that they believe that “Creative Scotland is already impoverishing culture by promoting and envisaging it in overwhelmingly industrial terms. This misguided approach ultimately fixates on anything or anyone that can be bought, sold or put into debt”. Have they got a point? And if they have, is it a point that we can afford to make just at the moment? In an atmosphere of panic and fear, with the potential of cuts looming on the horizon, can we afford to be precious about the way our sector is viewed, as long as we can help it to survive the downturn (ping!)? Or, on the other hand, is our acceptance of this world view a huge gamble, by which we could lose spectacularly?