Last word

Manifest virtues
It seems that you’re nobody in the arts world these days if you haven’t got a manifesto – though you don’t necessarily have to call it that. It can be a discussion document or a report for consultation – the point is to publish it in the tiny window of opportunity before the General Election is announced and the hospitals-schools-and-war merry-go-round starts up. By the time you read this, the Budget will have been issued and the election itself may finally have been announced – and your chance is gone. The Cultural Capital crew (p1), Arts & Business (p2), Equity (p3) and the Adam Smith Institute have all made it under the wire. (I recommend the Adam Smith document [Newsreel, p3], which is the funniest thing I’ve read in ages.) The Cultural Capital document is a different beast, however: it demonstrates just how much more confidence the sector has gained over the recent past. Years if not decades of justifying ourselves to the Government, to funders and to the general public have resulted in the worm finally turning. We can now argue that the country needs us, and that we are a major partner not only in expression and identity but also in social and economic capital.
I arrived in the AP Editor’s seat just as Arts Council England was perpetrating That Spending Review, at which point the arts sector in England started getting very political indeed. Over the same period, Wales has performed the opposite trick: despite the challenges of funding and recession, a period of calm seems to have descended. Scotland has been just as turbulent as England, with a similar revolving-door turnover of culture ministers and new upheaval to look forward to during 2010 with the establishment of Creative Scotland. Whatever transpires at the ballot box, the whole of the UK arts sector will be facing continuing challenges: financial, political, technological and social – almost enough to squeeze out the artistic challenges which we all welcome so keenly. The fact that so many organisations are producing manifestos is an indicator of how far up the political agenda the arts, and their sisters in the creative industries, have risen.

Ave atque vale*
As I depart AP Towers, I’d just like to thank the myriad contributors, press officers, PR agents and off-the-record sources who have made my time here so exciting (if not always comfortable). Thanks too to the talented, delightful and hard-working team at AP itself, who labour so hard to bring you your fortnightly fix of all that matters in the arts. Once I have had a nice lie-down, I will miss you all. And my very last word: ‘ave’ to my successor, Nosheen Iqbal, to whom I wish all good things.
*Or, hail and farewell.