Ballot boxing

With just over a fortnight until polling day, it’s no surprise that each of the three major English political parties are narrowing their focus to The Big Issues of the day – namely, the economy, education and health. Despite this, most of us would agree that the arts have been paid more lip-service in this election than any before it. (Albeit, scant firm policy measures.)
The future of arts funding post-May has been the subject of at least three public debates and national conferences in the past six months, involving key Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat representatives. Politicians have made concerted efforts to woo those working in the arts, with the Tories pushing the hardest on this front pre-election, even publishing an individual arts manifesto in February. This followed on, of course, from the Liberal Democrats’ pamphlet of “arts proposals”.  

Promoting the party line
Politically speaking, there is far greater recognition today of how much culture and national heritage pay back in terms of public health and well-being (see p1), as well as to the economy overall. But whether electioneering bluster will translate into real policy is a separate issue. The shadow DCMS team, Jeremy Hunt and Ed Vaizey, talked up philanthropy and endowments as alternative funding models. Much more fuss was made from Conservative central office about streamlining arts bureaucracy and slashing what have been identified by the party as a succession of needless arts quangos.
Labour ministers Ben Bradshaw and Margaret Hodge, by comparison, were reluctant to promise the electorate anything particularly radical or original with regards to arts policy, preferring to reflect and remind us of the achievements of the Labour government. (Whichever way your vote swings, the last decade has certainly been a particularly fruitful one for British arts.) On the other hand, of the three largest political parties, only the Liberal Democrats’ Don Foster, emphasised the need to treat the creative industry as seriously as any other in Britain. Foster has been hammering home the figures (the sector generates a reported £60bn – 7.3% of the total – a year to the British economy) and insisting that a Lib Dem government would keep an arm’s length principle towards arts funding, but protect spending.
Even focusing only on financial benefits to the nation, continued investment in the arts makes sense. Current arts funding costs one penny in every £100 of the treasury’s budget: that’s 39p per week per household. This is a real-terms budget increase of 90 per cent to Arts Council England over the last decade alone. While the boom years appear to be behind us – none of the big political parties are denying that cuts are ahead or pledging to ring-fence funding – the creative industries remain vital to British business, growing faster than any other sector between 1996 and 2007. This accounts for an additional 2 million jobs and £11.6bn of cultural exports in 2006.
Now that every party has published its manifesto, what can we expect from any incoming government?

The Conservatives
Over 130 pages of manifesto later, it becomes clear that any solid Tory commitment to the arts could be written on a matchbox. After months spent by Ed Vaizey and Jeremy Hunt courting favour the only actual policy their party proposes is to “return the Lottery to its original purpose... ensuring a greater shares goes to the arts, sport and heritage”. This isn’t exactly groundbreaking or revelatory. It’s also vague and shows a lack of faith in the ambitions of the shadow culture team. A very poor show.

Labour
Despite not committing to Margaret Hodge’s calls for ring-fenced funding, the current government is offering more than one might have expected. Creativity starts with education in this manifesto: “Every child and young person should be entitled to five hours of art, music and culture per week, through learning to play a musical instrument, visiting local museums and joining film clubs, or taking part in local theatre.” A “should” isn’t a “will”, so it’s only a nudge rather than a full step in the right direction. Having admitted the relative failure of its scheme to offer free theatre tickets to under-26s, which failed to meet its targets, the party now promises a more inclusive, better planned scheme to “build on the success of the National Theatre’s £10 Season to work with theatres and sponsors to provide reduced-rate tickets for theatrical productions around Britain”. The news for museums and galleries is also upbeat. While “incentives for philanthropic support” will be reviewed, Labour “will maintain commitment to free admissions”. This is something which can only be achieved through continued government subsidy and support, and is proof that the party maintain confidence in their core achievements over their past three terms.

Liberal Democrats
The party make more play of the arts being “a central part of civic and community life” than the Conservatives or Labour, which is definitely encouraging. They too will “maintain free entry to national museums and galleries” while also “[opening] up the Government Art Collection for greater public use”. Quite how the latter will be achieved is yet to be detailed but beyond that, the Lib Dems make interesting noises about new funding grants. In particular, their plans to “set up a ‘Creative Enterprise Fund’ offering training, mentoring and small grants or loans to help creative businesses get off the ground”, is one to feel positive about. Their pledge to “cut red tape for putting on live music” by reshaping the licensing laws is also a plus. Like the Tories, however, the Liberal Democrats published a separate paper of arts proposals, not all of which have made the final cut in their manifesto, which is a shame.

The Green Party
Voters are offered a series of core principles from the Greens rather than policy commitments, the central one being to “[promote] participation over passive consumption” in culture, media and sport. Grassroots activity is key here with talk on “democratising and localising” culture that amounts, in the end, to a series of buzzwords. The idea to “develop more relevant structures of support for the arts, building on the work of the Arts Council and ensuring that vibrant regional and local arts cultures can thrive”, sounds good – but how do they plan to achieve it?
Northern Ireland
Of the two main parties, Sinn Fein takes the most progressive approach to the arts. It wants to integrate the island’s two arts councils, believing they “should work for better co-operation in project co-ordination and strategic development”. Sinn Fein also recognises that as “community arts provide individual development and empowerment”, they should be given special designation within arts policy overall and budgeted accordingly. The DUP has concentrated its efforts on Ulster-Scots heritage, showing support for more parades and marching bands which it views as a “vital part of the cultural life of Northern Ireland” that “should be one of [the country’s] greatest tourist assets”.

Scotland and Wales
Neither the Scottish National Party nor Plaid Cymru make any mention of arts and culture in their party manifestos. A confusing snub, if only because arts and heritage are so key to national identity and tourism in both countries.

At this stage of the election campaign, one might have hoped for more radical or innovative thinking. In truth, there is not enough separating the three main parties to convince the arts community that they’re being listened to. A survey by Arts Quarter, polling 854 arts professionals in April, found that 48% of respondents felt that none of the three main parties demonstrated any clear empathy with issues relating to the sector. Given what we’ve been presented with overall – in other words, not very much at all as evidenced above – this lack of confidence is not surprising. The only thing the sector can be sure of is, come 6 May, leaner, meaner times will be ahead financially – for those in the arts, let’s hope times are not so hard creatively.

What the sector wants:
Tim Etchells, Writer and Artist with Forced Entertainment
“The Tories’ unrealistic enthusiasm for private sponsorship massively favours big institutions, and proves tricky at best for small organisations or those producing really cutting edge work. No thanks. Labour on the other hand will continue to see the arts very much as part of their logics around regeneration, social inclusion and cultural industry. But on paper, what the Liberals have written does seem most genuine in its passion for the arts. That said, we’re resourceful here in the arts in the UK – a fact that’s born of necessity.”

Ian Brown, Artistic Director of West Yorkshire Playhouse
“I’m quite gloomy, to be honest. Leeds has celebrated such a positive year, with increased demand and increased box office across arts venues. It’s a very rosy picture that could be dismantled very quickly whichever party comes into power as I suspect big cuts are inevitable. The danger is that if funding does fall below a certain level, 10 years of great work will be at risk to save a tiny sum of money.”
John Wyver, Writer and TV Producer with Illuminations
“The Conservatives have been incredibly active in courting the arts but it would seem that Labour have, from the manifestos, dedicated the most thought and commitment to the arts. They could still do better. It’s a misplaced, easy argument for the Tories to cite too much bureaucracy and administration, for example. The last decade has been so incredibly vibrant in large part because of well-managed, significant public funding and smart administration of the arts sector.”

Hilary Gresty, Visual Arts and Galleries Association
“The only commitment to maintaining arts investment comes from Nick Clegg. Following their creative manifesto launch, the Liberal Democrats became the only party to overtly recognise the importance of local authority investment. The Conservative party manifesto ran out of steam after publishing a plethora of unreassuring moves around redistribution of Lottery funds, efficiency savings, and philanthropy. In my view, Labour has stolen the limelight not by virtue of new policies, but by prominence.”