The Culture Minister needs to be worrying about his Government’s arts legacy
The arts sector’s resilience is rooted in past Government’s success but current policies mean trouble for the sector’s future.
Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications and the Creative Industries, has recently declared that the cultural sector is in “rude health” and that complaints about the way in which the government is suffocating funding for the sector are overblown. According to Vaizey, any talk of a crisis is “rubbish” and “the arts in the UK are waving, not drowning.”
I would agree – much of the arts in the UK is in rude health. But, I would argue that this has almost nothing to do with his government’s policies or funding. Rather, it has come as a result of decades of support. Indeed, as many in the creative industries will attest, the strength of the sector in the UK over the last 10-15 years has not been because of government actions of the last 10-15 years, but the actions taken successively over decades since the 1960s and before.
Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications and the Creative Industries, has recently declared that the cultural sector is in “rude health” and that complaints about the way in which the government is suffocating funding for the sector are overblown. According to Vaizey, any talk of a crisis is “rubbish” and “the arts in the UK are waving, not drowning.”
I would agree – much of the arts in the UK is in rude health. But, I would argue that this has almost nothing to do with his government’s policies or funding. Rather, it has come as a result of decades of support. Indeed, as many in the creative industries will attest, the strength of the sector in the UK over the last 10-15 years has not been because of government actions of the last 10-15 years, but the actions taken successively over decades since the 1960s and before.