Mark Robinson responds to ‘Rebalancing our Cultural Capital’ suggesting that local and national government funders should consider what they could control – as well as what they can’t.
‘Rebalancing Our Cultural Capital’ by Peter Stark, Christopher Gordon and David Powell subtitles itself as ‘A contribution to the debate on national policy for the arts and culture in England’. This indicates the essentially optimistic and constructive tone of the self-funded and initiated project. I’ve certainly wondered when such a debate would really start in England, let alone get to the good stuff. It gives a robustly and very specifically researched perspective on the disparities between funding for the arts and culture in London and the rest of England, links that back to the defining moment in cultural policy in Jennie Lee’s White Paper of 1965, and makes a modest proposal of a time-limited lottery fund for regional production as a way of beginning a rebalancing.
‘Rebalancing’, as I shall call it, is an important piece of work that deserves serious consideration and inventive responses. It’s far from a ‘regions vs. London’ argument, and it’s vital the debate rejects win/lose scenarios and arts world infighting. If it kick-starts a discussion which enables us to move on fairly quickly from the maths to how and why policy works at a systemic level it will be a huge achievement.
That London receives a numerically disproportionate amount of funding per capita compared to the rest of England is hardly ‘breaking news’. We know it, and it’s long been tacitly accepted. The report leaves us in no doubt as to how deep-seated and large the disparity is, and how different from some other countries. It runs on the same tracks as other ‘data’ on the economy and power in this country, of course, which is why it’s so deeply ‘embedded’ that lottery funding has, more or less, followed treasury funding.
‘Rebalancing Our Cultural Capital’ by Peter Stark, Christopher Gordon and David Powell subtitles itself as ‘A contribution to the debate on national policy for the arts and culture in England’. This indicates the essentially optimistic and constructive tone of the self-funded and initiated project. I’ve certainly wondered when such a debate would really start in England, let alone get to the good stuff. It gives a robustly and very specifically researched perspective on the disparities between funding for the arts and culture in London and the rest of England, links that back to the defining moment in cultural policy in Jennie Lee’s White Paper of 1965, and makes a modest proposal of a time-limited lottery fund for regional production as a way of beginning a rebalancing.
‘Rebalancing’, as I shall call it, is an important piece of work that deserves serious consideration and inventive responses. It’s far from a ‘regions vs. London’ argument, and it’s vital the debate rejects win/lose scenarios and arts world infighting. If it kick-starts a discussion which enables us to move on fairly quickly from the maths to how and why policy works at a systemic level it will be a huge achievement.
That London receives a numerically disproportionate amount of funding per capita compared to the rest of England is hardly ‘breaking news’. We know it, and it’s long been tacitly accepted. The report leaves us in no doubt as to how deep-seated and large the disparity is, and how different from some other countries. It runs on the same tracks as other ‘data’ on the economy and power in this country, of course, which is why it’s so deeply ‘embedded’ that lottery funding has, more or less, followed treasury funding.