Sir Christopher Frayling, Arts Council England Chairman, warns of the implications of the Government?s 2004 Spending Review for the arts in England.
Where culture is concerned, the immediate reaction to the Chancellor?s spending announcement on Monday was positive. Friends from the arts and museums phoned me up and emailed me to say ? with a sigh of relief ? that it was good news after all. They had a slight upward cadence in their voice, though, because they were not quite sure what the announcement really meant.
They were right to be unsure ? because then we did the maths. Despite the positive gloss being put on this settlement, on closer inspection it is bad news for culture.
Double vision
Of the major departments, DCMS comes 13th out of 19, with just 2.3 per cent above inflation. This compares, for example, with 4.5 per cent for Transport, and 6.9 per cent for Health.
Even so, the DCMS?s ?average annual increase of 2.3 per cent in real terms? amounts to an extra £230m ? so shouldn?t we be celebrating the good news?
Not quite. Because the £230m ? and the ?real terms? increase ? compares the years 2004/05 with 2007/08. As seasoned spending review observers will know, the reviews feed into a three-year rolling plan. The first year of each settlement is the third year of the previous one. And in this case, Year 1 is 2005/06. So the £230m includes increases already announced in the last spending round ? which was far more supportive of culture. In fact, £99m of the £230m was announced, budgeted ? and committed ? in 2002. It has not just been double-counted? it has already been spent!
Of what is left, the ?real terms? increases in Years 2 and 3 (2006/07 and 2007/08) are more like an average of 1.4 per cent.
Now how does that figure compare? For other departments, this was not the hard spending round we had been led to expect. For the past three months, I?ve been hearing ?it is going to be a tough round for everyone, so don?t expect much? and ?it is always tough, but this time it?s going to be really tough?. So how come, overall, the comparable figure across the whole of Government is 3.4% above inflation.
Not such a good result for culture, then, either relatively or absolutely.
A strong case
I can only speak for the case that the Arts Council made ? as forcibly as it could ? to DCMS. The case was about building on success, not going back to the ?stop-go? of the early 1990s, the value the arts add to society, the successes of the last two years, the impact the arts can have on people?s lives. Artists have shown a fantastic capacity to multiply modest levels of investment in recent years, and they make a huge contribution to the economy through tourism and the creative industries. They also tell us about ourselves.
The health of the cultural sector depends heavily on the infrastructure of organisations and institutions that are its backbone. Galleries like the Tate. Museums like the V&A. Companies like the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. Orchestras, community arts projects, theatres, dance companies.
For example, theatre in England is a £2.6bn industry that relies on just £121m of subsidy. An increase of £25m in an earlier round transformed the theatre: more new writing, bigger casts, and new audiences. There have been some stunning success stories, like ?Jerry Springer: the Opera? transferring from Battersea Arts Centre, via the National Theatre, to the West End and then to Broadway.
Cuts ahead
But this settlement risks taking us back to the bad old days of ?stop-go?, short-term thinking and hand-to-mouth subsistence.
In fact, as the Arts Council has a number of unavoidably large demands, such as Liverpool Capital of Culture in 2008, an increase in line with inflation would mean cuts for arts organisations.
This is the scenario we could be facing between 2005/06 and 2007/08. That the Arts Council, when we make our three-year plans early next year, will be making cuts in funding for arts organisations ? for the first time this century. I am still hopeful it won?t come to that, and that something will be found in the roundings. But I wouldn?t say confident.
Other agendas
On the positive side, we in the cultural sector are a resourceful lot. Organisations will identify who have been the winners in this round, and will gravitate towards them. Some obvious examples are Regional Development Agencies ? the ?single pot? goes up by £450m a year by 2006/07. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister will be spending an extra £525m on Neighbourhood Renewal, and housing spending will be £1.3bn higher in 2007/08, than 2004/05.
I know that cultural organisations can add real value to projects in these areas, and we shall be looking to develop new partnerships with them. These could grow to the same scale as the role cultural and creative professionals now play in education. (Did you know that artists are the second largest professional group working in schools, after teachers?)
Somehow, the show will go on.
Staying alive
I can?t help feeling that this has been an opportunity missed by the government. Across the world, culture and creativity are coming forward as the secret ingredient in building successful societies, regenerated cities, thriving citizens and competitive economies. We know that culture adds value to other areas of social policy. But when Tessa Jowell published ?The value of culture? earlier this year, she was arguing a different case ? that culture brings benefits that are valuable in their own terms.
And I feel this sentiment very much catches the moment. It seems to me that in all the confusion of the modern world, people are craving both value and values. Increasingly, they emphasise experiences that are high-quality, authentic, personal, original and ? whatever some commentators may say ? challenging. Looked at this way, culture is an important part of what it is to be alive.
I had thought this government saw itself as a champion of the arts, and was beginning to establish a reputation as such. To sideline culture ? and the department responsible for supporting it ? is a mistake. The arts world will probably get angry.
Here we go again.