We will never have it so bad. The only thing that’s going to save us now is business. Business is the only saviour the arts has thanks to a government hell-bent on squeezing the cultural life out of the country.
There is no doubt, 2011 is going to be a tough year. Friends, colleagues, mentors are going to lose their jobs. Festivals and events we’ve patronised and visited over the last decade might not happen this year or next. And it’ll be awful. It’ll be frightening.
But I think there is a chance for one small rallying whimper. We didn’t do anything wrong. We didn’t. So why are we behaving as though we did?
In the course of my lifetime, the course of a generation, the cultural life of England has exploded. When I was at school, a cultural outing was visitng a castle in North Wales. My niece, who is 16, has so far this year visited the UK’s centre for digital art, she has taken part in a pilot project joining 3,000 other school children for an event called Supersing, she entered a young writer’s competition run by the oldest library in the North West (and is down to the last six, thank you very much) and has taken up the flute to relax her while she revises for her GCSEs.
This weekend, should she feel like it, within twenty miles of her front door, for free, she can look at paintings by Rubens and Tintoretto, she can explore the history of DNA, find out about German Romantics, or go and see Britain’s first female folk duo performing their 50 year tour. No wonder her mother gets frustrated when she says she’s bored.
We already have the statistics, hey we’ve probably tweeted them. Investment in the arts cost 17p per person and contributes to a tourism economy that brings around £86bn into the coffers.
Steadily growing audiences each year, using cutting edge technology and new-fangled techniques to hear what those audiences want to say the arts are braver, more innovative and, unsurprisingly, more creative in their approach to communication and interaction than any other industry in the country.
By comparison, the private sector is struggling with a chronic lack of faith from the public. PR gaffe after PR gaffe has undermined brands and left many thinking chasing the buck is more important than customers.
Is this what the arts should be turning to?
What the arts needs is business to put their hands in their pockets. The arts doesn’t need someone to come in and tell them how to write a business plan, or how to market their exhibitions. They know how to do that already. Smaller organisations will need help fundraising but the spirit of collaboration and partnership in the arts isn’t going to go away overnight. After three decades of unprecedented growth, business should be turning to the arts and PAYING THEM for advice.
Sharing talent and expertise is what will get the arts through this year. We just have to keep doing it right.
Laura Brown is a freelance writer and PR consultant.