‘Evidence’ of the value of the arts isn’t enough to shield against a shrinking public realm. Three Johns and Shelagh propose a new plan.
Why is a new report from Arts Council England called Towards Plan A? Everybody knows that George Osborne’s Plan A failed, and that, despite all the rhetoric, he has been pursuing Plan B for the last three years. And what did Plan A deliver? Nothing but recession, a long delay to the recovery, inequality, and despair.
ACE’s Plan A, the result of its State of the Arts strand in partnership with the RSA, is essentially an exhortation to the cultural sector to provide better evidence to government, but that’s not what’s needed. Secretaries of State for Culture and Education on both sides of the party divide have pleaded for more ‘evidence’, particularly on economic impact.
But we know from experience that evidence doesn’t work. National and local governments don’t take decisions about arts funding based on evidence, however convincing it is. Instead, they act in the context of the wider economic picture, and in the light of their own prejudices, world-views, ideology and instincts. That’s what makes politics politics, rather than managerialism.
This Government is driven by an overarching prejudice that guides its actions, and explains its failures: it sees the public and private sectors as separate and oppositional, rather then symbiotic and collaborative. On top of that, it draws no distinction between, on the one hand, organisations that are independent and only partially funded by public money (like the vast majority of arts organisations who are honest, pretty efficient, and deliver a lot of public value) and some of the more creaking, dodgy, self-indulgent bits of the public sector.
Why is a new report from Arts Council England called Towards Plan A? Everybody knows that George Osborne’s Plan A failed, and that, despite all the rhetoric, he has been pursuing Plan B for the last three years. And what did Plan A deliver? Nothing but recession, a long delay to the recovery, inequality, and despair.
ACE’s Plan A, the result of its State of the Arts strand in partnership with the RSA, is essentially an exhortation to the cultural sector to provide better evidence to government, but that’s not what’s needed. Secretaries of State for Culture and Education on both sides of the party divide have pleaded for more ‘evidence’, particularly on economic impact.
But we know from experience that evidence doesn’t work. National and local governments don’t take decisions about arts funding based on evidence, however convincing it is. Instead, they act in the context of the wider economic picture, and in the light of their own prejudices, world-views, ideology and instincts. That’s what makes politics politics, rather than managerialism.
This Government is driven by an overarching prejudice that guides its actions, and explains its failures: it sees the public and private sectors as separate and oppositional, rather then symbiotic and collaborative. On top of that, it draws no distinction between, on the one hand, organisations that are independent and only partially funded by public money (like the vast majority of arts organisations who are honest, pretty efficient, and deliver a lot of public value) and some of the more creaking, dodgy, self-indulgent bits of the public sector.