The arts are humming: let's keep it that way

Published in the Evening Standard

f the weather turns fine, expect Tony Blair to pop up at the Met Office, explaining how his ten years at Number Ten have created more sunshine than in the dark days before 1997. That would be in keeping with the tenor of the legacy tour, in which the outgoing prime minister travels the kingdom, claiming credit for the glorious achievements of what he hopes history will call the Blair decade.

This week he was at Tate Modern, hailing the “golden age” for the arts over which he has presided, like a latter-day Medici, dispensing purses of generous patronage. “Together,” he said, he and the directors, conductors, designers and writers assembled before him had transformed the culture of the country, making it “more confident, more assertive, more creative and alive.”

For once, that was not a wholly vain boast. In the arts things did actually get better under Labour. Government funding has doubled since 1997, so that theatres or galleries that were skinny and starving in the 1980s are now in rosy-cheeked good health.

The proof is especially visible in London. Tate Modern was a smart location for Blair’s speech because it has, in the seven short years since it opened, become the most popular modern art gallery in the world, pulling in more visitors than either MOMA in New York or the Pompidou in Paris. London’s museums are humming, helped in part by Labour’s abolition of entry charges, while the National Theatre is playing to packed houses and bagging multiple awards with hits like the History Boys. Blair quoted the Tate’s Nicholas Serota as saying that today’s museums “’feel’ different; they have a different atmosphere.” That’s vague – but it’s also right.

Indeed, this cultural flowering is a large part of what makes living in London worthwhile, despite all the daily hassles. To see a great play, or a gorgeous exhibition, is an exhilarating experience, one that can lift you out of the grind, allowing you to look at life afresh. That kind of transcending experience is available every day in the London of 2007.

That has to be the first argument for the arts. But if that doesn’t persuade, there are other, more mechanical ones. Chief among them is the economic impact “the cultural industries” have on this city and this country. They form some 7% of the economy, employing almost 2m people. They’re a big part of our exports and, as London knows better than anywhere, they do much to pull in tourists from overseas.

So what’s needed to ensure this golden age endures? Blair’s audience at Tate Modern were desperate to hear that their funding is not going to be cut back: they don’t want gobs more cash, just the same amount, adjusted for inflation. That sounds reasonable enough. After all, the arts can argue that just a small amount of public subsidy gives them the security they need to take risks and innovate; once they do that, they can win audiences and make a financial return. The recent revival of regional theatre supports that argument and it came pretty cheap — requiring an increase of just £25m, pocket change by government standards.

The artistic chieftans are also fretting about the Olympics: they fear that Lottery cash, which has proved vital to them, is about to be diverted instead to the bottomless pit of 2012. Tony Hall, chief executive of the Royal Opera House, told me yesterday that he’d like to see the Department for Media, Culture and Sport put arts funding behind a separate ring-fence — safe from the greedy hand of the Olympics. He’d also like institutions like his to have five-year budgets, so they can plan ahead, rather than waiting for the three-yearly Comprehensive Spending Review whose outcome this year has them so nervous. Again, they are hardly asking for the earth.

There are two more radical moves worth making. Blair suggested Britain had found a perfect compromise between European-style mega-subsidies and the US habit of leaving the arts to the tender mercies of market force. But that’s a distortion of the way the Americans operate. The galleries and orchestras of even medium-sized US cities are flush with cash, not from the government but from donations given by wealthy individuals and companies. Often they have established huge endowments, the interest on which alone can comfortably fund an opera house or theatre.

We need some of that here. As a new study yesterday showed London on course to become the world’s fourth richest city, it’s about time our wealthiest citizens followed the lead of their counterparts in New York or Los Angeles and dipped deep into their pockets. Some corporations are already stepping up, like Travelex, sponsors of the £10 seats at the National. But individuals need a prod. Government could help by tweaking the tax code to make endowments for the arts at least partially tax-deductible. A small change by Gordon Brown would see an avalanche of cash coming the arts way.

All of this would be pointless, however, unless there are people keen to go to concerts, plays and exhibitions. That is by no means certain, not when today’s kids are so pressed by league tables and compulsory testing that music, drama and art have been all but squeezed out of the school timetable. Too many children go nowhere near a musical instrument unless they have parents able to pay for private lessons; too many never set foot in a theatre, unless their teachers can prove the visit is linked to the national curriculum.

That needs to change, freeing up the timetable so that there’s space for those experiences which cannot be tested but which open up a child’s soul. “You need to build the audience of tomorrow,” says Hall, who suggests a performance a year for every child. Why not?

The arts have become one of London’s greatest assets. But they are a precious flower. Nurture them and they’ll grow. Neglect them and they’ll wither – and that would leave all of us the poorer.

Posted on March 8, 2007 11:52 AM

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