The Arts Dividend Revisited E-Book

Darren Henley

• Herausgeber: Elliott & Thompson
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 337

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

The Arts Dividend looks in depth at seven key benefits sustained and strategic public investment in creativity and culture across England bring to our lives every day: • encouraging our nation's creativity • advancing our education and skills • increasing our happiness, health and wellbeing • supporting our innovation and technology • animating our villages, towns and cities • growing our economic prosperity • enhancing our reputation for creative and cultural excellence on the global stage This book encourages us to consider our country's innate creativity and the invaluable rewards to be gained from the public investment that enables the arts, museums and libraries to be part of everyone's lives, no matter who they are or where they live. The result of a decade-long journey across the length and breadth of England, Darren Henley reflects on our remarkable national cultural landscape from Cumbria to Kent and from Cornwall to Northumberland – and why he believes that public investment in creativity and culture can help us all to lead happier lives.

Leseprobe

Contents

First Word

Introduction

Chapter 1The Creativity Dividend

Chapter 2The Opportunity Dividend

Chapter 3The Happiness Dividend

Chapter 4The Innovation Dividend

Chapter 5The Place-Shaping Dividend

Chapter 6The Enterprise Dividend

Chapter 7The Reputation Dividend

Final Word

Acknowledgements

References

Index

First Word

This book contains my personal reflections on England’s arts and cultural landscape at the end of 2024, ten years on from my appointment as chief executive of Arts Council England.

I wrote the first edition of The Arts Dividend back in 2016, some twelve months after I had taken up the job. At that point, few people could have predicted the scale of political and societal change that has since unfolded in the UK. The second edition went to the printers in the spring of 2020 – just as the world was beginning to get to grips with the tragedy and upheaval of a global pandemic.

Now, as the UK continues to redefine itself on the international stage as a country outside the European Union, and with a new Labour government in the first year of its political life, the time feels right to update this book. In this fully revised edition, my central argument – that public investment in art and culture can help people to lead happier, healthier, more fulfilling lives – remains the same. But since the first publication of The Arts Dividend, I have become steadily more passionate about the breadth of ways in which such investment can be made, and the depth of the impact it can have. In my travels around the country, and my conversations with artists, cultural leaders and members of the public, I’ve gained new experiences and insights, and learned much, much more about the good that creativity and culture can do across England. I wanted to gather that learning and share it here.

I have also been on a more formal learning journey in the intervening period. My thinking has been greatly informed by studying for a professional doctorate on the role of the outsider as an agent for change, at Middlesex University. This has led to further postgraduate study of coaching and behavioural change at Henley Business School, and of applied positive psychology – the science of what makes life worth living – at Buckinghamshire New University. That learning journey is one I’m still on – and, to be honest, I hope it turns out to be a voyage of discovery that never ends. Already it’s helping to shape my thinking and understanding of the world in which we now find ourselves. It’s also casting new light for me on how those of us who work in the creative industries can help make an even greater positive difference to the world around us.

Although I can’t claim to write with anything approaching his supreme elegance, style or enduring impact, I like to think that this book follows in the tradition of J. B. Priestley’s 1934 classic, English Journey. Like Priestley, I hope to shine a spotlight on parts of England – and their artists, arts organisations, museums and libraries – that have not always enjoyed the nationwide attention they deserve, nor the benefits such attention can bring.

Unlike Priestley, I cannot lay claim to the best subtitle of any work in this genre: ‘Being a rambling but truthful account of what one man saw and heard and felt and thought during a journey through England during the autumn of the year 1933.’ But this, too, is a book rooted in the reality of what I have witnessed on a non-stop journey through villages, towns and cities right across England. It is, I suppose, my own rambling but truthful account of what I saw and heard and felt and thought as I journeyed through England’s arts and culture scene some nine decades after Priestley did.

I wrote the first edition of this book in case there should ever come a time when, through familiarity, our national art and culture might come to seem less remarkable to me than it really is. I am happy to say that, ten years later, familiarity has not bred complacency. Quite the opposite: I remain just as excited about our country’s artistic individuals and cultural organisations as I was back then. I am just as optimistic, too. This is also a book about the future: about risk, innovation and imagination. It is as much about who we might become tomorrow as it is about who we are today.

Although I am an optimist, I am also a realist. In the pages that follow, I present an upbeat assessment of our artists, arts organisations, museums and libraries – and the value they bring to individuals and communities. However, I would never wish a reader to go away with the idea that I believe these positive dividends happen effortlessly or automatically. Since the first edition of The Arts Dividend was published in 2016, we have experienced huge challenges on a national and international scale. Many of the achievements I celebrate here defy the odds. They are the product of extraordinary dedication, resilience and sheer hard graft by two groups of people: the creative professionals who make, curate and perform across England, and those who work behind the scenes in leadership, technical and support roles in our cultural organisations, ensuring that they continue to excel every day. These are not easy jobs. We owe all who undertake them an immense debt of gratitude.

In England, we are blessed with unique creativity. It’s too easy to take it for granted. We should remember everything that it does for us – and we should nurture it, savour it, talk about it. If it flourishes, then so do we all.

Darren Henley, November 2024

Introduction

This book argues that public funding for art and culture is critically important, because a sustained, strategic approach to cultural investment pays big dividends in all our lives.

I understand that words such as ‘investment’ and ‘dividends’ might be dismissed as economic rather than creative terms. Where’s the art in all this? The point I’ll make is that these dividends flow only when the art excels. While there will always be healthy debate about what quality means within the artistic community, the public tend to know straightaway when they are being fobbed off with anything less than the real deal. To my mind, if you want truly popular, memorable and resonant art, it has to be the best.

Before I joined the Arts Council, I spent fifteen years leading the UK’s biggest classical music radio station, Classic FM, bringing some of the greatest works of art to a mass-market audience – so I have never understood the distinction some make between ‘great’ and ‘popular’. There are works of art that are ahead of their time, but few artists have ever striven not to be seen, or to have their work leave people untouched. The greatest art is the most human. Given time it will always find its audience.

That doesn’t mean that all art will be equally popular in every public constituency. Taste, custom and history – elements intrinsic to the richness of our national culture – must be taken into account, and these are every bit as influential as the aesthetic traditions of an art form. The actor, playwright and director Kwame Kwei-Armah says that theatre, for example, is a ‘catalyst for debate about the big themes’ in society. And I reckon he’s right.

Artists must be able to challenge preconceptions, to think differently and freely, to imagine new possibilities, and to create great art in new ways. Imagination is vital to creativity: if we can draw on our experiences to call up an image of the world in our consciousness, we can create an environment ripe for experimentation. For me, the words of the poet Lemn Sissay capture this beautifully:

We turn to art and creativity because it is the greatest and truest expression of humanity available to all. And all things are possible in the eye of the creative mind. To be more is first to imagine more.1

It’s only by encouraging the diversity of individual artistic perspectives that we can ensure we are reflecting the lives, loves and interests of audiences – that everyone is getting the best. From a funding perspective, what matters is that we support talent and champion ambition, imagination, innovation and risk. These values are integral to creativity. We must not dilute them.

Great art changes people’s lives. I’d like all our museums, our libraries, our artists and our arts venues to be genuinely popular – to be a part of the lives of all their communities, so that everyone in England can enjoy the Arts Dividend and have their lives enhanced, no matter who they are, or where they live.

Over the past ten years, as I’ve travelled the length and breadth of England, I’ve come to know and understand how our creative ecology works, and I believe we’re on the way to realising a vision in which everyone everywhere can have equal access to the best performances, exhibitions and artistic events close to where they live. But while we have identified our desired destination and are moving towards it, there remains a long way to go.

Across England I’ve visited exciting new venues, many of which have been helped into being through major capital investments made by Arts Council England and using taxpayers’ and National Lottery funds: among them, Storyhouse – the library, theatre and cinema in Chester; Shakespeare North Playhouse – a theatre that has sparked regeneration in the heart of Prescot; and The Box – the gallery, archive and museum in Plymouth.

I’ve seen works of ambition and innovation: from exhibitions of new art at Nottingham Contemporary to the technology embraced by the creative community at Pervasive Media Studio at Watershed in Bristol; from work presented by young people at Burnley Youth Theatre to the terrific writing, acting and production values of The Children’s Inquiry, created by Helen Monks and Matt Woodhead from the wonderful Barnsley-based Lung Theatre.

Everywhere you go in England, you’ll find brilliant art breaking out in unexpected places, with traditional art forms being presented in daring and innovative ways by highly creative professional performers, producers and directors. Take opera as an example: I was at Leeds Grand Theatre for Opera North’s stunning productions of Puccini’s Tosca in 2023, and Mozart’s Magic Flute in 2024. Fully staged, both occasions were utterly magnificent. New generations of audiences are discovering opera presented at this scale, with our major opera companies continuing to create and innovate across England with new commissions and new versions of much loved favourites. I absolutely loved an intimate performance, just as artistically excellent but much smaller in size, of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman at the Invisible Wind Factory in Liverpool, produced by Southampton-based OperaUpClose in partnership with musicians from Manchester Camerata. I caught an excellent performance of Windrush: The Journey playing to an extremely appreciative audience at the Bristol Beacon. Showcasing a rich tapestry of music and storytelling, and celebrating Black classical composers of the past, present and future, the production was created by Pegasus Opera Company, whose mission specifically champions under-represented voices in opera. And who could have failed to have been completely blown away by Birmingham Opera Company performing Tippett’s dystopian New Year with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Alpesh Chauhan in a big top pitched on a car park in Birmingham city centre? The audience was free to move around the tent during the performance, with the action happening all around us. Truly, this was Birmingham Opera Company living up to the creative ideals of its founder, the late Sir Graham Vick, and to its tagline: ‘Not what you expect from opera’.

The best of innovation and the best of tradition thrive alongside each other in a consistent celebration of all that is best about our national culture, whether that’s the remarkable BBC Proms concerts in consecutive years by the Aurora Orchestra conducted by Nicholas Collon, when the musicians performed Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony completely from memory; James Graham’s powerfully devastating play Punch directed by Adam Penford at Nottingham Playhouse; the internationally successful Black Sabbath – The Ballet commissioned by Carlos Acosta at Birmingham Royal Ballet; or the stunning 2023 Turner Prize show at the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne.

These are just a few of the many events and places that I have experienced for myself over recent years – and I am able to take in only a fraction of what’s on offer – every day. Put together, they make up a wonderfully interconnected cultural ecology that extends across our villages, towns and cities. And, separately, each of them also shows the value of public investment in arts and culture.

Eighty Years of Public Investment

In 2026, the Arts Council will mark the eightieth anniversary of the granting of its first Royal Charter. Created at around the same time as the National Health Service, during a period of post-war renewal, it grew from the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA), which was set up in 1940 with the aim of supporting Britain’s culture as part of the war effort. The driving force behind the creation of the Arts Council, and its first chairman, was the economist John Maynard Keynes.

It is salutary to note that it was an economist, rather than an artist, we have to thank for the body that provides public investment in creative work. Keynes was a passionate believer in the arts. He collected paintings and regularly attended the opera, ballet and theatre. More than half a century ago, he recognised the value that arts and culture bring to our lives.

In a 1945 BBC Radio talk announcing the Arts Council’s establishment, Keynes underlined the importance of creative freedom for the artist who

walks where the spirit blows him. He cannot be told his direction; he does not know it himself. But he leads the rest of us into fresh pastures and teaches us to love and enjoy what we often begin by rejecting, enlarging our sensibility and purifying our instincts.2

Keynes was the architect of the Arts Council’s Royal Charter, although he died shortly before it was ratified. The Arts Council was funded with a grant from the Treasury and set up to work at arm’s length from the government. That principle is still upheld today. In addition to government funding (known as ‘grant in aid’), since 1994 the Arts Council has also distributed National Lottery Good Causes funding to arts and culture activities across England.

Decades after its establishment, the Arts Council, alongside the NHS and the BBC, is still serving the public. When the Conservative MP Jesse Norman set out his vision for a ‘Big Society’ back in 2010, he noted that it was those institutions we all share that ‘shape us as we shape them’.3

In his first speech in the job in 2017, Sir Nicholas Serota, the current chair of Arts Council England (and one of Keynes’s successors), argued that culture and creativity should be on offer to everyone in twenty-firstcentury England:

An encounter with art and culture can be a catalyst for change in all our lives. I believe that it is through having, and sharing, these experiences that we become stronger, as individuals and as communities, and become a fairer nation. Public investment in our arts, our museums and our libraries, is investment in a shared cultural language, with many different voices and accents. I want that language to be available to everyone.4

Things have changed since the days of Keynes. Back in the 1940s, there could sometimes appear to be a lofty separation between artists and the rest of the population, and politicians and funding organisations took a rather patrician view of audiences, who were offered what the establishment thought was good for them, rather than what they might actually want.

In the past, the art that was widely considered to be great was largely kept away from the population, as if locked up in a cupboard: too remote or expensive or exclusive to be accessed. In the twenty-first century we are blowing the doors off that cupboard. The riches are available for everybody to enjoy, and the Arts Council puts the needs of the public at the centre of its thinking. Art, culture and creativity are no longer a luxury, remote from everyday life; rather, they are an essential part of it.

From ‘Making the Case’ to ‘Making a Difference’

If you’ve read this far, you are more than likely interested in this subject already. Perhaps you work in a museum, a gallery or a library. Maybe you are a teacher, or someone involved in political decision-making around the arts at a local or national level. You might be a performer, a writer, a producer, a curator or a librarian. Or you could be part of my favourite group of all: an audience member, a reader, a viewer or a listener, somebody who pays their taxes or who plays the National Lottery and so has a personal stake as an investor in our national cultural infrastructure.

But I hope, too, that this book will be a useful read for those who are not directly part of this cultural world and who, perhaps, are yet to be convinced of the significance of art and culture – and why it’s so important that we continue to invest in these areas of our lives.

Those of us who work closely with libraries, museums, arts organisations and individual artists see the benefits day in and day out. It’s our responsibility to make the case for the value of the arts – and for public investment – to the widest possible audience. And we need to get that argument across in ways that make sense.

We can do this most powerfully by showing how public investment in artists, arts organisations, museums and libraries makes a huge difference, not only to the major cities that are most often talked about, but to every part of the country – to the communal lives of villages, towns and cities everywhere.

Thinking about how we can encourage culture and creativity in less obvious places is a preoccupation of mine, and I am always excited when I visit towns that might not be regarded as conventional tourist hotspots – and discover great cultural riches. So, I was thrilled to walk around a corner in the Huddersfield Art Gallery to see a Henry Moore sculpture, slap bang next to paintings by L. S. Lowry and Francis Bacon. And when I visited the Higgins Museum in Bedford and the Harris Museum in Preston, I was excited by the breadth of the artistic riches on show and the obvious pride that people who live there have in the museums and collections.

Big cities such as Manchester, Newcastle, Liverpool, Leeds, Bristol and Birmingham are surrounded by smaller towns and cities that might not be so well known but still have great civic pride: places including Barnsley, Blackburn, Bridgwater, Darlington, Middlesbrough, St Helens, Wakefield, Wigan and Wolverhampton. The people who live, work and study in these places deserve to reap the benefits of creativity and culture in their areas. In the past, many of them have been overlooked, but I believe firmly that the time has come to redress that balance, and to do so in a sustained and strategic way, making investments that deliver long-term change. Many of these towns have a proud heritage of innovation and creativity that is crying out to be rekindled. During my travels around the country, it’s been exhilarating to walk the streets of such places and see how artists, arts organisations, museums and libraries share a genuine ambition to make art and culture a part of local life, and how they are working to reignite the spark of creativity that can help reimagine and regenerate their towns.

You can find the same inspirational message in the towns that dot our coastline, whether you’re in Bournemouth or Hastings, Blyth or Scarborough, Great Yarmouth or Grimsby, Ventnor or Watchet. And it’s important to remember the role that artists, arts organisations, museums and libraries can play in counties with big rural areas, such as Northumberland, Lincolnshire, Cumbria, Cornwall, Herefordshire and Dorset. The population in these parts of England may be dispersed, but the people who live there have just as much right as those who live in big cities to benefit from the opportunities that individual creativity and high-quality culture bring.

The reanimation of England’s towns is a central theme of Lisa Nandy’s book All In: How We Build a Country That Works, published in 2022 while she was shadow secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities. When Labour came to power in 2024, she was appointed secretary of state for culture, media and sport. In her book, she highlights the importance of arts and culture to people in towns across the country, noting that ‘people no longer saw themselves or their communities reflected in the national story’5 and issuing a challenge to funding bodies such as the Arts Council to do more to ensure that decision-making happens closer to where people live, and to invest more in culture that is reflective of those places.

When I joined the Arts Council in 2015, I vowed to make sure that my life didn’t consist solely of sitting behind a desk in London. Instead, I set out to spend around half of my working hours outside the capital. Ten years on, I’ve kept my promise, visiting all the places I’ve just listed, and many more besides. After eighteen months in the job, I stopped counting the places that I’d been to. By then, my tally had reached 157 different villages, towns and cities around England. In fact, I suspect that I’ve seen more artistic performances and exhibitions, visited more cultural organisations, and met more artists and arts groups on their home turf than anyone else in England during the past decade. Doing the job that I do, that’s exactly as it should be – and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Although I’ve now stopped keeping count of all the places I’ve been to, I haven’t stopped travelling, observing and learning. And I don’t intend to any time soon. During my non-stop journey, I’ve seen and heard for myself the benefits of creativity and culture in people’s lives. Over the coming pages, alongside anecdotal observations from my travels, I will reference some of the mass of research showing the value of investment in art and culture. But I should stress that this book has no academic pretensions. It remains for the general reader, whether they work in the arts or not. I hope that I can help you share my excitement about the immense value of the arts, museums, libraries and creativity, and if you see this value, I hope you’ll join us to make the case for public investment. And once that case has been made, those of us who work in the arts or in museums or libraries will have to follow through and prove it in practice, ensuring that our artistic and cultural riches are shared with all parts of society.

Making this happen requires foresight, sensitivity to the needs of communities, and an understanding of how talent develops. But if we plant and protect the acorns of artistic ambition, these will in time grow into magnificent oaks. This process takes patience, care and sustained investment. Everywhere I’ve gone, I’ve seen that public investment is paying dividends – and those dividends will only grow in the years to come. It will not surprise you to learn that I strongly believe that more public investment in artists, arts organisations, museums and libraries will yield greater benefits, more quickly, for more people, in more places. There are so many life-changing creative opportunities just waiting to be unleashed.

It’s Not Subsidy

Art and culture in Britain is funded by a network of public and private investment, including local authorities, central government, the National Lottery, higher-education institutions, philanthropists, business sponsors, charitable foundations and the ticket-, book- or artwork-purchasing public. It’s a structure that has evolved over a long period of time, and everyone participates because it works for them, one way or another. In fact, it has helped shape the variety that’s a characteristic of our national culture.

Let me be clear, though: these funders do not ‘subsidise’ the arts. It’s never a one-sided transaction in which one party gives for no return; there is always a return, though it may not be immediately obvious or even accrue to the original benefactor, and they may not expect it to. The return may be in terms of the artistic experience, or the support of creativity and talent. Or there may be a clear economic payback, the promotion of a company’s commercial interests, or an interest in supporting the life of a community.

But there’s no subsidy. Personally, I cannot abide the term. The Arts Council doesn’t use public money to subsidise art and culture. It invests public money for the benefit of all the public. In the pages that follow, I’ll be showing how that works. And I guarantee that, in the rest of this book, you won’t see the word ‘subsidy’ again.

The Political Argument

In 1964, Harold Wilson appointed Jennie Lee to the role of the UK’s first arts minister. She built on the work of Keynes, penning a visionary White Paper in 1965 entitled ‘A Policy for the Arts: The First Steps’. The publication of the third edition of The Arts Dividend that you have in your hands right now coincides with the sixtieth anniversary of Lee’s groundbreaking work. It contained an unequivocal recognition of the value of art and culture:

In any civilised community the arts and associated amenities, serious or comic, light or demanding, must occupy a central place. Their enjoyment should not be regarded as something remote from everyday life.6

Let’s travel forward into our own century, and a speech in early 2024 by the then leader of the opposition, Sir Keir Starmer, shortly before he gained the keys to 10 Downing Street. He was speaking at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he had studied the flute for six years as a schoolboy. He told the audience of creative and cultural industry workers about his belief in the power of what they did for a living:

It’s not just nice to have. It’s essential – for our economic growth as well as our personal growth, who we are. Because 2.4 million people work in the creative industry. It’s worth £125 billion – and growing fast. The UK is one of only three net exporters of music. We have the second largest art market on the planet. Only the US exports more advertising than us. And that’s not the only thing we lead on – nobody exports more books than we do. When I meet international leaders, I know I am standing on the shoulders of our cultural reputation. Our music, films, games, fashion, literature . . . What we make and produce is known and loved in every corner of the globe. You’re not just important to Brand Britain – you are Brand Britain. Attracting major foreign investment from companies all over the world who recognise and value British talent.7

Investing in Everyone’s Passions

Art is often, quite rightly, political. Long before a formal arts-funding structure was put in place at the end of the Second World War, artists used their work to espouse viewpoints contrary to those of the government of the day. The creative freedom of artists is of paramount importance. It’s one of the reasons it’s so important for the Arts Council to operate at arm’s length from the government. Different people have different views – that’s the beauty of living in a liberal democracy. People certainly have different artistic tastes. Now, I am personally very passionate about the paintings of cattle by the Victorian artist Thomas Sidney Cooper (1803–1902), even going so far as to write a dissertation on his oeuvre for a master’s degree in history of art. I always experience a frisson of excitement when I visit one of our many museums around the country that hold his works in their collections. He was a prolific artist (the most exhibited Royal Academician of all time, due to his long life), so his pictures are to be found hanging on many gallery walls. However, I do realise that his paintings of cows and sheep may not be everyone else’s cup of tea. So, I welcome the fact that different people will have different artistic passions across different art forms. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I revel in celebrating those different perspectives. It’s one of the joyous things that I have come to realise about doing the job that I do.

Every day, I engage with people who are passionate about art. Sometimes, their passion might be about a particular art form; on other occasions it will be a subgenre that excites them; often it is a single artist or artistic company or venue that is the focus of their intense fervour. You could say that our job at Arts Council England as custodians of public money is to make investment decisions that reflect the passions of as many people in as many places as possible. Often these passions are in direct contradiction with each other, with some believing that their art form is hierarchically more important than others. But while a passionate defence of one’s own art form is to be expected, and even applauded, I have no time for the argument that one art form is intrinsically more valuable than another, and certainly this is not a position anyone working at the Arts Council can or should take. We must balance a finite financial budget in support of artists, arts organisations, museums and libraries across all art forms, at all scales, in all parts of the country. As you might imagine, this leads to healthy and detailed debate. Keeping everyone happy all the time is an impossible task. But, in the end, it’s why I’m personally so passionate about the extending of the Arts Council’s investment into new organisations and communities. To fully reap the Creativity Dividend, I believe we have to invest in the broadest range of art and culture possible.

I believe that one of our jobs at the Arts Council is to try to make sure that everyone is afforded the opportunity to develop their own personal creativity, no matter who they are or where they live. Everybody has a creative potential that they can realise if offered the right opportunities. I reckon that achieving this potential can help each of us to lead a happier and more fulfilled life. So when I describe investing in everyone’s passions here, I believe that this should include giving everyone creative opportunities at all stages of their life. To be clear, we exist to support creative professionals to make excellent work across all art forms, as well as to invest in nurturing future generations of professional artists and performers. Encouraging everybody’s personal creativity is not an alternative to that. Nor is it a replacement for investment that enables audiences to experience the widest range of high-quality professionally produced culture close to where they live. Rather, it is a complementary aim.

Just like the population at large, politicians from different parties (or artists, for that matter) might not always agree on what constitutes great art and culture, nor on what the role of art and culture in society should be. Despite that, over the years there has been a surprising degree of political consensus about its fundamental value. Nonetheless, when budgets have come under pressure at a national and local level, there has been a tendency for the arts, museums and libraries to be viewed as ‘nice to have’, rather than a necessity. Hearing the words of Sir Keir Starmer at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, or of the Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey, who believes that our cultural and creative industries are vital for our economic growth, arguing that ‘they are not just about wealth creation, they are also about enriching our everyday lives’,8 I do hope that the recognition of the value of culture in all our lives is changing for the better. The work of artists, arts organisations, museums and libraries is not an optional luxury. Instead, it is an essential part of life in thriving communities – and a significant catalyst for positive change and growth. When he was arts minister, the Conservative peer Lord Stephen Parkinson neatly encapsulated this when he described his role as ensuring ‘that everyone can enjoy the life-changing benefits of the arts – and play their full part in enriching the cultural life of our nation’.9

In this book, I argue that any reduction in investment will undermine this essential work in places where it is most needed, and that any increase will reap returns many times over. This is important both at national and local funding levels. Local authorities have a crucial job to do in building and supporting the cultural ecology and physical infrastructure. They are the Arts Council’s major funding partners, and the withdrawal of their support leaves a hole in funding that cannot be filled.

Even at times when funding is tight – and it has been tight for councils across England since the global financial crisis of 2008 ushered in more than a decade and a half of austerity – the most effective local authority leaders and chief executives are working alongside the Arts Council and other national funding bodies to ensure that arts and culture continue to be a part of their core strategy, bringing creative energy and vigour to their communities. It’s what makes them great places to live, work and do business.

Ideally, I’d like to see an even closer relationship between national and local government and the practitioners of arts and culture. I believe that artists, arts organisations, museums, libraries and our commercial creative industries should have a valued place in the process of policy and decision-making in Whitehall – and in town halls, city halls and county halls.

Investing in the Next Generation

The UK’s status as a creative nation is sometimes better recognised abroad than at home, though in recent years there has been a greater understanding of the economic value of the creative industries to ‘UK plc’. Our future success depends on a sustained supply of national talent. We need to identify, nurture and develop this talent from an early age.

So, providing children and young people with the highest-quality cultural education is vitally important. Every child should be able to enjoy great art and culture for its own sake. School subjects such as art and design, dance, drama and music should not be seen as entertaining optional extras. They give young people knowledge and skills that will help them build careers that are creatively and economically valuable. As the arts minister, Sir Chris Bryant, says:

The single most important thing you can do is make sure that every single child in every school in Britain, whether they’re at a private school or a public school, has a proper creative education. By which I mean art, drama, music; the whole panoply of the arts. That is the way that you get people going through into careers in the creative industries.10

Some will go on to study at our excellent network of conservatoires or specialist arts universities and will work in the cultural sector or creative industries. Others will pursue a broad range of subjects in further- or higher-education institutions – but they will do so as more rounded and confident human beings, trained to think creatively, because art and culture has been a strong part of their education.

Outside the classroom, children and young people should have the opportunity to enrich their lives via the performing arts, museums, galleries and libraries. They should take part in creating new art and culture, and they should be encouraged to experience the very best that is on offer. These opportunities should be the same for all children, no matter where they begin in life. Every child, whoever they are and wherever they live, should have the chance to realise their talent. They should not be disadvantaged by the colour of their skin, their religion or beliefs, their family background, gender, sexuality, disabilities, or social class. During her husband’s time at the White House, the USA’s former first lady, Michelle Obama, made it one of her priorities to improve cultural education for those from poorer socio-economic backgrounds:

Arts education is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. It’s really the air many of these kids breathe. It’s how we get kids excited about getting up and going to school in the morning. It’s how we get them to take ownership of their future.11

We need talent, of every sort. And to get it, we will have to break down the barriers that block creative young people from flourishing and build bridges that allow their talent to proceed and succeed. Here in England, cultural organisations are playing their part in consciously deciding to help make this happen. Sally Shaw, the director of Colchester’s Firstsite gallery, has introduced a wide-ranging programme of ‘Holiday Fun’ for children when schools break up over the summer. It meaningfully connects the youngsters both with the visual arts as an art form, and with the gallery as a physical space in the centre of their town. In the same vein, I visited a primary school in Skegness along with the Royal Shakespeare Company’s chair, Baroness Shriti Vadera, to experience their superb education programme, which takes Shakespeare to a network of schools across the country. Over the past two decades, the RSC’s director of learning and engagement, Jacqui O’Hanlon, has honed the company’s offer to schools to create an often life-changing experience for primary, secondary and special-education-needs pupils that sees them immersed in performing the Bard’s greatest works.

These major programmes aren’t just happening in the visual and performing arts. The National Literacy Trust’s Connecting Stories campaign is an Arts Council-funded project that aims to increase young people’s access to books and literary experiences in communities where levels of reading for pleasure are traditionally low. It has already reached more than 200,000 youngsters in fourteen areas across England through a variety of online and in-person events. I saw Connecting Stories in action in Stoke-on-Trent. Hearing first-hand the love of reading that had been sparked among young children and their families was a joy to behold. With greater investment, high-quality programmes such as these could reach further, faster.

I shall talk about this development of the next generation of creative talent in detail in Chapters 1 and 2, because it is so important. It should be a priority for those who care about the future of art and culture in this country.

Art is Valuable in Itself

It’s important to underline that there is a multitude of intrinsic benefits that come from being surrounded by quality artistic and cultural events and experiences – and from simply being involved in the process of creating something. Paintings, sculptures, photographs, dance, drama, music, literature, films, poetry, carnivals, parades, crafts, digitally created art – all of these bring profound pleasure, on an individual and collective level.

Great art can transport us to a different place. It can take us from the mundane realities of life to a new world. It can fire our imagination and show us the possibilities of other lives, other places – even other galaxies. It can lead us to question ideas and challenge our own assumptions.

For me, the best art is, above all, provocative. It always gets my attention – and a strong reaction: I love it, I dislike it, it perplexes me, or it shocks me. It stimulates an emotional response.

This book talks about the Arts Dividend – the great benefits art and culture confer on our society. But art that cannot be enjoyed for its own sake is scarcely likely to have much of an impact in other ways. So we must always celebrate the intrinsic value of art as a human, emotional, thoughtful, transformative experience. That experience is more than enough reason for investing in art and culture. But it’s not the only reason.

Artistic and cultural activities can produce a wide variety of outcomes, beyond their purely intrinsic value. This adds to the excitement and relevance of the art. For some great artists, it’s an inspiration. As the sculptor Sir Antony Gormley (creator of the Angel of the North) put it:

Maybe this is a utopian view of art but I do believe that art can function as a vehicle, that it isn’t just a cultural pursuit, something that happens in art galleries. Unless art is linked to experience and the fear and joy of that, it becomes mere icing on the cake.

If you like, art can be used as a tool to secure a beneficial outcome – it is ‘instrumental’. For me, there doesn’t have to be a choice between instrumental and intrinsic benefits. I’d