A week on
Culture and national missions
Introductory apologies
It’s been quiet here due to a combination of work peaks and life/family factors. I will get the newsletter running regularly in September, after a break in the summer. But I wanted to mark the events of last week (not the football…) and reassure you I’m still here and practicing thinking.
Taking a breath
A new dawn
Here we are a week into having a Labour government again. As a long-memoried man who recalls the excitement of 1997, and the rather horrible comedown after it, it’s felt good that no one, including the government is getting carried away about overnight transformations. And overall, it’s simply felt good.
There has not been an overnight transformation as a result of having a cabinet full of people who though not perfect are at least serious in a way the last lost were clearly not. We’ll each no doubt be disappointed by different things they do or don’t do, maybe already are, but it feels good to have a cabinet that reflects the country, more than 9 out of 10 of the state-educated – more people from Sunderland than old Etonians. People who worked in the charity and social sectors, not investment banking and hedge fund gambling. It feels like the air is clearer, as after a storm, and you can take a breath before starting to repair the damage.
For those working in culture and the arts, the welcome appointment of a new Culture Secretary with a sense of how culture and creativity benefit communities as well as or more precisely including artists and audiences, Lisa Nandy, and the chance to put our shoulder to the wheel in that process of national renewal is a really important opportunity.
We know that the challenges are great. So many things in the UK have fallen into disrepair and peril – from our rivers – “no single stretch of river in England or Northern Ireland is in good overall health”, to our pot-holed roads, from our railways to our increasingly financially fragile cultural organisations. (All of which connect to the global issues of climate emergency, war, genocide, persecution and involuntary migration.)
The case for culture to play its part
So making the case for investment into culture – so obviously needed after a decade and a half of austerity – and for supportive policy changes in employment, education and planning will require culture to be more firmly built into those challenges and debates, without losing the specific nature of how culture works. It was a bit depressing to see the opera lobby react to Darren Henley’s first blog on how ACE will work with the new government to contribute to the five national missions of renewal with “Yes but what about excellence, we don’t work for the government…” (Rough summary!)
Instrumentalism is clearly something to be cautious of, and used appropriately. Instrumental creep – unpaid social work for which artists are sometimes neither rewarded nor supported - has increased in recent years. But the civic role of the arts, often working in partnership with universities, local authorities and mayoral authorities has also been embedded.
Marginalised
But how much has it been embedded in the national conversation, and on what terms? And where ought we be looking?
A report last year from Carnegie UK and Ipsos showed the impact on the collective wellbeing of people living across the UK. It found that there are large disparities in well-being, with (unsurprisingly) people living in more deprived areas, or with lower incomes and more precarious housing situations, experiencing lower collective wellbeing. Younger people had lower levels of collective well-being than older people. The thing that united most people was a sense of democratic ill health, reflecting a widespread lack of trust in institutions. (Hence, arguably, some of the patterns in last week’s elections.)
Unfortunately there is little presence of culture, arts or heritage in the questions asked to determine levels of collective well-being. The ability to “afford to socialise with friends or family outside of the home once a month if desired” and satisfaction with the quality of public, green or open space are as close as I can see.
In some other recent publications beyond the cultural sector aimed at informing or influencing the next government, one can see aspects of the cultural offer.
Last year I worked with Local Trust to look at their work with Big Locals – a powerful example of devolution of funding and strategy to groups of local people. Local Trust’s A New Neighbourhoods Policy emphasises the agency that flows from the connectedness of people:
“A neighbourhood is not one single thing. It is a collection of small things: schools, parks, libraries and leisure centres. All of these can be improved with central funding, and thoughtful national policies. More often, though, the defining factor in lasting regeneration is not what happens in Whitehall, but what happens in the community hall. The forces of progress – better housing, transport, education and jobs – are all predicated on local agency: community groups, neighbourhood associations and civic leaders who can take advantage of the support the state provides.
Education
The Cultural Learning Alliance straddles culture and learning and their recent Report Card pains a daunting picture of how creativity has come to be seen within schools and the curriculum (albeit against many people’s better judgement of course):
an overall decline of 42% in the number of Arts GCSE entries since 2010, with (for example 42% of schools no longer enter any pupils for Music CSE, 41% of schools no longer enter any pupils for Drama GCSE and a gobsmacking 84% entering no pupils for Dance GCSE. There has been a corresponding shrinkage in the teachers in arts subjects – worrying because those creative individuals often play other roles locally in arts networks, and those roles support creative livelihoods: for example, teacher recruitment in Music has fallen by 56%.
Events
There are some positive signs, however. Spirit of 2012 recently published a report commissioned from Warwick Business School to look at how to create greater legacy from major events and from events at all levels across the UK that arguably form an ecosystem of events.
The report’s title summarises the argument (as all good titles do): Creating The Golden Thread. It suggest a shared vision of an inclusive progressive and confident UK’ and the adoption of a common evaluation framework that includes economic value alongside social and cultural value, and health and wellbeing in a way that might satisfy anyone not yet ready to let go of tired and discredited excellence/access, artists/usefulness binaries. It also seeks to build in the stability and development of the event sector and environmental sustainability, conscious of some of the recent major events’ impact on sustainability locally.
I especially like the description of the ecosystem approach for delivery of the national ambition, which conceivably enables the many different players to realise their roles and interconnectivities, from local communities to government departments.
Spirit of 2012 have also, alongside this report, publishing a report into the feasibility of an Events Data Observatory, which it believes would help “moving from evidencing the impact of singular events in isolation, to displaying the connected, long-lasting and contingent value of events as an ecosystem”
Rearticulating the role
All of these dots on the radar back the argument made by Justin O’Connor in his new book “Culture Is Not An Industry” that “culture, as an object of public policy, should be moved out of “industry” and back into the sphere of public responsibility alongside health, education, social welfare and basic infrastructure.”
This means moving beyond the simply economic, or the bluntly instrumental, or the (possibly) charming object of charity to a sector central to our ideas of something collective – a neighbourhood, a city, a nation even.
To do this the main thing we need to first is to pause before making an ask, and check what offer we can make. How do the “local, adaptive, experimental” activities of the cultural sector (including but not restricted to those parts could be described as industries) inform the five national missions of our government?
I think “Culture Is Not An Industry” could lead to some new, more effective answers, and want to return to it in more depth next time. (I seem to have written myself into writing some more: that’s how it works I guess…)
Meanwhile, take a breath. Here. Here we go. Here we go on.
As always - insightful. Sadly the new Westminster Govt’s positive messages for culture are not having much impact in Scotland. Not so distant future looking grim - a crisis coming.