I am determined not to let other deadlines prevent the regular production of this newsletter. I have been enjoying the requirements of rhythm, rather than the ‘as and when’ to which I have retreated previously. I am a great believer in the efficacy of a regular beat at work. If a team has started to lose touch with each other, or is failing to bring its experiences together, often the first thing I suggest is establishing a meeting/output rhythm, whatever it is. Even short contact regularly builds the connective tissues and collaborative muscles, and aids communications.
This newsletter is my weekly team meeting with myself, so although I’m briefly as busy as Jack the Juggler in a Plate-Spinning competition when someone throws them a unicycle and shouts “Have a nice sit down then”, here we are. Thanks for reading.
Policy thinking
I was talking last week of the need for new cultural policy. The following days brought not one but two different sets of thinking on that subject.
The What’s Next? network published its ‘10 policy principles for the future of arts and heritage’, reflecting ideas from the sector and the What Next? leadership group. Overall this a good set of principles, focused on the cultural ecology, ability to trade in Europe, education and training, freelancer working conditions, climate justice and developing a sector that reflects the lived experiences and heritage of the UK.
The principle I would debate further is the one placed first, as if most important: ‘Decisions on arts funding to be taken at arms-length and be removed from central political ideology’. Distanced as I want to be from the gang currently in power, how does one properly disconnect non-statutory government funding from government policy or thinking? On what basis? And how does this principle apply to local or devolved government?
The arm’s length principle means governments should not influence individual decisions, but I’m not sure one can make the case to politicians to be removed from their overall direction without creating a significant democratic deficit. And democratic deficits, we know, undermine public confidence.
If a democratically elected government gives a steer that – say - it wants funding spread more equitably, rather than concentrated in one place or group, that does not seem to me necessarily in contravention of the arm’s length principle. (Also, if there is a place without ideology, please send travel details/visa requirements.)
Interestingly, Arts Council England’s recent and critical Inclusion Review (worth a post in its own right when I have time) highlights how deep the different interpretations of the arm’s length principle run. It concludes inter alia that “staff, including leaders, do not consistently understand the tensions and limitations of an arm’s-length body.”
As the report explains, “The Arts Council … is part of government but has some independence in certain elements of its operations. This both empowers and constrains the organisation and its leaders as it pursues equality, diversity, and inclusion. Sector-oriented arm’s-length bodies, such as the Arts Council, face specific pressures in balancing their government and sector positions. Many staff colleagues do not understand this balance well. Staff colleagues’ self-perceptions complicate this. Staff colleagues repeatedly presented themselves as part of the creative and cultural sector first and government second (if at all).” This is challenging but important.
The second outbreak of policy was in Liverpool at the Labour Party conference. Shadow Culture Secretary Thangam Debbonaire floated a range of ideas, built around developing a National Culture Infrastructure Plan. This would include a map that would, she said, help local leaders be “better able to spot cultural spaces at risk and opportunities for investment and development.”
There were also welcome commitments around arts in education and a visa waiver system for artists working in Europe. I’d also push for a waiver for incoming artists, so that fewer international artists are refused visas to visit the UK, especially those from Africa who experience disproportionate exclusions and what one musician called “ritual humiliations”.
Thangam Debbonaire’s speech and her interview for The Art Newspaper were promising. What I did not hear was a commitment to properly funding the cultural sector, beginning with an increase in Treasury funding for creativity– nor was this a key principle in the What next? list, though it is arguably implicit. I understand why – asking for more now feels impossible, clumsy, entitled even. But…
A map is beguiling, yet of little use if I can’t afford to recharge or fill up the car, or catch a train or bus. Increasingly I hear that the root issue of many issues in and for the sector is that there is not enough money in the cultural ecosystem to stop the system failing, as audiences falter and local authorities shrink and wobble. We need to improve the sector by diversifying who is funded and who is involved in decision-making, but we need at least parts of the current landscape to stay healthy while we do that.
The radical (i.e. related to root causes) need is now horribly simple: more funding. The ask therefore requires not just principles – which politicians can plunder for fine words with which to butter their parsnips regardless of actual policies - but a case for investment, public funding for public good.
Celebrating Age
I will write more next week about Equal Arts’ National Conference on Creative Aging, at which I spoke last Tuesday about the Arts Council England/Baring Foundation collaboration Celebrating Age. It was a great day, and the brilliant poet Jackie Kaye made me cry, but I’ll say more next week.
Meanwhile you can read the publication about Celebrating Age which Baring Foundation have published. This includes the Executive Summary of the evaluation I worked on with Imogen Blood and Lorna Easterbrook, alongside a real wealth of case study insight by David Cutler of the Baring Foundation.
Tactics Tomato
In another trailer-cum-commitment, I will be writing soon about Northern Soul And What It Taught Me About Culture, inspired by the 50th anniversary of Wigan Casino. Maybe in a fortnight. Meanwhile here’s a rather upbeat set of some favourites I use when I need to keep on keeping on, at pace.
Always a pleasure Mark. As we all know, anything that claims to be ideology-free is almost always just reinforcing the status quo. VISA denied.
I am enjoying your newsletter very much. Ideas and comments that promote thinking.