News focus
NCA conference hears robust rallying cry, but also recession warnings

Although the arts must prepare for recession and inevitable funding cuts in the next year, “now is our moment”, said Melvyn Bragg in his capacity as president of the National Campaign for the Arts.

Speaking at the NCA’s conference Future Britain: arts leading the way, Lord Bragg said culture constituted the biggest single sector in the economy in terms of employment, and its importance should be championed.

The arts, He said, are critical to the development of the UK’s economy, and that by 2013 predictions suggested they would contribute as much as £85 billion a year in added value. Now as the time for every arts organisation to be on the front foot, asking how the arts could be ore-proactive.

His keynote rallying cry, made at the conference organised to launch the NCA’s new arts manifesto, came after speakers had warned that that the “phoney recession” would give way to real hardship, but that preparation could help ameliorate the effects.

Ed Vaizey, the shadow arts minister, said that he would find it difficult to make a case for cuts to arts subsidy to the Treasury because for such a relatively small amount of the money, the damage to the infrastructure and the bas political backlash would be disproportionate.

But Dame Joan Bakewell, chairman of the NCA, said that ten years of sustained funding for the arts was now under threat. “Any incoming government is going to have to make cuts” she said. “It’s not about money on the table anymore, it’s about what the arts can do for our country”.

Tony Hall, chief executive of the Royal Opera House, said the credit crunch had actually been good for the arts so far, allowing organisations to “demonstrate how good the arts are for us”. But fund-raising was gradually diminishing, though individual giving was increasing. Warning that we may be in for ten years of reduced funding, he said arts organisations should be finding new ways of developing audiences, using new communications media such as Face book.

So the message was that there needs to be more partnership – arts minister Barbara Follett said that many small arts organisations were doing similar work and should work in tandem to cut costs and increase effect – and not to let national and local government off the hook with subsidy.

Munira Mirza, director of arts for the mayor of London, said it would even be helpful if arts organisations made their own suggestions of where costs could be saved.

But politicians must be kept engaged, warned Arts & Business head of arts Verity Haines, because if subsidy went, so would private support, “overnight”. “It is the private sector that will recover first from this recession,” she said. . Businesses will be looking to cultural solutions; individuals will be looking to support dynamic artists and cultural bodies. The private sector holds the cards for many in the cultural sector”.

But audiences need to be consolidated, said Alan Davey, ACE’S CEO. “We need to be very confident and bold about the arts’ place in civil society” he said. “There’s a thirst for knowledge an understanding which we need to harness.”