State of the Arts conference
Message of optimism to arts, despite promises of cuts from Tories and Labour
Both the current culture secretary and, many believe, the next one warned of cuts to the arts subsidy post-election at the recent Royal Society of Arts/Arts Council conference State of the Arts, though the news was given in an atmosphere of enthusiasm conjured by the ACE chairman Liz Forgan.
“After repeating the message that the arts are useful, productive and economic superfoods, it is finally beginning to get through out there” she said, “but it will need to be made again and again.
“We have a great case to make for sustained investment and we must make it or all we are worth… We have good numbers to talk about and they are large and growing every year faster than any other sector.”
But she found herself clashing the Tory spokesman, Jeremy Hunt, over ACE’s future.
“We think administrative costs are far too high” singling out the Heritage Lottery Fund and ACE which he said were spending 13% and 11% of their subsidy on administration. A Conservative government would not abolish the Arts Council, but it would have to be “leaner, though not meaner”.
But Forgan challenged Hunt’s his figures. “We are heading for 6% now, and 5% later this year” she said. Later, Carole Souter, chief executive of HLF, said their administrative spending was now down to 6.5% of income.
And his claims that the money coming to the arts from lottery and subsidy because of diversions of lottery finding, particularly to the Olympics, was now less than in 1997 was refuted by Ben Bradshaw, the culture secretary. “He is completely wrong” he responded. “We have just had the most successful decade in the arts when the cultural economy has grown at twice the rate of the Gross National Product, greatly promising for the future”.
Hunt set out Conservative arts policy, promising a “golden age” for the arts, much like Tony Blair had done in 2007.
New was the pledge to encourage arts organisation to establish endowments funding by private investment along American lines, and in return a Conservative government would offer five year funding deals instead of the present three years.
A Cameron government would return to the original five good causes as recipients of lottery funding, with the arts getting a 20% share which could mean £50m a year more; there would be more generous arrangements for the acceptance of works of art by the nation in lieu inheritance tax, and an improvement of Gift Aid to encourage a US-style philanthropy – ‘It would be good for society if giving were a cultural norm’ he said - though he could not promise more direct tax breaks.
Despite Hunt saying that he could not promise to maintain arts funding, Liz Forgan underlined her message of optimism. “Let me say in the clearest possible terms to government and to our other partners: we can’t expect excellence to continue I our creative life without sustained public investment” she told the 500 delegates.
“There is no reason why we cannot come through the troubles economic times with these achievements intact, but we need to keep reinventing what we do, being as imaginative in the way we organise the arts as artists are in creating work.”
