TaitMail Hardening up soft power
A week ago David Lammy and Lisa Nandy jointly launched the Soft Power Council (SPC), a multi-member new body tasked with finding ways of boosting the UK’s economic growth through our culture. They will also jointly chair it.
“Britain’s cultural exports showcase the best of Britain around the world” Nandy said. “When international investors look to the UK, it is so often our iconic sporting events, performing arts, media outlets and creative industries that make the UK such an attractive place to grow and invest.
Responses such as “what took you so long?” have been echoing in the busy corridors of soft power this week, and the launch next week of Alison Cole’s new think tank the Cultural Policy Unit to keep an eye on all these goings-on could hardly be more timely (see a previous TaitMail at https://www.artsindustry.co.uk/feature/3322-taitmail-changing-cultural-policy-by-thinking-aloud).
Soft power, as a concept, became fashionable in the mid-1980s, defined in the OED as the "power (of a nation, state, alliance, etc.) deriving from economic and cultural influence, rather than coercion or military strength".
This new council establishes soft power as a bona fide area of policy, but it is an advisory body that has no power of its own, soft or otherwise. Its brief is extremely broad and consequently it’s extremely large, 26 members. There’s no mention of how often it will meet, but if it’s waiting for the Foreign Secretary to be available it might be not very often: “Soft power is fundamental to the UK’s impact and reputation around the world. I am often struck by the enormous love and respect which our music, sport, education and institutions generate on every continent” he said. “But we have not taken a sufficiently strategic approach to these huge assets as a country”.
So on the council (pictured) - arraigned as part of the government’s six-point Plan for Change, though it’s not clear under which of the six points - are such established arts sector figures as Tristram Hunt of the V&A, Peter Bazalgette, ex-chairman of the Arts Council, Roland Rudd who chairs Tate and Tom Kiehl of UK Music, but they will have to stand their corner against representatives of sport, broadcasting, the British Council, the law, economics and even the former Chief of the Defence Staff. And, of course, Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson.
But to coincide with the convening of the SPC Nandy has announced a £60m "turbocharge” for the creative industries, to transform local venues, creating jobs, supporting businesses and spreading opportunity across the country, she said. “But this is by no means the limit of our ambitions, which is why the creative industries are at the heart of the forthcoming industrial strategy”.
And pre-empting all this a couple of weeks ago, Emily Thornberry as chair of the foreign affairs select committee launched its own inquiry into the effectiveness of soft power, looking at what tangible advantages soft power brings to the UK, including culture. Her inquiry will ask. In particular, said Dame Emily., it will “ask how the UK can maintain its status as a soft power superpower. We will examine the UK government’s soft power strategy, asking how this strategy complements our wider foreign policy objectives”. It could rubbish the whole notion and make the SPC redundant almost before it’s had its first meeting; probably not, though. The deadline for taking evidence is March 3.
No, this is good news that the government and parliament are at last taking seriously the potential of cultural soft power as a part of the economy - remember the creative industries alone are worth £125bn a year. The trick is making all this reviewing, inquiring, scrutinising and advising, actually work.
This week a flurry of local authorities announced that those community apertures for cultural and creative discovery, their museums, are facing closure. They are not the councils’ statutory responsibility as libraries are, and they are now considered expendable as economic expediency for authorities confronting bankruptcy. Tell that to the teachers, parents, children and tourists that have been using Leeds’s Abbey House Museum for a century. Where is that crisis in the agenda of the Soft Power Council?
The Nandy/Lammy initiative is welcome, of course it is, but it comes with history’s usual caveat: It’s been tried before. In March 2016 the then arts minister Ed Vaizey published the first ever – and so far last - culture White Paper. It told us: “The power of culture can increase our international standing”, that “By promoting the UK through our cultural exports we will enhance our global reputation and soft power”, that “government will continue to invest in our growing cultural sectors”.
It didn’t work, as Ed, now Lord, Vaizey tacitly admitted in the House of Lords this week: “Many of the issues it explored remain as resonant today”, so remain untackled; and then came the rub. “One big issue that needs more attention is arts education - not just arts subjects in the school curriculum, but a proper strategy for engaging kids in the arts. Unfortunately, as it always is with culture, there is the issue of funding - finding money to support the education offer of arts education, and money to support schools in actually getting kids to venues. And unfortunately, there is never enough.”
And there he gets to the root of all of this. Education, education, education. We have let art, culture and creativity seep out of our schools until there is virtually nothing left, no music, no painting, no poetry, not even handwriting according to another report this week. And iit's in schools that all this creative industry is born.
This week, too, we had a story about a new initiative to bring art into the classroom, and its initial target is 1,000 secondary schools by 2027, supplying each one of them with special monitors, ArtScreens, so pupils can experience the art guided by successful artists. The art concerned comes from a pantheon of contemporary artists each of whom picked the piece that most inspired them. The broadcaster Kate Bryan chose Matisse’s The Snail; the sculptor Ann Christopher had Frank Auerbach’s Self Portrait; Cornelia Parker chose Uccello’s 15th century The Battle of San Romano; Bridget Filey’s choice was Van Gogh’s Long Grass with Butterflies.
Its progenitor is Winton Rossiter. “The idea came to me after years of witnessing how many pupils were being left out of experiencing the arts, particularly in underfunded areas. I’ve always believed in the transformative power of art - it sparks creativity, broadens horizons, and nurtures mental well-being. It felt deeply unfair”.
The scheme has no public money, it’s all come from donations and trust grants, and Rossiter himself is not a paid-up member of the arts sector, he’s an entrepreneur and company director with a background in private equity and start-ups, a clue maybe to where we're headed. And he owns JazzyMedia, the UK in-school communications agency.
It all starts in the classroom, whether they’re full of putative artists or just people who get art, but while the big beasts Lammy and Nandy sally forth on the international stage flogging our faux-historical TV series, garish computer games and pubescent rock bands, the fundamentals from which all of them must start are being left to private individuals with a conscience. Yet another argument for at least 1% of that £125bn a year to be channelled back into art and creative education in schools. And then watch soft power get a grip.