Wouldn't it be nice if philanthropists with lots of spare money backed artistic and educational projects and we admired them for doing it. What business has the state got here? If the Greens are to be believed billionaires can provide all the money we need to sort out society's problems. Maybe we could persuade these wealthy individuals to stop funding nebulous climate pressure groups and do some practical good. Then we could offer them tax incentives to stay in Britain and celebrate their generosity.
I partially agree with you. A lot of this stuff sounds like utter rubbish and a parody of wokeism that Rod Liddle might have made up. What a waste of time and money.
But the Tories need to be very careful here. There’s a clear fork in the road. Reform-lite: aping of Trump, attacking all minority-focused and “DEI” initiatives from an ideological standpoint, because “normal” people don’t want this sort of thing; or old-fashioned Conservative: a tolerant acceptance that this is small beer, and theatre and the arts have always been left wing and a bit bonkers, and let it do what it wants in a free country.
Reform would presumably create its own Arts Council approving only projects it considers culturally acceptable. I don’t think that’s where most Conservatives are.
Don’t be Reform-lite. Time to reclaim the millions of former moderate Conservatives you are alienating with your leave the ECHR, anti net zero culture war nonsense.
You put this really well. This is radicalising - both in the sense that it describes funding for events that one presumes will radicalise some of their attendees, and in the sense that reading it makes me furious
Also scrap free entry to museums and galleries. A modest fee—say £15 for adults, with free entry for children—would be reasonable.
It could also make visiting them a more pleasant experience. Many are regularly at or beyond capacity, to the point where overcrowding can make the experience far less enjoyable.
The main beneficiaries of the current policy are Londoners and tourists, the majority of whom could afford to contribute towards the cost of running these institutions. The additional revenue could help support their long-term funding while allowing visitor numbers to be managed more effectively.
This is all pocket change though compared to the amount the Arts Council wastes on subsidising Opera in this country - an art form which is mainly attended by those who could afford to pay and which the common man on the street has no interest. This surely has to be the first place to start - the amount spent is virtue signally of the highest order so that the elites feel like they have done the 'right' thing
I think the criticisms you’re highlighting here are important. However, it’s also important to highlight the good work done via arts council funding. Some really important institutions such as the National Theatre, the RSC, plus important regional theatres benefit from arts council funding. They then work their socks off to sell tickets and raise money through private means. Many of them are badges of pride for the country; others are real local hubs for their community.
War Horse began at the National, Matilda began at the RSC, other shows like Operation Mincemeat (big, award winning global hit) received ACE funding.
How do you make sure you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater here? How do you ensure that the good work done by art council grants continues, whilst some of it more identity-obsessed, less unifying projects plough their own furrow?
This is all very well, and I wholly agree - but then why, when your Conservative Party was in office for 14 YEARS, did you not abolish the Arts Council, or better still, the whole of DCMS? We don't need them. Did Shakespeare and Dickens and Edmund Keane need Arts Council grants? Did the pre-1960 media, vastly more professional and dependable than the dreck we get today, need 'regulating'? Sport can look after itself perfectly well without the State employing 20,000 well-pensioned chair warmers to oversee it.
I'll tell you why you didn't: the Civil Service wouldn't let you, the LibDems and Labour would have called you mean for doing it and it was all too much bother for a gutless bunch who were only really there to enjoy the trappings of office and burnish their CVs for a few years before heading off on the Davos lecture circuit. And in the unlikely event the Tories ever form another administration, that's just what we will get, again.
As a (now) ex-Tory voter of 40 years I couldn't have put it better. How many times did the Tories say they would reduce immigration? Fool me once.......
Well, I agree with the bit where you say we made massive mistakes and allowed this stuff to go on. But the whole point of me writing this is that we are changing - see the announcement I mentioned at the top. We will have more to say. If you are annoyed at us you are right to be and I share your frustration. But we are now under new management (not just one person) and everyone will have to sign up to the new agenda.
Call me old fashioned, call me a cynical old fool, but if something is worth seeing or taking part in, then you would be willing to pay whatever price was published, and just maybe, the published price actually reflects the quality of whatever is on offer. I note that “actors” always plead poverty but are well paid, so well paid that during the long periods between “work”, they manage to survive. The current system of grants etc is driven by the need to appear “edgy” and “hip”, whether one or one million want to see it, the price is heavily subsidised because invariably it is crap- Creative Rubbish Attempting Prestige and nobody with a modicum of intelligence wants t see that.
I think this stuff is nonsense as much as the next person. However...
The free market is a poor mechanism for the arts. The country's greatest orchestras all require public subsidies to survive (and I imagine we'd all be supportive of those continuing). The introduction of the Arts Council was a deliberate attempt to democratise the arts - pre-war arts funding was about patronage and philanthropy which naturally skews it towards towards more middle class tastes. That none of these projects would likely be self-sustaining without public funding isn't an argument that they shouldn't exist because you could say the same thing about our museums.
The actual amounts being thrown around here are mere pennies even within the DCMS budget, much less total government expenditure, so a sharp cut would be an ideological move, not an economic one.
The real issue seems to be that this stuff is explicitly left wing/progressive in a way that rankles. Presumably a Guardian columnist would likewise find plenty to complain about if ACE began funding 'Dangers of Mass Migration: A Sculpture' or whatever.
So you either accept that some (pretty tiny) amount of public funding will go towards projects you personally find politically nauseating, or you start explicitly ideologically steering such funding in a way you personally find politically appealing.
Wholly agree with all of this. Whilst it's right and proper that talented artists are helped to produce their art, since the arts generally pay poorly, publicly funded art should be for all and for the betterment of the nation. ACE's giving policy shows they are giving to their idea of an ideologically pure few. Virtue signalling and the spread of identity politics is not art.
Good work in exposing this nonsense. For the larger awards, in particular, it would be good to know how much of this money is disbursed, and how much is retained by organisers and their acolytes.
Wouldn't it be nice if philanthropists with lots of spare money backed artistic and educational projects and we admired them for doing it. What business has the state got here? If the Greens are to be believed billionaires can provide all the money we need to sort out society's problems. Maybe we could persuade these wealthy individuals to stop funding nebulous climate pressure groups and do some practical good. Then we could offer them tax incentives to stay in Britain and celebrate their generosity.
I think that's how it worked for many years.
I partially agree with you. A lot of this stuff sounds like utter rubbish and a parody of wokeism that Rod Liddle might have made up. What a waste of time and money.
But the Tories need to be very careful here. There’s a clear fork in the road. Reform-lite: aping of Trump, attacking all minority-focused and “DEI” initiatives from an ideological standpoint, because “normal” people don’t want this sort of thing; or old-fashioned Conservative: a tolerant acceptance that this is small beer, and theatre and the arts have always been left wing and a bit bonkers, and let it do what it wants in a free country.
Reform would presumably create its own Arts Council approving only projects it considers culturally acceptable. I don’t think that’s where most Conservatives are.
Don’t be Reform-lite. Time to reclaim the millions of former moderate Conservatives you are alienating with your leave the ECHR, anti net zero culture war nonsense.
You put this really well. This is radicalising - both in the sense that it describes funding for events that one presumes will radicalise some of their attendees, and in the sense that reading it makes me furious
Also scrap free entry to museums and galleries. A modest fee—say £15 for adults, with free entry for children—would be reasonable.
It could also make visiting them a more pleasant experience. Many are regularly at or beyond capacity, to the point where overcrowding can make the experience far less enjoyable.
The main beneficiaries of the current policy are Londoners and tourists, the majority of whom could afford to contribute towards the cost of running these institutions. The additional revenue could help support their long-term funding while allowing visitor numbers to be managed more effectively.
This is all pocket change though compared to the amount the Arts Council wastes on subsidising Opera in this country - an art form which is mainly attended by those who could afford to pay and which the common man on the street has no interest. This surely has to be the first place to start - the amount spent is virtue signally of the highest order so that the elites feel like they have done the 'right' thing
Agree with this, and baulk at the idea of the BBC being funded by a household levy for not too dissimilar reasons
I think the criticisms you’re highlighting here are important. However, it’s also important to highlight the good work done via arts council funding. Some really important institutions such as the National Theatre, the RSC, plus important regional theatres benefit from arts council funding. They then work their socks off to sell tickets and raise money through private means. Many of them are badges of pride for the country; others are real local hubs for their community.
War Horse began at the National, Matilda began at the RSC, other shows like Operation Mincemeat (big, award winning global hit) received ACE funding.
How do you make sure you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater here? How do you ensure that the good work done by art council grants continues, whilst some of it more identity-obsessed, less unifying projects plough their own furrow?
This is all very well, and I wholly agree - but then why, when your Conservative Party was in office for 14 YEARS, did you not abolish the Arts Council, or better still, the whole of DCMS? We don't need them. Did Shakespeare and Dickens and Edmund Keane need Arts Council grants? Did the pre-1960 media, vastly more professional and dependable than the dreck we get today, need 'regulating'? Sport can look after itself perfectly well without the State employing 20,000 well-pensioned chair warmers to oversee it.
I'll tell you why you didn't: the Civil Service wouldn't let you, the LibDems and Labour would have called you mean for doing it and it was all too much bother for a gutless bunch who were only really there to enjoy the trappings of office and burnish their CVs for a few years before heading off on the Davos lecture circuit. And in the unlikely event the Tories ever form another administration, that's just what we will get, again.
Nailed it, thank you.
As a (now) ex-Tory voter of 40 years I couldn't have put it better. How many times did the Tories say they would reduce immigration? Fool me once.......
Well, I agree with the bit where you say we made massive mistakes and allowed this stuff to go on. But the whole point of me writing this is that we are changing - see the announcement I mentioned at the top. We will have more to say. If you are annoyed at us you are right to be and I share your frustration. But we are now under new management (not just one person) and everyone will have to sign up to the new agenda.
Call me old fashioned, call me a cynical old fool, but if something is worth seeing or taking part in, then you would be willing to pay whatever price was published, and just maybe, the published price actually reflects the quality of whatever is on offer. I note that “actors” always plead poverty but are well paid, so well paid that during the long periods between “work”, they manage to survive. The current system of grants etc is driven by the need to appear “edgy” and “hip”, whether one or one million want to see it, the price is heavily subsidised because invariably it is crap- Creative Rubbish Attempting Prestige and nobody with a modicum of intelligence wants t see that.
A sort of "price mechanism" you say? Will never catch on...
I think this stuff is nonsense as much as the next person. However...
The free market is a poor mechanism for the arts. The country's greatest orchestras all require public subsidies to survive (and I imagine we'd all be supportive of those continuing). The introduction of the Arts Council was a deliberate attempt to democratise the arts - pre-war arts funding was about patronage and philanthropy which naturally skews it towards towards more middle class tastes. That none of these projects would likely be self-sustaining without public funding isn't an argument that they shouldn't exist because you could say the same thing about our museums.
The actual amounts being thrown around here are mere pennies even within the DCMS budget, much less total government expenditure, so a sharp cut would be an ideological move, not an economic one.
The real issue seems to be that this stuff is explicitly left wing/progressive in a way that rankles. Presumably a Guardian columnist would likewise find plenty to complain about if ACE began funding 'Dangers of Mass Migration: A Sculpture' or whatever.
So you either accept that some (pretty tiny) amount of public funding will go towards projects you personally find politically nauseating, or you start explicitly ideologically steering such funding in a way you personally find politically appealing.
Darn!
Wholly agree with all of this. Whilst it's right and proper that talented artists are helped to produce their art, since the arts generally pay poorly, publicly funded art should be for all and for the betterment of the nation. ACE's giving policy shows they are giving to their idea of an ideologically pure few. Virtue signalling and the spread of identity politics is not art.
Good work in exposing this nonsense. For the larger awards, in particular, it would be good to know how much of this money is disbursed, and how much is retained by organisers and their acolytes.
It’s all disbursed, but likely mostly to organisers and their acolytes.
It's all very chummy