Patrick Stewart and Silk go to meet the man (but he's not there)
mainThe Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt argued on Question Time last night that leaving the healthy system unreformed in a fast-changing society was ‘not an option’.
On BBC Breakfast this morning I argued that the same applies to the arts. It is absurd to continue with an Arts Council mechanism that was improvised 66 years ago and has been allowed to blunder on, essentially unchanged, through several social revolutions.
The time has come for the arts to speak directly to government. They are a huge industry and an exceptionally sound investment. Why devolve the arts to clerks when statesmanship is needed and the public demand accountability?
That is a question the Culture Secretary has fudged so far. Maybe it’s time to take it higher.
photo: AP
I was appearing on the news show with the actor Sam West, who was heading off to Downing Street with the man from Star Trek and Maxine Peake from Silk to present a polite letter to the prime minister, urging his to take a post-recessional view of the importance of arts to the nation.
Jolly good idea, and Sam was dead keen to get his letter into the right hands.
If he’d only paused to read the morning papers, he’d have learned that David Cameron has just flitted off with his other Sam for a birthday break in Spain.
Guess he doesn’t care much for the arts.
photo: BBC
Her Silkiness won’t be pleased.
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