Arts leaders write once more to the Times
mainAnother letter today from 70 heads of arts institutions:
Sir, The performing arts are battling for survival at a time when theatre matters more than ever. It is not only the West End, the panto, world-class musicals, dance, opera and Shakespeare, it is the creative and outreach work happening around the country in our diverse communities, outdoors, in pop-up spaces, at festivals and online. Theatre tackles contemporary issues head on. With Black Lives Matter stirring our national consciousness, theatre can play a critical role in challenging, educating and informing people.
Theatre is a national success story, vital to Britain’s economic prosperity. It attracted 34 million visitors last year, employs 300,000 people, promotes tourism and generates huge tax revenues, including VAT of £130 million in London alone.
Our industry depends on the £1.3 billion of annual ticket sales that has now disppeared…
The rest you have read before in previous weekly letters of this kind.
£1.3bn ticket sales (annually) is a relatively small figure when you consider the vast sums of money the government has thrown around/wasted over the last few months, so it will be interesting to see how much they care about culture……
Same in USA. They don’t care. Yet the economic impact of America’s creative sector, per one study, is greater than all the sports combined. Go figure.
Does that include “the movies”?
They include Hollywood and chart music in that study. Those don’t need a bailout.
Why is culture more important than all the other peoples jobs under threat. Why are culture jobs more important than the 6000 jobs going at Rolls Royce, the 8000 going at HSBC and the 5000 going at Centrica. Those people have votes and they will ask the question why are others getting bailed out when they didn’t.
When the government borrowed £106 billion in one month, there are limits on what is affordable. The Bank of England had to do £200 billion of QE in May or the government couldn’t borrow any more money. No QE and the UK would have gone bankrupt. I really don’t think people understand what’s coming. The culture sector needs to be proactive and not wait around for a government hand out because they are way down the list of what economically and politically important.
They’re not necessarily ‘more important’. But culture and commerce are not the same thing. Also, HSBC (for example) have not been closed for the last 3 months -but the theatres have. They were told to close and to stay closed – so is the government going to compensate them for that. And yes, they may be way down the list, but when you consider how much the government has ‘magically’ found to pursue its policies – do they value culture enough to protect it. Other civilised European governments do – does ours?
Please understand that the government cannot afford to bail out everyone. There are 100,000s of business that were ordered to stay close. They all have access to bounce back loans and that is it. Why is the ENO due special treatment and the 47,600 pubs that employ 457,000 people not. Bailing out pubs is more popular and more economically important than the culture sector. You can all agree with each that you are all terribly important and how the government should care but the voters dont. If you dont reflect the electorate you dont get to make decisions. Politics is the art of the possible. 50 years of insularity is coming home to roost.
Tourism supports cities. Hotels, restaurants, especially near venues get filled. Airlines sell tickets as well. Theater owners, own other companies too and they feed off of one another. A waiter who works next to a venue loses his job, so does the electrician who works for the venue. A theatre closes, and all the surrounded business will close. No one lives on an island.
Every single persons’ job is crucial and must be protected. The difference is that the entire arts sector is in risk of dissolution. It’s as much about what the arts do for our societies, our culture, preservation of incredible works of art, commentary on contemporary and past events, and then there are the tens of thousands of workers, many of whom have multiple higher education qualifications and who have sacrificed security for years and years before reaching their performing and managerial roles.
In theory someone from Rolls Royce for example have a skill set that can be taken to another vehicle manufacturer, but the arts all around the world are in danger of collapse. And these people who deserve to work and apply the skills that they cultivated to rewarding and valuable work.
The Bank of England magic-ed up £100bn the other week in quantitative easing, if the economic hole left by the arts being inactive can be so easily filled, why should the government care? I obviously hope they do, but they’ve had months to plug the gaps in the self-employed support scheme and have done bugger all about it. The fact they’ve said that theatres can open but can’t put on any shows demonstrates their level of thinking.
With Black Lives Matter stirring our national consciousness, theatre can play a critical role in challenging, educating and informing people.
This is precisely the point. The ideology using the BLM movement to further its cause does not want an open and healthy exchange of opinion. It is interested solely in pursuing cultural Marxism à la Gramsci. Let’s be honest; how many of these halfwits had even heard of Colston or Colbert before George Floyd’s death?
You have yourself highlighted the purpose of the movement, to spread awareness of other victims…
I wish the conversation about equality and ending perpetration could be a discussion not an all or nothing exchange.
Why did BLM have to be thrown into it?
‘Theatre is a national success story, vital to Britain’s economic prosperity. It attracted 34 million visitors last year, employs 300,000 people, promotes tourism and generates huge tax revenues, including VAT of £130 million in London alone.
Our industry depends on the £1.3 billion of annual ticket sales that has now disppeared…’
One thinks of Adorno & Horkheimer’s ‘culture industry’ and ‘enlightenment as mass deception’. Personally, I think the above quote from the letter exactly describes much that is wrong with the arts in the UK. I don’t intend that as an argument against public funding, quite the contrary, but I hope that the Covid-19 ‘lockdown’ triggers some hard questions about the social role of the arts and leads to a less tourist-dependent policy and a more community based one.
Here is one of the big problems. Go to virtually any website these days and someone is asking for a handout. Not all of these closed businesses and institutions are going to be saved. I wish it were possible but wishing it won’t make it happen.
The populace doesn’t want to hear bad news these days. Many won’t wear a mask. Some group of enlightened souls is going to need to come up with some solutions PDQ.