Three Johns and Shelagh on why, despite consensus on the value of the arts, paralysis and budget cuts continue.
More than 400 people turned up at the British Library on 4 February for the first of three ‘provocation events’ being staged by the Warwick Commission on the Future of Cultural Value. With BBC Business editor Robert Peston delivering the keynote speech and a panel that included Arts Council England head Alan Davey, it was a high-profile start to a two-year project.
Hosted by the University of Warwick, chaired by Vikki Heywood (the former Executive Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company), and with a powerful list of Commissioners, the Warwick Commission intends to ‘undertake a comprehensive and holistic investigation into the future of cultural value… and gather together the evidence and arguments to energise the debates about the future of investment and engagement in our cultural lives’.
We have, of course, been here before. It’s more than ten years since the then Secretary of State for Culture Tessa Jowell wrote her personal essay Government and the Value of Culture, and since Demos held its Valuing Culture conference. In the decade that has followed, there has been a steady stream of work on the subject. Recently, however, the pace has quickened. As well as the Warwick Commission, we also have the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Cultural Value Project and two recent speeches on the subject from the current Secretary of State for Culture, Maria Miller... (Click here to read more)
More than 400 people turned up at the British Library on 4 February for the first of three ‘provocation events’ being staged by the Warwick Commission on the Future of Cultural Value. With BBC Business editor Robert Peston delivering the keynote speech and a panel that included Arts Council England head Alan Davey, it was a high-profile start to a two-year project.
Hosted by the University of Warwick, chaired by Vikki Heywood (the former Executive Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company), and with a powerful list of Commissioners, the Warwick Commission intends to ‘undertake a comprehensive and holistic investigation into the future of cultural value… and gather together the evidence and arguments to energise the debates about the future of investment and engagement in our cultural lives’.
We have, of course, been here before. It’s more than ten years since the then Secretary of State for Culture Tessa Jowell wrote her personal essay Government and the Value of Culture, and since Demos held its Valuing Culture conference. In the decade that has followed, there has been a steady stream of work on the subject. Recently, however, the pace has quickened. As well as the Warwick Commission, we also have the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Cultural Value Project and two recent speeches on the subject from the current Secretary of State for Culture, Maria Miller... (Click here to read more)