Arts Council England: What is to be done?

Once again, Arts Council England (ACE) is under government-initiated review. It happens every few years, sometimes to remind Arts Council insiders where the limits of their quasi-autonomy lie and sometimes to assure artists and arts organisations de-prioritised or harassed by the Arts Council that government ministers share their pain. 

The latest review may be intended, in part, to help ACE draw a line under recent policy and public relations debacles for which government itself should really be blamed. During her short term as Culture Secretary, Nadine Dorries ordered ACE to support the government’s levelling-up agenda by taking money away from London-based grant recipients and spreading it around the regions. 

ACE obliged. English National Opera could only hang onto its funding if it agreed to relocate. Sensible policy in some ways – perhaps there is too much subsidised opera in London WC2 at the moment – but it should have been discussed with English National Opera before ACE went public with it, and with people in the Manchester host community whose (real or imagined) opera deficit ACE had to say it was seeking to redress. 

Recent ACE advice to clients about political opinions and their incautious expression by staffers, freelance hires or board members had a similar government-dictated tone to it.

ACE’s relevance is not up for discussion

We already know what outcome the government anticipates. Arts and Heritage Minister Stephen Parkinson describes ACE as “one of our most important national institutions”. Dame Mary Archer, leading the review, thinks it “enriches our lives, enhances our individual wellbeing and maintains our national reputation for excellence across the arts and creative sectors”. And Chief Executive Darren Henley “welcome[s the] opportunity to show how we’re delivering our 10-year strategy”. 

Nothing fundamentally wrong then. ACE could do some things better, and possibly cheaper, but its relevance as a national institution is not up for discussion. A review team aiming for meaningful results would want to start in a different place, striving first to achieve full consciousness of the political situation in which it and ACE are caught up. 

This article’s headline nods both to Lenin and to Abby Innes, whose new-ish book Late Soviet Britain: Why Materialist Utopias Fail (Cambridge University Press, 2023) compares the coping strategies adopted by political leaders in the former USSR as its economy collapsed with those to which their equivalents in present-day post-Brexit Britain seem to be resorting. 

“[T]he temptation for … governments in crisis is to embrace the anarchy of political affectation and misdirection, to make promises they know they cannot keep, to start political fires they know to be diverting and, when push comes to shove, to simply make stuff up. What alternative strategy do they have, in fact, when reality becomes a constant source of embarrassment to their politics?” (p.374). 

Public realm is being stripped of value

So ACE – on behalf of government – claims to be “the national development agency for creativity and culture” even though it funds or otherwise acknowledges only a small fraction of all the art and culture actually developing under its nose. A circular definition allows it to invent success stories. If culture “mean[s] all those areas of activity associated with the artforms and organisations in which Arts Council England invests”, then culture minus ACE investment can never happen.

Higher up this chain of performative command, national politicians claim to be managing events and making policy choices that can influence events when in fact they have surrendered control to private sector asset managers and are now just sitting back to watch while what used to be the public realm is stripped of all remaining value.

This seems to be the nub of the problem. The ‘old’ Arts Council was one of many pieces of a public policy jigsaw meant to fit together to create a better future after the Second World War. An inclusive welfare state trying to provide decent housing and decent healthcare for everyone, decent education for younger citizens and dignity in retirement for older ones – taxing wealth quite heavily to raise the necessary funds – could justify spending some money on support for the arts even if that expenditure only benefited small and specially discerning audiences. 

No one minded ‘welfare for the well-to-do’ (as most consumers of state-subsidised art turned out to be), while more robust welfare arrangements improving poorer people’s quality of life were also being put in place.

Government expects grateful client compliance

Not much is left of that post-war welfare consensus after four decades of unrelenting neoliberal assault. Debate about arts funding priorities is beside the point in a country where 3.8m people are unable to “meet their most basic physical needs to stay warm, dry, clean and fed” (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2023). 

ACE’s vision for 2030 – “a country in which the creativity of each of us is valued and given the chance to flourish” – will be completely unrealisable unless governments are prepared to tackle basic social problems like poverty and inequality. 

ACE cannot admit the scale of problems like poverty and inequality, or their effect on artists or audiences or young people cheated of an arts education, because if it did the government would shut it down. 

Arts organisations funded by ACE know that government expects gratefully compliant client behaviour in return. Since ACE’s 10-year strategy is rooted in lies – and must be, to pass government muster – Darren Henley can show how he and colleagues are delivering it only by telling more. 

An honest review would sweep the lies away and give ACE a chance to rebuild on truthful foundations. Dame Mary and her expert panel have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to set things straight. They will in all likelihood be reporting to a new government and could, if they wanted, give truth-telling a try.

Andrew Pinnock is a professor in the University of Southampton’s Music Department, and a former Arts Council England Music Officer (1992 – 2000).
 southampton.ac.uk