RSA Chair calls for the arts to show their true value

The inaugural speech by the new Chair of the Royal Society of Arts, Vikki Heywood, has included a call to arms for arts organisations to start demonstrating the true value of the arts. Challenging artists to become more engaged with the wider world, Heywood suggested that instead of trying to persuade the Government and public to protect spending on the arts, we should be exploring how organisations can enable places not only to survive but to prosper in such difficult times. “Claims made by arts organisations that they are catalysts for the development of our cultural identity are hollow”, she says, unless they come together with a genuine commitment to self-evaluation and financial prioritisation. She argues that the evidence for the arts’ value is there, we just need to take up the challenge of communicating it – this is about behavioural change, not policy.  

In her speech, the former Executive Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company suggested further development of place-based commissioning with artists acting as ‘place catalysts’ providing vital input into local leadership and new ways of thinking – something, she says, that will require them to develop a much better understanding of their locality, its people, their needs, its culture and challenges, and an examination of their own ways of working: “They will in essence need to see themselves as commissioned by the places, in which they are based, or the communities they serve.” Calling for more artists on boards of businesses, retail companies and banks, on planning committees, health boards and prisons, Heywood warned that “an arts policy in a silo is not an articulation of value” and currently there is no joined up thinking for a policy on the arts as an industry, or as an essential function in the cultural identity and a prosperous future for the UK.