This editorial from The Guardian reflectson local authorityarts funding in the wake of Birmingham City Council's plan to withdraw its entire cultural budget.
How do you put a value on culture? In this age of austerity, a political, philosophical question is too easily reduced to painful choices. Would you prefer a roof over your head or a tune in your heart? Lorries to collect the rubbish from your streets, or a well-stocked library?
It’s a decision nobody in a civilised society should be forced to make, yet these very alternatives are starkly posed in an ongoing public consultation by Hampshire County Council. Only a fool would dismiss the questionnaire as political posturing – there are undoubtedly tough choices to be made – but neither should anyone be fooled into believing that social priorities can be reduced to a tick-box exercise.
A crisis of public services that has been brewing for the past 14 years spilled over this week with the publication of a draft budget from the authority charged with running the UK’s second city, Birmingham, that shockingly proposed the withdrawal of all funding, as of next year, from a range of cultural institutions that should be cherished as intrinsic to the self-respect of any 21st-century metropolis...Keep reading on The Guardian.
How do you put a value on culture? In this age of austerity, a political, philosophical question is too easily reduced to painful choices. Would you prefer a roof over your head or a tune in your heart? Lorries to collect the rubbish from your streets, or a well-stocked library?
It’s a decision nobody in a civilised society should be forced to make, yet these very alternatives are starkly posed in an ongoing public consultation by Hampshire County Council. Only a fool would dismiss the questionnaire as political posturing – there are undoubtedly tough choices to be made – but neither should anyone be fooled into believing that social priorities can be reduced to a tick-box exercise.
A crisis of public services that has been brewing for the past 14 years spilled over this week with the publication of a draft budget from the authority charged with running the UK’s second city, Birmingham, that shockingly proposed the withdrawal of all funding, as of next year, from a range of cultural institutions that should be cherished as intrinsic to the self-respect of any 21st-century metropolis...Keep reading on The Guardian.