Cultural Negligence: The crucial point the Conservatives keep missing about the arts
In a matter of days, Glastonbury Festival will once again bless the British summertime with a universally recognised carnival of culture. Beyond the fanfare of peace and love, the UK’s Conservative government will also recognise that it is set to bring in over £100m to the South West’s economy while also employing over 85,000 people directly and helping to support countless subcontractors and small businesses indirectly. Given the collectivism, benevolence and progressive nature of the festival, it represents perhaps the most ideal way to generate a functioning economy.
While the festival might seem like the high-end pinnacle of culture, at its heart, it is sustained by grassroots arts. They might be superstars these days, but the Arctic Monkeys would not be headlining if it wasn’t for the leg-up that local venues like The Leadmill gave them. Then closing the whole thing is Elton John – one of Britain’s biggest philanthropists who has funnelled his net worth of £395m into AIDS research, local football clubs and more – who began his musical journey with a free junior scholarship offer by the Royal Academy of Music.
In fact, every act in the entire line-up will have been aided in some way by the arts at the grassroots level, whether that be small independent venues, homegrown record labels, community projects, vinyl shops promoting local talent, arts funding or some other direct cultural husbandry. The moneymaking artistic behemoth of Glastonbury – an event that showcases the best of Britain to the world at large – is essentially the cultivated celebration of what the grassroots level has harvested through hard work and love.
And the beauty is, with a life-ring of funding, this economy can prove effortlessly sustainable. After all, look no further than The Beatles: they still bring in £82m a year to the Liverpool economy alone over half a century on from their last output. This influx has helped to sustain venues like The Cavern Club, which are still flourishing today.
Sadly, these flourishing small places are few and far between. A whopping 35% of the UK’s Grassroots Music Venues have been forced to close their doors in the last 20 years. The problem is indicative of a lack of investment faith in working-class community enterprises. It is as though governing bodies shrug their shoulders and say, ‘Sorry, but budgets don’t allow us to protect good fun for the masses in these sober financial times’, and the money that the industry actually generates is classified as some sort of magical windfall that can’t be trusted.
This has been reflected by Conservative policies across the board. There is a current crisis of confidence among the powers that be that any sort of investment to those on lower rungs will ever be repaid in kind. Thus, what they toss towards grassroots venues, schemes and so on, is a small gesture to satisfy some sort of pressured obligation. This is a travesty that not only undermines the £100m that Glastonbury does actually repay yearly but the future of beloved British culture as a whole as the data on our treasured arts centres becomes more and more damning.
This corresponds with the lack of investment in young people in general. As the actor David Mitchell commented regarding skyrocketing university fees: “I did have a nice time at university. More than that, at university I found out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life which didn’t actually have anything to do with history which is what I was supposed to be studying while I was there. […] I went to university at a time when everybody got their fees paid.”
Continuing, he adds: “As a result, you go and you feel you’ve got a sense of possibility. You’re not under pressure to get a qualification with which to pay back the money you’re borrowing and I think that that whole free and easy open-minded attitude to university could die as a result of that funding being withdrawn. And I don’t know, but I’ve paid back my funding in tax lots of times over so it made financial sense when I was given that money; it is sad that no one thinks it does now for today’s students.”
That exact same paradigm is reflected in the arts. Culture represents a free and open space where people can mature and blossom. This is why it is the ultimate engine of social mobility. Thanks to a well-cared-for arts scene at the time, a working-class lad like Paul McCartney was able to indulge in a passion, develop his skills, and now he ranks on The Sunday Times’ Rich List with an estimate £950m. That is a boon for the UK economy. Alas, the chances of that sort of thing happening again amid the current neglect shown to the arts are dwindling towards the impossible.
To put it in a blunter fashion, you get the distinct impression that investment in culture is being looked upon by Conservatives as a small fee they have to pay to keep the arty side of the political press off their back so some ne’er-do-well can literally spunk it up the wall in an abstract acrylic splurge. In reality, if funded properly and given enough breathing space to develop, culture can be the profitable lifeblood of local communities that cuts the need to spend in other areas.
Take, for instance, The Leadmill: the fact that the venue has recently fallen on hard times is seen as the dog-eat-dog nature of things amid a sorry economic downturn. If it is in the red, then c’est la vie; it can’t be helped when seemingly more important institutions like education and healthcare are also in need of funding. However, what is forgotten during this brief period in its history when The Leadmill has struggled, is that it might be in the red, but the Arctic Monkeys have just compensated for that by bringing millions into the UK economy on their recent arena tour, Pulp will do likewise this summer, and so on and so on.
It is simple: a healthy cultural scene contributes to not only a healthy economy but a healthy civilisation in general. It is not a pit of bohemian scallies where funding disappears into pot smoke. It is a world of innovation and social mobility where growth can be self-generating given enough fertilising funding. And because it is largely driven by the working class of this country it can’t afford to self-fund either. But the Conservatives have been continually unwilling to show faith in this sector.
As the Music Venue Trust told us regarding the heart of the arts, grassroots venues: “GMVs are at the heart of their local communities, providing early-stage access for artists and creatives to experiment, grow their skills and develop their talent. They are the Research and Development labs of the £5.8 billion per annum UK Music Industry – a world leader in music and culture. They foster and develop new talent in an open, non-profit driven model which enables creativity to flourish. In many locations, they provide an outlet for people otherwise left behind.”
Culture offers us a route out of these harder financial times, both mentally and in real-world economics. As Factory Records founder Alan Erasmus told Far Out, tough times “release different avenues of creativity because [artists] will be going somewhere they haven’t been before.” And these avenues can drive “fresh change” acting as an engine of social mobility and community-driven innovation. Erasmus’ own innovation helped to transform the entire fortunes of Manchester, showing the scale of art’s impact.
It’s this collectivism and one hand washing the other that is helping to keep everyone afloat. However, all too often there seems to be no top-down assistance from elsewhere. That needs to change, or we’ll soon find a £109bn yearly art economy in the UK come to a sorry end.
