ARTS

Bureaucrats and busybodies

Peter Gill responds to the Culture Secretary's consultation paper on investment in the arts When in the 1970s I was the director of Riverside Studios, a community arts cen- tre in Hammersmith, my chairman was the late Hugh Willat, secretary-general of the Arts Council, in the now seemingly golden age of Arnold Goodman and Jenny Lee. Our funding from the local council obliged us to hold an annual public meeting to account for our activities.

The first proved memorable, partly because the audience contained two power- ful interest groups — those who had failed to nab the resources for social services and a group of pre-Thatcherite zealots called the Hammersmith Ratepayers Association led, if I remember correctly, by a woman called Mrs Smelt — but chiefly because of Hugh Willat's contribution. I was in com- bative mood and ready to account for myself robustly. But it fell to Hugh to open the debate with an introduction that took up most of the time allotted for the whole meeting. Audible, but only audible enough, Hugh rambled on and on, platitude after generalisation after statistic, all giving the impression of grave accountability. When he had finished, the meeting was bored into submission. I answered some dull questions. Hugh wound up. And we all went home.

My colleagues and I were furious that we had not had the spirited encounter with the enemy we'd been looking forward to until irritation gave way to marvel, as we appre- ciated Hugh's coup. He was a believer in a client-led arts policy. A board appointed someone to run an organisation. Limited funds were allocated and, provided budgets were kept to and you did roughly what you were supposed to, that was it until the next time. Under this regime some remarkable things were achieved, and in the meeting Hugh stoutly defended his principles, which were that public subsidy and accountability were best left to the artist and his or her public and not to bureau- crats and busybodies. I was reminded again of Hugh's speech when ploughing through the Culture Secre- tary's consultation paper 'The New Approach to Investment in Culture'. It is so amorphous as to make you almost supine. But you suspect, unfortunately, that it does not come from the same tenacious hard-fought love of the arts as Hugh's speech. It seems to contain proposals relat- ing principally to abstractions about the bureaucracy. The arts are viewed from on high, but not, alas, from Olympus. The paper is a model of inaccessibility, which is curious in view of the primacy of the accessibility principle throughout its 42 Pages; accessibility, along, of course, with accountability, excellence, streamlining, management, regional autonomy and inevitably education, education, education. All that is missing are faith, hope and charity.

The mindset which makes the document so opaque is at the heart of what needs to be changed. Arts funding is obfuscated by a kind of bureaucratic bindweed which favours only those practitioners who share this over-articulate and deadly way of thinking. It militates against the intuitive, empirical, practical nature of most artists, and favours a particular kind of arts profes- sional who manages to be the enemy of innovation and access at the same time.

`Access' here is defined by the number of `experiences' that the minister wishes us to have. Number is not, however, an indicator of quality. Neither do larger audiences nec- essarily mean a wider social mix. Cheaper seat prices alone will not materially affect what the government calls the socially excluded or those who do not already take part. Neither will dumbing down. The Three Tenors argument — that 'Nessun dorma' leads from the football terrace to the opera house — is unproved. The proposition that what people want is the `popular' is often far too narrowly con- ceived. Truisms about popular art at its best being better than high art at its worst lead to a pointless circularity. The real `Come, Gerald — we can't waste time look- ing at pictures worth less than half a million.' question of access is a political one that requires a more broadly based approach and more joined-up government.

And how is excellence going to be defined? Coming from the mouth of New Labour it sounds dismal. There is some- thing churchy about it, a pious diversion from the orthodoxies of philistanism and populism.

And education, education, education? Any proposal that might lead to the rein- troduction of the arts into the curriculum must be welcome. Theatre in education could prove vital in satisfying the current demand for more communication skills and, with community theatre, is a good way of widening access. Any large-scale empha- sis on education cannot, however, go by on the nod simply because it sounds virtuous. It needs particularly careful examination as to how it is to be achieved and funded (the money must surely come out of the educa- tion budget and not the arts budget). Past experience has taught us that many charla- tans have flourished in these fields. The obvious virtue of this work often leaves it unscrutinised and criticism is often seen as, ipso facto, reactionary. The untalented, the prejudiced and the mouthy flourish in this culture.

There are various schools of thought about how best to tackle education. There are the purists who think that only a partic- ular group of experts have the necessary skills to undertake the work, which must remain untainted by anything as suspect as the professional theatre. And there are those who believe in the bolt-on principle, which often means that to merit a grant you should invent an accompanying educa- tion scheme. This is obviously not a univer- sally productive approach. Would it really be sensible to ask Maggie Smith to lead an after-show workshop? She has already done her bit. It is not normally thought to be a good use of time for the consultants at St Thomas's to be teaching first aid.

It is good, however, to see the need for investment being at least acknowledged, but it is difficult to believe that the proof that investment in the arts is profitable is accepted. How could it be, when British capital seems so uninterested in investment anyway? At present we have none of the advantages of the funding strategies of either Europe or of America.

I suspect that the minister is hoping to manage his way out of a problem that is to do with a lack of resources and political will. The extra £125 million for all the arts only brings funding back to 1992 levels and does not reinstate the preceding cuts.

At present the bureaucracy's refusal to stand by its own judgments makes for an inexcusable false accountability, as recent fiascos over the dispensing of Lottery fund- ing shows.

When it comes to the public sector, gov- ernment advocates management, manage- ment, management. So instead of giving the various bodies their limited cash and letting those who run them get on with the job, they are obliged to jump through hoop after hoop after hoop. Many of these new commercial practices imposed on the arts are now outmoded. Industrial management in Britain has little to teach the theatre, as the government's recent studies on produc- tivity seem to confirm.

The only practical concern constant in the paper is the undercurrent of the minis- ter's desire to streamline. But is streamlin- ing necessary, or is it centralisation by other means? A neurotic response to diver- sity. The substance of the proposals seems to be that the exemplary and tidy Crafts Council should be welded together with a streamlined Arts Council for England, a central committee charged with overall strategic responsibility and with the distri- bution of funds; that more responsibility should be devolved to the regional arts boards charged with carrying out the cen- tral committee's strategic policy; and that there should be a new watchdog, a sort of chief inspector of the arts. It is not clear what makes the Crafts Council so special. Charity prevents speculation as to how hard dispensing funds to potters can be. Curiosity wonders if the Crafts Council has ever had an experience of a client as recal- citrant as the Royal Opera House.

To ensure that reorganisation on these lines would work, it would surely be better first to develop a proper understanding of what access, excellence, accountability and education entail or they will remain slo- gans. We also need to have an assurance that the central committee will take advice and be seen to have listened to experts in particular fields. We need to involve practi- tioners whenever possible in the make up of these bodies, which is the only real way of looking after the interests of 'ordinary people', who are otherwise not going to get a look-in. All these bodies should demon- strate by their make up that they have a commitment to excellence and be drawn from candidates across the whole country, and not be palliatives to mediocrity or local and metropolitan elites. Ultimately, there is no avoiding the obvious good sense of making the new strategy client-led.

The relationship between the artist and the public is the only basis on which a fruit- ful discussion of public subsidy of the arts can take place. The artist is the client of the public. The artist is not a client of min- isters, governments, arts officers, regional arts boards, managements or bureaucrats. These facilitate the essential relationship. In a democracy, the primacy of this rela- tionship must be recognised if anything meaningful is to follow.

Certainly, giving power to individual the- atre artists is difficult. In the theatre this is done by means of institutions. But, at pre- sent, too much power is in too few hands. Increasingly, those in power are part of the particular outlook criticised here and else- where. Writers are in a position to be most easily empowered. Why not give particular writers the cost of producing particular plays and get the institutions to bid for them? The idea itself is enough to strike terror into administrative hearts. It would be smothered before having a chance to re- energise by contemplation.

Peter Gill is a playwright and theatre director. His new play, Certain Young Men, opens at the Almeida in January.