Melvyn Bragg: ‘We are sleepwalking into permanent mediocrity’
Music is under attack and theatres are closing. It’s time for a radical overhaul of the arts in the UK before it’s too late
The arts generate more revenue than the life sciences, aerospace and construction industries combined. Add television, films, advertising and broadcasting, and we are faced not with a charming marginal activity but with an industry, ready to grow to the massive benefit of this country. But first the arts industry needs a radical overhaul — today it is dangerously patchy and punching way below its weight. Last year, there were more than three million jobs in the creative and cultural industries. There could be many more if we recognised and reached the full potential of what is still considered too often to be the cherry on the cake. The arts is the cake.
We have the skills; what we need is the vision and the will. But to be the best we need to take a proper look at the worst. Recently, on this page [in The Times], Richard Morrison wrote that “British theatre is in a dreadful state”, its demise hastened by the dominance of TV and streaming. “Theatres not facing closure because of local authority budget cuts are struggling to attract audiences for anything except musicals and famous plays featuring famous actors.” National Theatre Wales has lost its subsidy from the Arts Council of Wales. Creative Scotland has received a big cut from the Scottish government.
It’s strange that over the past decade the creative industries have grown at 1.5 times the rate of the wider economy. They have contributed billions of pounds of business activity and exports. But again and again these profits drain away and the only begetter, the arts, is left stranded on overdrafts.
When they built the first steam engine during the Industrial Revolution, they did not say, “OK, we can do it, we’ll stop now.” They went on to create, out of nothing, a rail network here and abroad. So why do we stop here, now, when the country is losing its theatres, music, dance and so on? We are sleepwalking into permanent mediocrity. And cultural institutions that were once the guardians of the arts have in crucial cases become accessories to this deterioration.
The Arts Council, for example, set up in 1948, has been of the greatest value for the arts, especially in its arm’s-length management principle. Yet in November 2022 English National Opera was given 24 hours’ notice by Arts Council England that all its funding would be withdrawn. This to a company approaching a century of outstanding work. Opera in English. Free ticket schemes for young people. More than half of audiences first-time bookers. A world-class infrastructure. Just struck off.
The way in which it was done disgraced the government. In a short letter Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary at the time, instructed (she used the word several times) Nicholas Serota, chairman of the Arts Council, to do as the government — ie Nadine Dorries — dictated. Who did she think she was? We had become a state-run arts country — one step from the dictatorship of the government agenda.
Dr Harry Brünjes, the chairman of ENO, fought all this and eventually the government shifted its ultimatum back a few years. What on earth is going on? The magnificent Royal Opera House is, incomprehensibly, besieged by not dissimilar troubles. Classical music would be bereft without the BBC, this country’s greatest cultural institution, yet it too is under constant attack.
Education is one path that can lead us to a new world of the arts. But we should heed the warnings of the composer Howard Goodall about the state of music in our schools. In the past century there were County Music Services, free instrumental lessons, Saturday morning music schools, orchestras and choirs. After 2020 these services were transferred into local hubs, a private enterprise model. The local authorities lost responsibility for them and the slide began. Last year it was announced that the number of hubs would be reduced nationally from 116 to 43 (in direct contradiction to consultations saying that this would be the worst possible option for state schools), yet they will have to do the same work on the same money.
Meanwhile the number of pupils taking GCSE music almost halved from 50,000 entrants in 2010 to 29,000 last year. Consequently staff numbers in music and other arts subjects dropped dramatically. The Department for Education met only 27 per cent of its target for newly trained music teachers last year.
Why can’t the 93 per cent of children in our state schools receive the same musical offering that the 7 per cent in private schools take for granted? This is shocking, unfair and wrong. And what a waste. School music needs rescuing. It needs investment and enormous rewards could follow.
If ever conclusive proof was required for the benefits of the arts in our society, read Professor Daisy Fancourt. She has nailed it in her forthcoming book: “In 2018 the World Health Organisation reported that after 3,500 studies it had cast iron evidence of the deep and widespread health improvements which came from the teaching of the arts — from neurological disorders to child development. Cohort studies have shown that tens of thousands of people of all ages benefit physically, emotionally and intellectually by going to galleries, by dance, and singing in choirs.”
We have scientific proof that art exercises the imagination and feeds us in a unique and lasting way. We can’t afford to ignore this. We can no longer cut, stint, cancel, slash. If we are to bring up generations whose minds and feelings are moulded by the best work, good teachers and multiple opportunities, then we could indeed make a brave new world. Why not and why not now?
Author: Melvin Bragg
Published by The Times, 1st February 2024
