An explosive level of jeopardy

The UK is a powerhouse of creativity, home to world-leading venues, museums and galleries, companies and artists representing every form of creative practice. In London, one in every five jobs is a creative one; four out of five people cite arts and culture as a central reason for why they love to work in or visit the capital.  

As spring heats up, on the surface, there are signs to be optimistic.  The creative industries have recovered strongly following the impact of the pandemic, with jobs growing by more than 200,000 in the last five years. The West End is (mostly) thriving and visitors to the capital and attendances at live events are returning to pre-pandemic levels. 

And the city has re-elected a mayor who has promised to “make London a byword for opportunity” and who has long championed and been committed to the value of arts and culture, recognising them not just for their economic impact but because they form the glue that stitches this city together.

However, major and stubborn challenges persist. Levels of public investment in the capital’s arts and cultural organisations have remained static for a decade representing, in the case of Southbank Centre, a real term cut of 40% since 2011. Meanwhile, the financial needs of an ageing cultural infrastructure grow and grow.  

Arts Council England funding cuts in London have been hard hitting for organisations facing spiralling operating costs and the ongoing impact of the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis. This is compounded by years of austerity politics resulting in historic levels of inequality and an assault on the spaces where young people are introduced to the life-changing potential of arts and culture – schools, youth clubs, voluntary organisations, FE colleges and universities.   

Squaring the circle

So, despite the rosiness on the surface, the cumulative effect of these challenges is an explosive level of jeopardy for the capital’s arts organisations that feels unprecedented.  Organisations are squaring the circle of increasingly unsustainable business models by quasi-commercial activity that focuses on revenue generation, where the easiest levers to pull are increasing ticket prices, and reducing artistic experimentation and audience and community development, which is the fundamental purpose of public investment in the arts.  

Added to this, the arts are becoming less familiar, less relevant, less affordable and less accessible to the very group on whom the health of a creative future and the future vitality of this city’s creative output rests: young people. Those in London and across the country for whom the capital has historically exerted immense pulling power. For structural and economic reasons, the industry is simply not reaching the young, diverse audiences and artists of the future.

The industry has a responsibility to tackle these challenges head on but it cannot and should not be done alone. We need to create and better support an interconnected national ecology. I spent over 20 years working in Birmingham and Manchester, where a recognition that everyone was in the business of growing artists, audiences and opportunity together led to daily collaborations between organisations big and small. 

There’s not enough of that in London, particularly since the pandemic when the city has returned to seeing others as competitors, not collaborators. But to drive change, we must join forces with like-minded partners across the city and the country to forge partnerships and strategically invest increasingly precious resources.   

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Southbank Centre Technical Academy. Photo: Pete Woodhead

Collective innovation

Arts venues should do this via cultural programming that embraces risk and artistic ambition, to excite younger audiences in particular about the possibilities of the arts. At Southbank Centre we want to be a place that makes culture relevant, forging new ideas and unlocking people’s potential.  

We’ve started working with six resident orchestras, the CBSO and Manchester Collective to explore how, by collectively innovating around the presentation of classical music, we can convert the vast and rising numbers of young people listening to classical music on streaming services into attenders at live events.

Last year we established Southbank Centre Studios, an initiative that gives unused time to young artists in our smallest venue, the Purcell Room, along with cash, production and technical resources so they can explore creative interdisciplinary collaborations. It has already seeded some wonderfully adventurous projects.  

As we extend this programme into its second year, I invite any organisation across the country interested in the future of collaborative, hybrid artistic practice to see how we can pool these resources to continue to support artists to experiment and take risks.

A vital source of soft power

Jointly investing in creating opportunity and developing the talents of young people is important. We recently piloted a skills and training programme Reframe, supported by Apple. It is a partnership between Southbank Centre, Manchester’s Factory International, and Birmingham’s STEAMhouse and Midlands Arts Centre.  

It supported 77 young emerging artists from global majority backgrounds to develop their creative and production skills, resulting not just in an extraordinary film installation presented across three cities, but in a cohort of skilled, confident and networked younger artists, many of whom now have their first foothold in the industry. 

While any one of the partners may have delivered a version of the project, its value was exponentially enhanced by sharing resources, knowledge and expertise. We have to try to ensure that all young people get the opportunities many of us benefited from. 

It’s heartening to see investment in cultural education, skills and training coming to the forefront of political strategies and manifestos as the General Election approaches. I’d urge even more ambition from local and national leaders too, including exploring the idea of culture passes for young people – successfully trialled across the world – that go some way to compensating for the paucity of exposure to arts and culture in schools.

Readers of Arts Professional will need no persuading of the benefits of arts and culture. They provide purpose and meaning, help us explore new worlds and connect us deeply to our emotions. They combat loneliness and improve health outcomes, they expand horizons and build empathy, they create careers and make people more employable. 

The strength of arts and culture in London is intrinsically tied up with the identity of this great city and culture remains our global calling card, a vital source of soft power. We must work harder together to ensure these benefits do not slip through our fingers, denying future generations the life-changing opportunities arts and culture brings.  

Mark Ball is Artistic Director of Southbank Centre. 
 southbankcentre.co.uk/
@southbankcentre