UNBOXED: Was it worth it?

An irresponsible use of public money, as described by the DCMS Select Committee, or an unprecedented cross-sector collaboration of creativity in the UK?

The debate over the rights and wrongs of spending £120m on an eight-month programme of events rumbles on following the publication of the National Audit Office's investigation into how taxpayer's money was used.

But the events of the past month, with Arts Council England's (ACE) funding decisions for 2023-26 causing pain for numerous valued arts and culture organisations across the country, casts it in a new light.

The NAO report rightly points out that audience numbers, whether that be in person or online, have broadly been in line with expectation and that the net value to the economy has likely been positive.

However, the raw facts and figures don't go any way to quantifying the intrinsic value of art and culture or broaching the central question. Was it worth it? 

The problem with grand political gestures – in this case from the then Tory Prime Minister Theresa May in 2018 and later dubbed "Festival of Brexit" by Jacob Rees-Mogg – is that the costs never seem to be covered by central government. More often than not the delivering department, in this case DCMS, picks up the tab.

Did the money set aside for it have a knock-on impact on DCMS budgets and ultimately result in less money for ACE? According to the government's own figures, in 2020/21 ACE recieved £1.05bn. In 2021/22 this was down to £868m – a reduction of £182m. 

Surely the question that any probe must ask is what impact the money allocated for UNBOXED had on wider budgets and what value it delivered.

It would be a bitter irony if a festival originally conceived to celebrate the UK’s departure from the EU had led to a depletion of arts funding in the UK.

With so many organisations now facing the prospect of restructuring or winding down, could that money have been better spent?