Mixed messages on cuts

“We should not be afraid to be self critical”, said Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Arts, speaking at the State of the Arts conference this week. Issuing a rallying cry to the sector, he called on arts organisations to look at how they run themselves, how they spend their money and how they promote themselves to the world. He was clear that the arts need to “make a robust instrumental case for arts funding” without compromising their core mission or artistic purpose, and added that “the arts should not be afraid of saying that they shape good citizens and a good society”. But conference speaker Ivan Lewis MP, Shadow Culture Secretary, who described himself as “new to this”, told delegates that “Arts organisations cannot be immune from the difficult choices which are necessary to reduce the deficit”. He nonetheless accused the government of showing “a cynical indifference to the cumulative impact of cuts being made by a variety of public bodies”, and took the opportunity to criticise Arts Minister Ed Vaizey – as Vaizey had predicted he would. He also accused Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt of being “the keenest cutter in the Cabinet”. Nice alliteration aside, Lewis did not use his time to suggest what Labour would have done if it were still in power, and failed to provide a coherent description of the Opposition’s plans for culture or for cuts. He said: “It is time for all those who care about the arts, irrespective of their own organisation’s status, to speak out against the scale and impact of the cuts on both excellence and access”. He called for a “covenant” in the arts where larger organisations could help smaller ones, but it remains to be seen if this becomes an official Opposition policy, or how it would work following the announcement of Arts Council England’s new portfolio of organisations.