The “overarching objective of public coverage ought to be to extend happiness”, writes Darren Henley, the chief government of Arts Council England (ACE), in his newest iteration of The Arts Dividend: How Funding in Tradition Creates Happier Lives. Why, then, are the humanities in England so depressing, and equally depressing beneath their respective jurisdictions in Scotland, Wales and Northern Eire?
Henley has been answerable for ACE, the principal supply of public arts funding in England, for the previous ten years. That is the third version, considerably revised and introduced updated, of a publication first launched in 2016 after which 2020. His mannequin is J.B. Priestley’s English Journey of 1934, however there may be nothing right here of Priestley’s extreme account of the Despair. The delicate hyperlink between the 2 is that Henley travels so much for his job. He claims to have seen extra artwork than anybody else in England.
Throughout this time of actual disaster within the publicly funded arts, which started with the launch of austerity in 2010, he has additionally discovered time to review at Middlesex College, Henley Enterprise College and Buckinghamshire New College, the place his topic was utilized constructive psychology. Henley is completely constructive in his account of the publicly funded arts, museums and libraries which can be his accountability. After an introduction that brings his copy updated and makes even handed and respectful references to ACE’s chairman, Nicholas Serota, to previous Conservative politicians and current Labour ones, he devotes a number of chapters to the dividends of funding within the arts: creativity, alternative, happiness, innovation, place-shaping, enterprise and repute.
Austerity the elephant within the room
As conveyed by Henley, these ideas are so bland that few folks would disagree with them. Creativity seems to be extra concerning the want for range; alternative is about cultural schooling; happiness is concerning the arts and well being; innovation warns the humanities towards dropping out to new applied sciences; place-shaping is about regeneration; enterprise addresses the inventive industries; and repute is the product of constant funding. Proof for these advantages is drawn from the initiatives, performances, exhibitions and libraries he has visited on his travels.
His account bears nearly no relation to the current dire situation of the humanities—one that’s each day getting worse. He writes in reward of cultural schooling, however makes no point out of the EBacc, the “reform” launched in 2011 that excludes artwork and design topics from the suite of common certificates of schooling the federal government expects college students in England and Wales to take. Arts topics nonetheless exist, however participation since 2010 has fallen by 47% at GCSE stage and 29% at A stage, with a corresponding decline within the variety of lecturers. Whereas the 6.5% or so of kids who attend fee-paying faculties are lavished with entry to the humanities, the 93.5% in state faculties have steadily been starved, making the humanities a privilege of the wealthy.
On the brink
Whereas Henley does point out Covid-19, and the £1.6bn in tradition restoration funding that saved the humanities from nearly whole destruction, there isn’t any point out of the 30% minimize that was imposed on ACE after the change of presidency in 2010, nor of the 25% minimize made to the Division for Tradition, Media and Sport the identical 12 months. At current, 2,800 arts organisations are carrying a mixed deficit of £117.8m. ACE-funded organisations are closing or vulnerable to doing so, nationwide and native museums and galleries are in deficit and shedding workers, and public libraries are shutting their doorways. Native authority arts funding has halved, and in some locations been minimize altogether. The British Council, liable for selling British arts overseas, is in such a poor state that its chief government has warned that it might disappear within the subsequent ten years. If, as has been steered, it sells off its artwork assortment, native authorities will observe.
None of this appears to be of concern to Henley. He admits the humanities ought to be extra various, that not all kids do in addition to Prince George and Princess Charlotte of their personal college, and that there are “challenges” to funding libraries. However he steers nicely away from controversies reminiscent of ACE’s latest therapy of English Nationwide Opera. And wherever doable, the connection of ACE—and certainly himself—to the matter in hand is talked about. Commonplace and complacent, this e book is dangerously irrelevant to the disaster the humanities face.
• The Arts Dividend: How Funding in Tradition Creates Happier Lives, by Darren Henley, printed by Elliott & Thompson, 240pp, £12.99 (pb), revised version 30 January