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Dateline:
11th November, 2007
 |
| John
Tusa, chair of the report panel |
Tory Report Suggests a New Funding Approach
The major national companies such as the RSC and the National Theatre
should be funded directly by the government and not through the Arts
Council, the Conservative Party’s Arts Taskforce has recommended.
Further recommendations are:
- that the restructured ACE be coordinated by a slimmed down central
office adopting a role for the development and promotion of technology
in the arts world; for giving advice and demonstrating best practice
in fund- raising and charity legislation; and as broker for increasing
project co-operation on the arts with local authorities and other
bodies. It should aim to maximise the impact of the funds available
for the arts through all the agencies
- a true Department of Culture be established, comprising the arts,
heritage, media and the larger part of the creative industries. Sport
should be transferred to a separate office as is standard practice
internationally, where we believe that it too would benefit from direct
ministerial focus... Although the new Department of Culture would
be comparatively small in terms of overall budget, its new status
would properly reflect the defining importance of culture to national
life as well as its spin-off economic and social benefits. The Secretary
of State for Culture must be a member of the Cabinet
- the introduction of new tax incentives for corporate giving and
private giving. For individual donations above £5000 we recommend
an incentive in which all the benefit goes to the donor. We also need
to introduce new tax deductions for companies. In the US there is
an income tax deduction of 100% of the value of gifts in cash or works
of art. In France a 90% rate for corporations and a 66% for individuals.
We cannot continue to ignore these international comparisons.
- a strong cultural element should be introduced to Local Authority
performance assessments. The “Culture Block” in the Comprehensive
Performance Assessment (CPA) used to establish the effectiveness of
local authority performance must include significant acknowledgement
of the importance of the performing and visual arts. As things stand,
the Culture Block is really about leisure and lifestyle not the arts
- the Treasury’s current three year funding settlement should
be increased to five years. The arts should demand and expect a degree
of certainty in the level of government funding. The arts should be
given a consistent level of expenditure over a longer period of time,
with automatic annual inflationary adjustments. Spending settlements
should be agreed and announced well in advance of the date of implementation
- no further Arts and Heritage Lottery funds be diverted to pay for
the 2012 Olympics; that the arts and heritage continue to benefit
from their current proportion of Lottery good cause funding
- there should be an entitlement to culture for all young people:
all young people must be enabled to attend cultural events as part
of their schooling, and all young people should have easy and affordable
access to advanced training in their special discipline, should they
choose to pursue one
Jeremy Hunt, shadow culture secretary, commented, "The arts taskforce
have put together a comprehensive and ambitious document and have brought
a wealth of expertise and fresh thinking to arts policy. We’re
very grateful for all their work putting this report together. In it
there are many proposals that would reform the arts, some we support,
some are aspirational, and some, such as the plans to move sport out
of the DCMS, are not something we would support.
"However, as the first Party since the last election to undertake
such a wide-ranging, independent review of the arts, this document will
set the agenda for a wide debate about future Arts policy."
The report panel was chaired by former Barbican Centre managing director
John Tusa, who said, "The choice is simple – either to continue
the same old guerrilla warfare over the same old issues, with the same
old minimal results. Or to take a broader view whose working assumption
is that the benefits to be released by a more generous, open minded
approach to the arts can yield benefits to society as a whole that far
outweigh any increase in costs. We believe the recommendations in this
report can contribute to such a result."
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