There has been a lot of recent chatter in the media about “pay restoration”, a concept that was largely unknown even a couple of years ago. While junior (recently re-christened as resident) doctors might have been in the vanguard, those working in other industries were not too far behind in seeking a return to fairness.
For anyone who is still unaware of this concept, it relates to resident doctors and others who have been treated badly, effectively losing out as inflation has spiralled but their pay has not. Most readers will have great sympathy for anyone whose standard of living has diminished due to inflation. Ironically, those who have fared best in recent years are pensioners, since they have benefited from the remarkably generous “triple lock”.
As Lisa Nandy begins to get to grips with her brief as Culture Secretary, she has outlined some ambitions in an article published in The Guardian which took up her speech at the Labour Party Conference. In that light, the language may be different but theatre folk would welcome and strongly advocate their own equivalent to pay restoration, so waited with bated breath.
It is a sad fact that, over the last 15 years, those in the arts have seen funding trashed by an unsympathetic government that was intent on austerity. Arts Council England and its equivalents across the United Kingdom have been helpless to protect themselves from diminution in central funding. That is only part of the story, since carving up the cake has caused great controversy, with highly respected theatres losing some or all of their funding in cash terms, meaning that once inflation is taken into account, they have suffered terribly.
It will come as no surprise to learn that, given the financial constraints that Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have been at pains to bring to the nation’s attention, Lisa Nandy was silent regarding funding, which has to be the main thrust of policy if the arts are to be advanced in future or, in some cases, saved.
Anyone in the cultural industries listening to Ms Reeves will have been aware of an arts lacuna as she talks about protecting funding for the likes of health and education, commentators observing that the only way that this can be achieved within her strict parameters will be by cutting other services. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that one of the less controversial services to cut would be our own.
Readers shouldn’t, however, be condemned to unremitting doom and gloom, since Lisa Nandy does offer some positive projections, presumably having already cleared her interview with Numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street. Like the Prime Minister, she is eager to revive arts education so that schoolchildren have a genuine opportunity to sample a variety of artistic areas, with the hope that they will become hooked and some will choose creative careers as a result.
Realistically, this must be regarded as a long-term project that will only come to fruition in a decade or more. First, schools have been denuded of the resources to teach music, drama and other creative subjects to the point where it may take several years to recruit the necessary teachers, as well as find space and equipment. Having done that, one imagines that the first cohort of children coming into the scheme will need 5 to 10 years to become totally hooked and adept enough to pursue their love professionally.
The second string to Ms Nandy’s bow (obviously the violinist’s rather than archer’s version) is a natural fit for somebody from the North West. She is keen to ensure that the arts are not merely a London preserve and spread across the country.
This is a highly commendable desire but should come with a public health warning. The dreaded Nadine Dorries, quite possibly the worst arts minister in living memory, also sought to share the arts more widely. Unfortunately, her way of doing so was to defund fantastic London organisations such as the English National Opera with the goal of either forcing them to relocate to an area that had no desire to take them on or merely allow them to die, so that a little more funding could be offered in the regions.
Coming back to the start of this article, the dream scenario has to be a funding restoration to 2010 levels. This would enable the arts to thrive. If anyone (including Ms Nandy) has doubts about whether this is needed, a cry for help from Summerhall Arts, one of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe’s most successful venues, cogently highlights the parlous state of culture.
Referring to “an increasingly unstable arts funding climate”… “Summerhall Arts make urgent appeal to the public for financial support to help preserve the future of artistic and cultural events in the iconic venue”. This message could apply equally to dozens or even hundreds of theatres up and down the country. With crumbling buildings and diminishing revenues, many are struggling to stay open, let alone present exceptional artistic work.
There is no doubt that significantly improving the position would cost the Exchequer a reasonable amount of money, but in the overall scheme of things, it is a drop in the ocean.
Looked at in the round, a modest investment will undoubtedly keep kids off the streets, promote the Nirvana of growth and, in the longer term, could easily be cash positive by feeding stage, film and TV production and boosting exports, especially if the government combines this with other positive projects such as negotiating a sensible compromise with the EU, enabling touring artists to ply their trade much more widely.