No political party is talking about the arts. Here’s what needs to be done

As we prepare to go to the polls, my brain has begun to shut down. I am now immune to certain phrases, such as “number one priority”; pledges to fix the NHS, immigration, the economy and housing ring increasingly hollow in my ears. I might have perked up had our political parties made a rallying cry to sort out the crisis in British arts and culture. But no leader has yet convinced me that they really care.

I know what many readers will say: that the arts are not the NHS, and no-one will die if an arts centre in north Hertfordshire is suddenly faced with closure. But, as I have said before, this attitude is tone-deaf. The arts affect everyone, and infuse every corner of our life, from education to health and wellbeing. If you prefer cold, hard facts, the creative industries contributed £126 billion to the economy in 2022, and employed 2.4 million people. So why is no politician banging this particular drum? And why, in the parties’ manifestos, is information on their cultural plans so scant?

In the Conservative document, we don’t get to the creative sector until page 69, in the penultimate section, and they lead with a nebulous promise about a dedicated apprenticeship scheme. While their promise to make the BBC more accountable is welcome, it feels as though a lot remains missing. Labour fare slightly better, given that they’re committed to children studying creative subjects until they are 16, and plan a National Music Education Network, which will offer information on courses for parents and children. But their manifesto is light on detail.

The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, want to “establish creative enterprise zones”, which sounds painful. And as for Reform, they don’t mention culture at all, which is remiss. (Even the Animal Welfare Party have talked about culture, with its leader Vanessa Hudson telling The Art Newspaper that the sector can “allow people a better understanding of the challenges faced by UK wildlife as the climate and ecological emergencies take hold”.)

I never fancied a career in politics – the long hours, the surgeries, the fruitless quest to “make a difference” – but I would like to offer some suggestions regarding how to improve Britain’s cultural sector. After all, someone has to. Here are five.

Reform the Arts Council, but don’t dismantle it.

I’ve been highly critical of Arts Council England over the past few years, not least due to their callous disregard of the opera and classical music sector. (Note that the arts have suffered catastrophic cuts, too, in Labour-controlled Wales.) A review, led by Baroness Archer, has been halted due to the election, but this has to resume, in order to weed out the ideologues within ACE: their “Let’s Create” strategy, which promotes participation in favour of excellence, has caused irreparable damage. We need ACE, but its view on culture must change.

Embrace philanthropy.

This always causes anxiety, particularly from the Left, and it’s true that a move to the American model, in which the arts must pay for themselves, is unthinkable. (While Wigmore Hall has future-proofed itself against a loss of subsidy, it has a fund of around £7 million that most other organisations can only dream of.) But in the absence of major central funding, something no party is offering, arts patronage can help to boost our creative industries. And on that score, the problem is political, with every major donor now raising the ire of Left-wing activists. If we can’t find reputationally clean sponsors, we must extend our tolerance to those who, within reason, are not.

Promote international collaboration.

Admittedly, some parties have brought up the idea of working with the European Union regarding the travel that’s so crucial for those in the creative sector, such as musicians and visual artists – and which has, since Brexit, become a bureaucratic nightmare. We need to push further, though, and make bilateral agreements with other countries that would remove all such barriers.

Reap the rewards of Amazon and Netflix.

We all know that the creative sector is becoming, increasingly, a place of haves and have-nots. At the height of the pandemic, the director Sam Mendes called on the streaming giants to invest in Britain’s arts scene. I’ve seen little evidence of this. If the Government were to share in the profits of successful shows that streamers have made in the UK, we would have a new source of revenue, and allow those art forms which suffer financially, such as theatre, to no longer be seen as the poor relation.

Review local authority funding.

In the past year, we’ve seen a lot of deeply distressing news stories about cuts to local arts scenes, as various councils from Birmingham and Nottingham to Suffolk have faced financial ruin. The Arts Council – once it has been reformed – needs to move money away from those meaningless arts groups it loves too much. (These seem to involve a lot of very bad agit-prop theatre.) It should then redistribute that cash to the local arts sector, where venues such as the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Nottingham Playhouse offer examples of both artistic and civic importance.

The old rationale around Britain’s two main parties is that the Tories are nasty and Labour are the good guys, bountifully promising handouts to every artistic soul in the land. Yet the latter’s manifesto is devoid of any promises that will reassure those who work in the sector, and who’ve been left reeling by what’s happened in the past few years. Should the musically talented Starmer become our prime minister next week, he’s going to have to do much better.