Thursday, 7 October 2010

Leech Upset At Attempts To Remove It With Lighted Cigarette

Nicholas Serota (currently director of the Tate, formerly director of the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford and the Whitechapel Art Gallery) on the terrible unfairness of the government attempting to remove his mouthparts from the taxpayer leg:
'The idea that you can cut a £180bn deficit by slicing money out of the budget of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport is frankly absurd." The words of an arts bureaucrat, theatre director, artist or writer with a special case to plead? No: Nick Clegg's, in the election campaign.
And here comes ‘an arts bureaucrat with a special case to plead’ to agree with him!
Now his coalition wants cuts for culture and sport, over the next four years, of between 25% and 30% – the greatest crisis in the arts and heritage since government funding began in 1940.
Oh, noes! The philistines! Disaster!
Of course, cuts are inevitable, but it is the size and pace that we challenge. Cuts on this scale cannot be absorbed by "efficiency savings" alone, they must inevitably result in a much smaller number of galleries and theatres, fewer chances for young people to broaden their experience of life, and a savage reduction in support for individual writers, artists and composers.
Well, better them than plumbers, bus drivers, nurses, etc, surely?
At a time when demand for theatre, music and dance has been rising, arts organisations will have to reduce their activities across the board.
Hey, if demand really is rising, put up your prices accordingly! The punters will pay, won’t they?

Ah. I see:
In some cases a vicious circle of declining audiences and reduced corporate and private benefaction will result in a slow, painful death because the core public subsidy is insufficient to sustain the halo of earned income and donations that we have all become adept at gaining.
It seems they won’t pay.

Oh, well. Too bad. It’s not like you are some kind of vital services, is it, Nicholas?

Oh, what’s that? You are?
In the 90s a hard-hitting BBC Newsnight report on Salford showed old people terrified to leave their homes because of the threat of attacks by roving gangs. In 1997 work on a new arts centre began with the aim of raising the cultural profile of the city and bringing new business and tourism into the area.
Wooohoo!

Sod extra police and harsh sentences for offenders! What we need to make old ladies feel safe at night is more mimes!
Many West End productions and much of the talent have been developed in the public sector. Take a show such as Enron. Headlong (an Arts Council-funded touring company) commissioned the writer, Lucy Prebble, and worked in partnership with Chichester Theatre to shape the play. It was then co-produced by the Royal Court, subsequently went on to the West End, and is now touring on an entirely commercial basis.
Great! What’s the return on our ‘investment’ then? There has been one, I take it?
The coalition cannot intend to abandon the principles that have brought culture to millions. A 10-15% cut in cash terms over four years would be a challenge of the kind that arts organisations regularly surmount; more than this will threaten the whole ecosystem, cutting off the green shoots with the dead wood, reducing the number of plays and exhibitions, discouraging innovation, risk and experiment and threatening the ability of organisations to earn or raise money for themselves. You don't prune a tree by cutting at its roots.
But if there’s a tree in the way that threatens to undermine your foundations and starve all the other plants by reducing their access to water and sunlight, you do cut it down.

Because there’s no shortage of trees…

11 comments:

  1. There should be NO funding for the arts. If people want it they will pay for it - Period.
    What bollocks

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  2. Arty types are all screwballs. Which we finance.

    So perhaps we are the screwballs...

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  3. Re Salford and the victimised old ladies: couldn't the gangs just cut out the middleman and beat up the mime artists instead?*

    You might even get a paying audience.

    Seriously, though, there is unprecedented demand for theatre, music and dance out there - in the form of parents willing and able to pay for lessons and workshops for their children.

    It's hard work and you won't get rich, but at least it would relieve the state of some of the burden of supporting you - it's ironic that many of these subsidised artists etc would doubtless look down on the women who have hordes of children on state benefits.

    Incidentally, some also look down on the many artists actually earning their own living, sneering at their 'commercialism'..

    Some of the greatest writers, artists and composers in history have managed to fit their work in with the necessity to earn an honest crust; subsidies have produced a return to the system of artistic patronage, substituting the State for the Grand Duke/Emperor/whatever.

    In what way could that ever be described as a Good Thing?

    *which would be a great day for fans of Vetinari.

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  4. Arts funding is a drop in the ocean of the deficit. That is true. The real reason I object to it is that it skews the market and the level of entitlement people have over it. In short it's the principle of it.

    Consider a thought experiment...

    I want to put on a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta and stuffed. If I want to do an installation show George W Bush eating Iraqi babies and farting CO2 then I'm on the gravy train because twats from Hoxton with pondering gatees will consider the former terribly reactionary and the later a piece of progressive genius.

    Most modern arts stuff is complete wank. Let the market decide! If the bien pensant middle classes want to oh and ah at it with an Indy rolled under their arm then they can knock themselves out.

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  5. What we need to make old ladies feel safe at night is more mimes!

    Surely you remember how awful it was in 1983 when there was the Mimers' Strike?

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  6. . You don't prune a tree by cutting at its roots.

    You do if it is a Bonsai tree. In fact for that you HAVE to prune the roots. Makes them smaller, but JUST as good to look at and equally as efficient.

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  7. AntiCitizenOne - I'd offer you my B Ark, but it's already full of aspiring Big Brother housemates.

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  8. But what are the odds that the example he uses of a successful publicly-funded show would be 'Enron'?

    Yep, a show about sleazy kapitalist pig dog Texans. What are the odds of ever seeing a show called 'McRuin' about a slippery Scottish git that sinks a whole country?

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  9. "There should be NO funding for the arts."

    I'm inclined to agree.

    "It's hard work and you won't get rich..."

    That, I suspect, is the problem.

    "The real reason I object to it is that it skews the market and the level of entitlement people have over it."

    Oh, this column positively oozes entitlement.

    "Surely you remember how awful it was in 1983 when there was the Mimers' Strike?"

    *groan*

    "But what are the odds that the example he uses of a successful publicly-funded show would be 'Enron'? "

    Yes, I looked it up. I can't see it being a West End smash hit, myself...

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