Image Credit: Wikipedia, 2024
Even among committed optimists, in which camp I usually try to count myself, there will be those struggling in the dark days of January to find any straws to clutch at as we anticipate the next moves of the Labour Government in 2025. The most recent sobering news was the unprecedented drop (outside of the pandemic) in sector economic activity since July, as analysed by the actors’ union Equity.
While a number of Budget measures were welcomed including the continuation of tax breaks, increased capital spending and a renewed focus on promoting creative careers, the NICs increase impact on the charitable sector (and outsourced local government services) hardly helps balance the books. But the scale of the crisis after fourteen years of decay and latterly distraction with culture warring, still desperately awaits signs of a strategic response from Labour. Will this come in the Industrial Strategy in which the creative industries are cited as one pillar? The proposed culture and creative industries review is expected to put flesh on this, but the paucity of detail in the Labour manifesto has barely been built on yet by Lisa Nandy, Chris Bryant or colleagues in education, local government and beyond. Even before that, DCMS has announced its revamp of the aborted review of Arts Council England, so how these strategic reviews will align is crucial.
Meanwhile, the foundations on which the sector is built continue to crumble. The recent State of the Arts report from Warwick University was just one of the starkest illustrations of how deep the crisis is across almost every metric. While some may be tempted to heap all the blame at national, devolved and local level on the previous UK administration, it’s clear from the situation in Wales and Scotland (despite the recent announcement of an arts uplift in both devolved nations) and various parts of England, that making an argument for investment in the arts is struggling everywhere. As the State of the Arts report revealed, the UK investment in arts, already languishing low on the league table, was among only a small group of nations to cut culture in the period 2010-2024. In a series of blogs we’ll be looking at some of the fundamental challenges the Government faces in rebuilding the cultural sector, starting with local government.
The additional resources for local government from the Budget (plus a relaxation of the cap on council tax increases) were a finger in the dyke at best and will immediately be swallowed up by SEND and ASC. Further devolution and local government reorganisation this year will be the government’s main answer to the crisis, focusing on better supporting areas of higher need. Of course there will inevitably be losers as well as winners from this. But in the meantime, beyond the headline-grabbing councils which have mismanaged investments or legal battles, a swathe of normally functional authorities are on the verge of bankruptcy and have exhausted their reserves. That cushion, which mitigated the worst negligence of central government is gone and so much of the pain in discretionary services, and those we might term ‘discretionary’ statutory services, like public libraries, is still to come, and we are starting to see such plans coming through.
In one sense it is obviously true that public libraries are not being singled out. But even looking at the headline figures, libraries suffered a 47% drop in real terms since 2010 compared to 23% across local government, and it’s likely the gap between top and bottom deciles has widened significantly, with the result that a huge disparity in provision exists between better resourced services while their peers are hacked to the bone. A thoughtful piece by the director of the Bodleian Library, Richard Ovenden, urging the government not to drop its predecessor’s plan for a national library strategy, pointed out that public libraries should not be seen in isolation from research and HE libraries like his own. Indeed in many cities, university and public library services are working more closely together for this benefit of all, a model surely to be encouraged further, though of course many universities are currently on the verge of bankruptcy themselves.
A sad irony of the current situation is that for two decades now, local councils which believed in public libraries, but wanted to face the realities of changing use and demographics, have faced such resistance that even moving a single library has often proven politically unpalatable, let alone closing one. Now councils are being forced to take much more drastic action from a less strong position.
Will Lisa Nandy finally draw a line? There is no sign that DCMS is interested in exercising its powers to intervene in any council’s plans to change or reduce library services. (Remember that the 1964 Public Libraries Act even (rather laughably) contains a provision for the SoS to take over the running of failing library services!) On the contrary, the message seems to be, as long as you consult meaningfully and carry out a needs assessment and EQIA, then it’s up to your local community to challenge you in the courts. Just before Christmas Libraries Connected published very sensible guidance for library services in this position.
The reality is that many councils are now planning parallel consultations across multiple service areas which imply a radical retreat from some communities. The prevailing survival strategy accelerates moves to co-location models for better-used sites with smaller branches in areas of need retained on a shoe-string, leaving local demand to pick up remaining branches through community-managed models. The situation across civic museums, arts and heritage is even more critical with little protection beyond the shrinking value of current ACE funding streams.
In the recent House of Lords debate a parade of speakers berated the new government for doing little for the arts. One of the more tin-eared contributions came from former arts minister Ed Vaizey, reflecting that in his time no one in the arts lobby would ever countenance a museum or theatre closure, opining that it was time for a bit of ‘M and A’ in the sector. As the excellent Birkbeck-based Museums Mapping project shows, in fact, churn in the museum population since 2000 has continued apace with 467 closures. Though even more museums have opened, it is in the local authority sector where closures have been most damaging, and in areas of higher deprivation. There was little joy for civic museums or arts in the budget, amid fresh news of threats of closure to several local museums.
The LGA recently published infographics illustrating the complexity of the funding environment for culture. Tellingly, these infographics speak to the humbled status of local authorities in this landscape. Once the lynchpin of local funding, they appear little more than a small object in a massive constellation of competing bodies. Bryant calls for new models for philanthropy to spread investment across the country. A laudable aim, but one echoed by ministers for decades with little tangible result.
The wheeze of the 2010s, to move more civic cultural services into charitable trusts has, in a few cases, brought a new entrepreneurialism, but has hardly been a game-changer. The trend has largely run its course now that the NNDR benefits have been reduced and the perilous position of some new trusts has been revealed since the pandemic. Meanwhile councils’ preference for co-location and local partnerships makes sharing across local authority boundaries increasingly complex. A bolder model of local government reorganisation, which is anticipated, might unlock greater synergies but would again only offer jam tomorrow.
Combined authorities are flexing their muscles across the cultural landscape, and if devolution is to be further broadened and deepened this may represent the best way forward for maximising and sustaining investment within the sector while repairing some of damage done to the creative skills base and cultural learning. Hopefully the government will resist the temptation to serve more meagre gruel via competitive funding rounds which have been so invidious and wasteful in recent years, most recently through the poorly administered Levelling Up funds.
But while the UK still boasts immense depth and unique creative talent from individual practitioners, community and volunteer groups to great institutions, it feels like other countries, particularly in Europe, are currently better at investing in their cultural assets and nurturing creative professionals, both now and for future generations (notwithstanding the shocking prospect of that cultural utopia, Berlin, announcing cuts to its arts budget). If the UK doesn’t take action soon, the relative damage will be felt for decades. During 2025 we’ll be taking a look at some cities which have caught our eye, starting with Barcelona.
Dr Andrew Holden is an Associate Director at Activist Group, and a Visiting Researcher in the School of Arts, Oxford Brookes University. Recent publications include ‘A slice of operatic life in London’s East End’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies 26/1 (2021) ‘Italian Musical Migration to London’; ‘From Heaven and Hell to the Grail Hall via Sant’Andrea della Valle: religious identity and the internationalisation of operatic styles in Liberal Italy’ in Körner and Kühls (eds.), Italian Opera in Global and Transnational Perspective: Reimagining Italianità in the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022). He is currently working on a co-edited volume about censorship in the contemporary opera industry.
Andrew Holden is an Associate Director with Activist Group. The views expressed in this blog are his own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Activist.