Public/Private Capital: Arts Funding Cuts and Mixed Economies

Abstract

One of the most obvious links between the state and the arts is funding. This link clearly marks an economic relationship, but it also articulates state and social attitudes to the importance of the arts, to social responsibility for the arts, to social relations and to society itself. In the United Kingdom, there exists a long and secure history of direct government funding for the arts as part of the formation of the post-war welfare state and its social and ideological commitment to the importance of the arts and to the state’s responsibility to support its citizenry by facilitating their access to participating in the arts, as audiences and makers. This chapter explores ways that this longstanding relationship between the state, the arts and people may be shifting. And if Chapter 2 focused on New Labour’s ‘carrot’ approach to encouraging enterprise in the arts as creative, this chapter focuses on what looks dangerously like a ‘stick’ approach under the Conservative-led coalition government, where the apparent option of a neoliberalization of the arts looks increasingly less optional.

Earlier versions of parts of this chapter were presented at the Irish Theatre History Conference, Archives, Historiography, Politics — Ten Years On — Performance, Memory, Futures, at the National University of Ireland, Galway, 25–26 November, 2011 (Harvie, 2011b); at the TaPRA Postgraduate Symposium on Theatre and Alternative Value on 28 January, 2012 (Harvie, 2012a); to the Department of Film, Theatre and Television, University of Reading, 9 February, 2012 (Harvie, 2012b); and at the conference ‘Subsidy, Patronage & Sponsorship: Theatre and Performance Culture in Uncertain Times’ at the V&A in collaboration with the University of Reading, 21 July, 2012 (Harvie 2012c). My thanks to my hosts in all these contexts, including, in Galway, Lionel Pilkington, Patrick Lonergan and Shelley Troupe; at the TaPRA symposium, Adam Alston, Virginia Elgar and Michael Pearce; and at the University of Reading, Simone Knox, Faye Woods, Graham Saunders and John Bull. Thanks also to other delegates for constructive feedback in those contexts.