Notes on the new culture white paper

The government has released a new white paper on culture and the arts – something that should be welcomed, since there hasn’t been anything on the subject for decades.

Not only are the arts and culture crucial for general wellbeing and a positive force in terms of education and development, they are hugely important for the economy of the UK – and not just in London.

But where the white paper could have been a positive force, even a quick reading illustrates that it’s full of empty promises, with words such as “support” and “encourage” rendered meaningless by lack of commitments on funding (even though it specifically quotes the Prime Minister as an enthusiast of “public-funded” arts and culture) and by the government’s own policies on, say, education, where it fully intends to remove all schools from having to teach the national curriculum that this paper says has importance to culture and arts.

The devil is always in the detail – or the lack thereof. So here goes, with an analysis of approximately half of the document in question.

On page 5, in the introduction by Ed Vaizey, the minister of state for culture, communications and creative industries, it states: “The increased appetite for culture was evident after Culture Secretary Chris Smith introduced free admission to museums in 2001.”

This is disingenuous, since 2001 saw a re-introduction of free admission.

The 1980s had seen attacks on cultural public spending, and pressures from the Conservative government of the day to introduce admission saw many museums and galleries do so.

Those that didn’t – including the British Museum, the Tate and the National Gallery – saw visitor numbers rise, while some that introduced charging saw substantial declines. The V&A introduced a £5 admission in 1997 and saw visitor numbers halved. (1)

And post-2001, the white paper says, that was repeated as, “in the next decade, visitor numbers soared” when admission fees were dropped.

The paper quotes Chancellor George Osborne in his last autumn statement as saying that our “creative industries are ... ‘one of the best investments we can make as a nation’.” So let's look for the investment.

It invokes the Bard, while Mr Vaizey himself also notes that it will “look at how culture can be used in place-making – and if ever a town was shaped by culture it is Stratford-on-Avon, where every year Shakespeare brings 4.9 million visitors to the town”. This is perhaps unfortunate, given what is happening in the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ – and not least Lancaster (2), where most museums are on the cusp of closure as a direct result of cuts to local government funding, even as the city tries to utilise its own extraordinary heritage to draw visitors in.

The introduction notes that: “When we look at new models for funding, we find that our experience with Shakespeare shows us the way. In Barking a community-focussed outdoor production of The Merchant of Venice is being crowdfunded to the tune of £80,000 and has raised £25,000 from a local property company”.

Yet only a few pages earlier, the first words in the white paper, after the contents, are:

“If you believe in publicly-funded arts and culture as I passionately do, then you must also believe in equality of access, attracting all, and welcoming all.

“Rt Hon David Cameron MP”

“Publicly-funded arts and culture” now appears to have a new definition – crowdfunding (which requires disposable income) and gifts from business.

On page 8, it states: “Everyone should enjoy the opportunities culture offers, no matter where they start in life.

“We will put in place measures to increase participation in culture, especially among those who are currently excluded from the opportunities that culture has to offer.

“In particular, we will ensure that children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are inspired by and have new meaningful relationships with culture.”

It’s difficult to imagine that anyone would disagree with this.

The document explains that the new apprenticeships levy will mean that “our larger cultural organisations” will be expected to “take on apprentices and promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace.” Expectation, though, does not mean anything to back it up.

Funded bodies will need to publish strategies for increased access (which will cost them resources, of course).

On page 9, it states that the government will work with various bodies to promote culture as good for wellbeing, while a “new £40 million Discover England fund will showcase” the new programmes, including UK City of Culture, the Great Exhibition of the North.

It’s simply unfortunate that, at the same time, Lancashire County Council (as just one example) is planning on axing “40 libraries, five museums and two adult education centres”.

These include the cuts impacting on Lancaster, plus many, many more, including Blackpool tram maintenance, which will presumably not be good for an area that is already seriously struggling. (3)

All the subsequent talk of “new cultural partnerships” and a “Great Place scheme” and “Heritage Action Zones in England” is meaningless in the face of such devastating cuts and losses.

“We will encourage councils and owners to make empty business premises available to cultural organisations on a temporary basis.”

Because “cultural organisations” can just spring up suddenly and take over such premises and put something on without any other resources that require financing. Oh, wait – that’s where the crowdfunding and business patronage come in (not the PM’s “publicly-funded” bit, you note).

“Technology offers many opportunities to bring our culture to many more people in many different ways. We will work with our cultural institutions to make the UK one of the world’s leading countries for digitised public collections and use of technology to enhance the online experience of users.”

You won’t be able to look at anything in the flesh, but we’re going to digitise Lancaster’s collections so that you can look at them online after the museums are closed (it won’t help the city itself – unless you have to pay to view – and it’ll create and sustain bugger all in the way of jobs, but whoopy-do! It’s digital!

If this isn’t (an extreme but entirely logical interpretation of) the case, then it’s just more meaningless twaddle. Is there any evidence that people don’t go to museums and galleries because the ‘online digital experience’ isn’t what it could be?

Personally, I never use audio guides or anything other than brief notes when visiting an exhibition etc – because it gets in the way, in my opinion: as do those concentrating on such things rather than the exhibits.

Page 10 sees talk of the UK’s global “soft power” (not the bombs that gave us our “mojo” back) and of building on the “GREAT Britain campaign”, which has “increased investment” (it doesn’t say from where, but this will apparently attract “world-class events to the UK”).

This year, “we will support Shakespeare Lives”, although at no point does it elucidate on what concrete form that government “support” will take.

Page 11 notes that: “We have a successful model of cultural investment in which public funding works alongside earned income, private sector finance and philanthropy. This mixture of income streams provides the basis for a thriving and resilient cultural sector.”

Well, except where the public funding is withdrawn (see Lancashire etc), while it’s difficult to see how the ad hoc nature of the proposal that councils and businesses should loan out empty properties will in any way promote stability and, therefore, quality.

“We will continue to support growth through investment and incentives”. Interesting that it does not mention the public funding that it quotes the Prime Minister stressing.

Of course, there are forms of VAT refunds to help, while a new tax relief for museums and galleries is to be introduced next year (someone tell Lancashire to hang on!)

“We will establish a new Commercial Academy for Culture to improve and spread commercial expertise in the cultural sectors,” because making money is what culture is all about or should be – see, Lancashire: that’s been your problem.

There’ll be a new Private Investment Survey and “tailored reviews” and a “wide-ranging review of the museums sector” ...

The paper makes clear that investment in culture has “enormous economic value” (p13) – “in 2014, the economic contribution of museums, galleries, libraries and the arts was £5.4 billion,” while “heritage tourism accounts for 2% of GDP, contributing £26 billion per year” (p16) and “research by the British Council shows that cultural attractions are the most commonly mentioned factor in terms of what makes the UK an attractive place to visit while the arts was the third most commonly mentioned reason”.

On page 13: “it [the white paper] explains how the government will help to secure the role of culture in our society”.

As a whole, the paper makes much of saying that the arts and culture are important for all and should be available to all. You’ll find absolutely no disagreement here.

It says that all “state-funded schools” must provide a broad and balanced curriculum, nurturing the “spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils”. Again, no disagreement.

Apparently the national curriculum “sets the expectation” that pupils will study cultural subjects. “New, gold-standard GCSEs and A levels have been introduced in these subjects”. (p23)

Unfortunately, since academies and free schools do not have to teach the national curriculum, and all schools are set to be academised ...

In fact, let’s be even clearer. While academies and free schools are subject to that “broad and balanced curriculum”, the funding agreement simply means that “they are required to ensure their curriculum:

“includes English, maths and science;

“includes Religious Education, although the nature of this will depend on whether the school has a faith designation;

“secures access to independent, impartial careers advice for pupils in years 9-11; and

“includes sex and relationship education (SRE).” (4)

On page 22, it says: “The majority of the organisations supported by Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund are committed to working with children and young people, while schemes such as the Family Arts Festival and the Summer Reading Challenge are crucial in introducing young families to their local cultural organisations, especially libraries”.

Excellent. Except where those libraries have closed or are slated to close. See Lancashire – and beyond. As of August 2015, 337 libraries have closed in the UK since 2009-10. (5)

On page 23, we learn that there’s going to be a new “cultural citizens programme” [sic – I don’t know what happened to the possessive apostrophe]. The government will “encourage schools” to use the pupil premium for cultural education, while the Pupil Premium Awards will “highlight the benefits of cultural education”.

This is a close look at just under half the white paper. You can find it all here.

But it should be clear from this that, while the general tone is entirely agreeable, it is nothing to get excited about, for the reasons made very clear above. It’s all sleight of hand; appearing to give (a little) with one hand while removing a lot with the other.

Or perhaps the Bard might have suggested that it was full of a sort of “sound and fury, Signifying nothing”.

Sources

(1)        http://www.museumsassociation.org/campaigns/free-admission-and-the-lottery

(2)        http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/mar/27/lancaster-city-culture-museum-closures?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

(3)        http://www.garstangcourier.co.uk/news/local/revealed-40-libraries-five-museums-and-two-adult-education-centres-among-massive-cuts-announced-by-lancashire-county-council-1-7574160

(4)        https://montrose42.wordpress.com/tag/academies-dont-have-to-teach-the-national-curriculum/

(5) http://schoolsweek.co.uk/nicky-morgan-library-campaign-branded-a-hollow-gesture-after-closures/

Junk culture

Fine in a fritter, but not in the inbox

One of the greatest delights – I use the word loosely – on returning home after any sort of trip away, is the Everest of mail that has accumulated.

Wading through, it’s quickly clear that the overwhelming majority of the pile is utter and complete junk.

When I’m ‘in residence’, the chances are that I’ll unlock the door every evening to find that, if there is anything on the mat, it’ll be yet more junk.

Now I know that the flats stand on the site of a scrap yard, but the amount of crap that lands through the door is just taking the piss.

Given the number of trees that have been sacrificed to tell me that there are special offers at pizza and kebab and fried ‘chicken’ outlets, plus the menus from Indian and Chinese home-delivery takeaways, you could be forgiven for thinking we must be surrounded by them, which is not quite the case.

Is there some sort of equation that balances the number of ‘jobs’ created for people to shove such junk through doors with the impact on the environment of all this printed dross?

Would the economy actually suffer if all this rubbish simply wasn't even printed any more?

Not that it’s just junk food that’s advertised on the junk mail.

We get assorted other offers and opportunities, including quite a few from varied flavours of the God Squad. There may be few old-fashioned churches in the area, but those rather more modern evangelical, all-singing, all-dancing congregations are on the rise, meeting in everything from community centres to former industrial units.

Still, at least if they’re shoving stuff through the door, they’re not actually knocking on it. Although they do that too on occasion.

There are few political callers, even at election time: perhaps they're all too embarrassed.

But junk mail is hardly limited to what comes through the letter box.

I doubt that I’m alone in getting irritated by online junk mail – or spam, as it’s often known. And it’s not limited to stuff appearing in my inbox.

Facebook has become particularly bad, with ‘suggested posts’ cluttering up timelines.

These seem to largely consist in advertising absolute tosh. The ones I get are particularly of the get-very-slim-very-quickly variety.

And I get more, presumably because a bit of software somewhere has noted that I comment on them – which is sort of amusing, because what it appears not to spot is that my approach is of commenting that they’re exploitative, snake oil bullshit.

It frankly astonishes me that these con merchants are even allowed to advertise. I suspect, though, that they’re mostly not based in the UK and are not, therefore, liable to UK laws on protection of consumers.

Still, as long as Facebook is making money out of ‘companies’ exploiting vulnerable people …

And let’s be completely clear about this: the people who will respond are vulnerable. You have to have reached a point of desperation where you’ll try anything to conform to societal expectations that are frequently completely unrealistic and even downright unhealthy to respond to such ads.

You can not, as one advert suggests, lose 30kg of “belly fat” in just a few weeks. That’s something like three of the biggest bags of cat litter I can get – and there are not many people who will be carry that as “belly fat”.

And if they were, no doctor on planet Earth would recommend trying to shed it all in something like three months by taking some crackpot supplement that’s probably about as efficacious as if they were made of the same sawdust that finds its ways into the counterfeit fags that are made in China.

Then there is all the spam for ghastly-looking leggings that apparently “burn calories”. No. No they don’t. That’s as impossible as muscle turning into fat.

How do people get to make such patently false claims – openly and in public, and then charge the vulnerable/gullible? Oh, and it’s fine to say people should exercise personal responsibility, but why not some business responsibility too?

Some businesses that make false claims get dealt with – they get dragged into court and are penalized when trading standards can get hold of them.

Yet patently false, exploitative spam is not merely allowed in social media, it’s foisted onto your personal timeline.

Now I appreciate that Facebook needs to make money – it’s not a charity. And I have no issue with that. But as far as I was aware, it was making money – and plenty of it – before it decided to foist spam on people in this way.

This isn’t about freedom of speech – it’s about patently false advertising claims.

So, what to do about this deluge of crap.

I am wondering whether to put one of those labels on the letterbox at home: the one that says: ‘no unsolicited mail’.

And if I then continue to get flyers from estate agents who desperately want me to let them sell my home, I’ll pop them back in a postbox with a fucking brick attached and the postage unpaid.

But since I use Facebook, in part at least, for work-related matters, it’s not simply a case of stopping using it.

Perhaps Facebook would like to operate a little bit of corporate responsibility, for a change? It’s a nice thought.

And while we’re at it, what about all the free bloody magazines and newspapers?

I actually got on a bus one night in London a few years ago (on the way home from a Divine Comedy gig in Camden, as it happens, with the excellent Duke Special as support) to find that the bus was almost knee deep in discarded such freebies.

Only a few mornings ago, coming down some steps near Euston station, I was faced with three people trying to shove three different publications into my hand from right, left and directly in front of me.

That was after someone standing outside WH Smith tried to hand a leaflet for weight loss.

Is all this throw-away matter indicative of a generalised junk culture? I leave the answer to you, but it does feel like it at times.

Testing our resolution for pleasure

The new year is a time for renewal, for starting again: for a kind of spring clean for the mind. I’ve long liked the sense of newness that it offers, but then I’ve always seen it as positive.

Even standing outside, early this afternoon, on a cloudy day where the blue could only hint at breaking through, I could feel the pull – almost physically – of the future; of the coming year; the returning sun: the cycle of life. Even now, only a few days on from the winter solstice, the days are getting longer.

All the snow before Christmas set me thinking. I love it; feel drawn toward it. In the very corner of my mind’s eye are snow-covered plains and forests stretching endlessly; a moon above and only the sounds of the occasional animal or bird and the crunch of snow underfoot. It’s something elemental and ancient. New year is the same.

My father managed to make it something else – a sort of groveling and miserable thing. Not on New Year’s Eve itself, when he’d stick to less religious tradition and conspire to have a piece of coal to bring into the house at midnight.

But later, on the first Sunday of the new year, when he’d take the annual covenant service. It was, as I recall, a Methodist’s formal opportunity to re-commit themselves to God.

I have no concrete memories of the service itself, just an abiding sense of it being miserable and depressing – although I doubt that was the prime intention. Mind, it was probably a bit like the Christmas that we’d just left behind: my father’s favourite carol is In the Bleak Midwinter – which must have one of the highest gloom quotients of any Christmas hymn. I was at my happiest when descanting away to Come All Ye Faithful and Hark the Herald.

Way back when, the midwinter feast would mark the last of the decent grub that had been stored: then would come the hardest times, before spring started bringing forth fresh foods.

A month or so after that midwinter fattening and celebration is the perfect time, when you think about it like this, for a formal period of fasting. For Lent, indeed. You didn’t really have a lot of choice, so clerics didn’t have to invent it, but merely turn it to a new use, to suggest that you do what you had no choice about for The Big G. Which would make you feel a lot better. If only in the next life.

People longed for meat, for cream, for butter. Instead, they grew bored of the fish that was the religiously-sanctioned staple and one of the few things available.

It’s funny really, that in our generally rather secular days, Lent hasn’t just stuck around as a time for religious fasting, but as a period when even those who are not particularly religious get to boast about what they’re giving up. And boast they do – which is why we all get to hear about what they’ve foresworn.

Then again, if they didn’t tell us, who would know? Those they tell are, in effect, the new gods that are looked to for approval of a self-denial that is chosen, not forced by the reality of a lack of modern food preservation techniques.

But if people boast because they need someone to see their self-denial and they don’t believe in a divine entity to do so, then it also begs the question of why they’re bothering with the giving-up malarkey in the first place.

Before we get to Lent, we have another ‘giving-up’ period with the start of the new year and the resolutions that go with it. And since that increasingly seems to mean: ‘I’m Giving Up X, Y or Z’ (or all three) it effectively extends Lent to something close to the first quarter of the year.

This year, just as your resolutions are wearing off, you get another little splurge on 8 March – the chance to use up your left-over eggs and flour for pancakes – and then off you go on Lent. As a slight aside, have you noticed that Brits gets diddled on this one? Look at what other people get to do before Lent while we get to toss pancakes.

But back to new year resolutions. Most of all, this is the time of year when you start The Diet. If you pigged out during the festivities in the olden days, then the unavoidable period of limited food to follow would get rid of those excess pounds. But now we have to artificially create the dietary impact of those old shortages.

Striving for the body beautiful is a perfect way to do this. Add in ideas where the only indicator of health is body shape and you have a potent mix. And indeed, it’s even better, since it gets to be used again, later in the year when you’re encouraged to get your body ready for the beach.

Let’s take things a bit further. If we have, as Nietzsche claimed, killed God, then does there have to be something in his place? Or even if there doesn’t have to be, has a vacuum been created that is being filled by other things?

And do those “other things” succeed most when they involve control, discipline, guilt, societal judgement and the promise of a distant reward, in much the same way that religion involves such things?

Do we now worship a certain body type in a pseudo religious manner, forcing ourselves through un-natural and not particularly pleasant behaviours in a quasi-religious quest for that always-just-out-of-reach ideal?

Because, no matter what anyone tells you, a diet made up, for instance, of two bowls of cereal a day or constant grapefruits is not actually a healthy one and all it’ll do is leave you with pangs of hunger and constant thoughts of the food that you cannot eat. Suffering is good for the soul, of course.

Mind, if we’re going down this road, then it could also be argued that the level of consumerism that we’ve reached (and which we need to maintain or increase for the sake of the economy) demands constant spending.

If we splurged loads on Christmas eating and drinking, then we can spend loads more in the new year on diet products (always more expensive than proper food anyway) and fitness products and services that will help us shed the weight that we put on with the economy-sanctioned spending binge at the end of the previous year.

If you think that all this is a bit far-fetched, just remember that during 2010, one of the senior officials of the Bank of England pleaded with us all to spend more for the sake of the economy – even if that meant dipping into our savings, which were worth less and less anyway because of the low interest rates that are intended to encourage us all to spend more ...

So while the tyranny of the perfect body might not have actually been created by the Establishment, it can be of service to some surprising things. At present, the economy.

Now please don’t get the idea that I’m saying that this is all An Absolutely Bad Thing per se. I make an effort to look after my skin decently, for instance – never more so than now, as I watch carefully on the horizon for that nearing half century. And in between checking the mirror as I apply a good moisturiser, I Google to see how old are assorted women on TV, as I compare their necks to mine.

It’s the sense of extremes that I find interesting: on the one hand, the cult of a certain very specific type of physical ideal. On the other, the puritanism that we’ve mentioned previously, that condemns, for instance, the enjoyment of food.

These two aren’t as different as they might appear – or as their respective adherents might wish to think. Both share, amongst other things, a near-religious certainty and a guilt in pleasure, together with a belief in something better that is just out of reach but surely attainable by certain behaviours, which just happen to involve pain and/or self-denial. No pain, no gain, eh?

And for both groups, food plays a central role in all those factors.

You might – or might not – be relieved to hear that I don’t do resolutions. And I’m not going on a diet now or planning to give anything up for Lent.

This place ain’t called the Voluptuous Manifesto for nothing.

A handbag?

Are you channelling Edith Evans yet?

Having spent years shaking her head as if in grief, asking: “When are you going to grow up” as I walked through the door in a football shirt, my mother is now aghast to hear of my lecherous adoration of handbags.

In my early teens, she forced me to carry a suede creation (this was the 1970s) to church (and put some slap on every Sunday morning). But I complied under protest. I wanted to be a boy – or at least to be allowed to play football and not have to worry about matters girlie.

And once I was free of the every-day authority of my mother, I dumped handbags.

Well into my 30s, a battered men’s tweed jacket, bought in a charity shop, remained preferable, blessed as it was with countless pockets. Who needed handbags?

And that was the situation as it existed when I met The Other Half.

But in the last decade, I have changed. And the changes have included the discovery of handbags.

The Other Half is only just coming to terms with this. I’ve spent the last few years arranging for female colleagues to explain to him, slowly and patiently, that there really is no such thing as too many handbags.

He has worked out that the correct answer to: ‘I need a new handbag’ is not: ‘you need no such thing’, but simply: ‘yes dear’. A quiet life is worth some adjustments to one’s thinking on matters materialistic.

Indeed, Miss Piggy had the right approach: "I find that it is vital to have at least one handbag for each of the 10 types of social occasion: very formal, not so formal, just a teensy bit formal, informal but not that informal, every day, every other day, day travel, night travel, theatre and fling."

Three years ago, I was able to afford my first designer bag – an Osprey, purchased in Liberty after a number of reconnaissance missions to a number of rather upmarket stores.

It was with me when I joined The Other Half in his staff bar a short while later to take part in a quiz night. The rest of the team he was on was female. All the women drooled over the bag and, when realising it was an Osprey, nearly wet their collective knickers.

The Other Half said later that it was only then that he had realised exactly what status symbols handbags are – like cars for men.

Well, I have quite a few these days, including a couple in the BMW class. But one day, when I have the money, I shall step up to the Ferrari class – and I shall buy a Dior bag. Until then, the glossies provide handbag porn for lusting over.

In the meantime, my current day-to-day bag is looking rather tired, so I’ll just have to brave the West End crowds and head for the shops. Russell & Bromley have a nice one in their new spring collection.

Now what was it dear old Oscar said about dealing with such a situation?

Ah yes: “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”

And just think – I’ll be doing the economy a favour too.