Liz Hill, editor of Arts Professional, concludes that Arts Council England’s This England report is based on a carefully constructed analysis designed to disguise a London-centric funding strategy.
As part of the recent No Boundaries conference in York and Bristol, Arts Council England made two major presentations about regional investment in the arts and the ‘wider benefits’ of arts and culture to society. Chris Bailey was in York and assesses the significance of the ACE reports.
Taking place simultaneously in Bristol and York and supported by Arts Council England and the British Council, No Boundaries was billed as ‘an open symposium on the role of culture in 21st century society’. Artist and gallery director Chris Brown reports from Bristol.
A new report urges those working with arts and culture to rethink their contribution to a vision of sustainable development that benefits the whole of society. Report co-author, Mark Robinson, introduces the provocation and identifies three vital ‘practices’ that can only be achieved by collaboration between artists, institutions and an intelligent funding ecology.
The Ask The Audience debate in Leeds was conceived as a challenge to the arts funding status quo and featured a panel of arts professionals including a-n’s director. Co-organiser Phil Kirby reports on how the event went.
The Warwick Commission on the Future of Cultural Value has embarked on a two-year project to gather ‘evidence and arguments’ about investment and engagement in our cultural lives. We report from the first of the Commission’s ‘provocation events’ and ask why, despite a growing consensus around the importance of culture, cuts and more cuts are still the order of the day.
The Warwick Commission is aiming to develop new policy thinking and practical recommendations related to the long-term sustainability of culture in the face of tough economic challenges.
Response to first speech by Maria Miller, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.
Formal research report to DCMS recommending using Treasury accepted economic tools as basis for measuring cultural value.
Impacts 08 was a joint research initiative of the University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University, which from 2005-2010 evaluated the social, cultural, economic and environmental effects of Liverpool’s hosting the European Capital of Culture title in 2008.
Summary of process, discussion and conclusions of Arts Council England’s Arts Debate programme from 2006.
Contributes to the cultural value debate by arguing there is little point in improving skills of individual leaders if their organisations remain unchanged.
In June 2004, Tessa Jowell, then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, published a personal essay called Government and the Value of Culture, in which she asked, ‘How, in going beyond targets, can we best capture the value of culture?’ This document responds to Jowell’s essay, proposing a wholesale reshaping of the public funding of culture.
