Johnson makes bold statement to artists with his choice of new Culture Secretary

Nicky Morgan once said idea an arts education is useful for many jobs ‘couldn’t be further from the truth’, notes Laura Waddell

If you were going by the various public handshakes offered by some arts organisations and individuals in invariably tepid and polite statements with the automaton tone of “we are looking forward to working with you”, you might be forgiven for thinking the appointment of Nicky Morgan as Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport heralded a new era of possibility, rather than the latest reshuffle of party ideology that is, at its core, at odds with everything artists are.

Charities and arts organisations have to work with whoever is in power, I know. Realistically, they have to be non-party political, civil and willing to both open and pursue dialogue. Some comments have been welcoming but pointed, a few have been surprisingly gushing, mostly from personal Twitter accounts of high-level staff.

Of course, brief public statements don’t show the real machinations of how organisations interact with government ministers, or very likely, the weariness and worry behind the scenes. But at a time when artists’ incomes are depleting and community arts projects are being cut, to a backdrop of rising poverty, homelessness, and hate crimes, it’s difficult to look at the dance of social niceties when it feels that humanity in general is being stripped back, and is likely to worsen under Boris Johnson’s right-leaning administration and those who cravenly serve it, as well as a looming no-deal Brexit.

Culture may be a devolved matter, but what happens elsewhere has ramifications for artists in Scotland, chiefly in creative partners and opportunities available throughout the UK. Arguably, wider social and fiscal policy has even more relevance to the life of an artist than whatever Morgan will do with her

remit. Arts organisations have a duty to represent their members and some have identified as a lobbying point the unfair and maddening visa rejections that have prevented a number of artists from entering the UK to work creatively and attend events. The Creative Industries Federation, active mostly in England, proposes a ‘creative freelancer’ visa as just one example. These Home Office decisions manifest themselves in specific ways for the arts sector, impacting book festivals when each year invited speakers aren’t allowed into the UK to discuss their work, and some galleries, like the Manchester Art Gallery, have left spaces on their walls blank to show the impact on visual artists who have been barred from entry.

But when it comes to taking a stand and applying pressure, I feel deeply, deeply uncomfortable when any focus on immigration problems faced by professional artists does not more broadly acknowledge that harsh immigration policies are penalising people from all walks of life; our neighbours, family, and friends, squeezing personal freedoms and hostile to the wider cultures our art comes from. As artists we can beg for crumbs for ourselves, or bread for all. Only the latter will truly sustain us, culturally and economically.

How bad do things have to become, and how dark the omens, for lukewarm manners and deference to station to be replaced with a sense of urgency? For the British sense of self to reorient from the drudging, terrible politeness some artists’ organisations offered to Johnson’s new hire to something a bit more toothsome and challenging? There is a fine line between targeted lobbying and sidestepping widespread problems.

I think about the William Car