Seeking change with real bite so the arts are accessible to all
Arts Council of Wales – the country’s official public body for funding and developing the arts – today publishes its plan ‘For the benefit of all’, setting out its priorities for the next five years. Here Phil George, Chair of the Arts Council, says why i
IT’S ALWAYS a risk to admit what you’re not doing well enough and make a vow to do better. But in a determined declaration of intent, that’s precisely what the Arts Council of Wales is publishing today.
On the face of it, the arts in Wales are a great success story, with large numbers of people enjoying and taking part in the arts. Our artists are making extraordinary work. It’s a pleasure to tell that story. But it’s not a pleasure to report that large numbers of our fellow citizens are not connected with the arts experiences and opportunities that the Arts Council makes available.
The brutal fact remains that too many people are effectively denied the opportunity to enjoy, take part or work in the arts. In a fair, prosperous, healthy society this simply won’t do. If we believe that the life-enhancing experiences of the arts are crucial for a healthy and dynamic society, then they should be available to all.
Which brings me to the challenge we’ve set ourselves. It’s laid out in our five-year Corporate Plan that we’re launching today. I know, I know – “Corporate Plan” – yawn, yawn! But I promise you that this one contains some serious challenges to ourselves and those working in the arts. It’s about fundamental change – and change that must have real bite.
Our new plan is based on two priorities.
The first is helping those who are working in the arts to become stronger and more resilient, helping artists and arts organisations to do their best work. It’s about nurturing talent and growing the skills that enable success in a complex and competitive world. Whether you’re a writer, a musician, a visual artist or our largest national company, our job is to help you thrive and to make your work more sustainable.
But we have a second priority, equally if not more important. At the Arts Council of Wales, an organisation that belongs to all of us, we are determined to push forward with broadening access to the arts for the full range of Welsh people. And you’ll see this determination feature more prominently in our future plans.
It’s simply not acceptable that so many people are denied the opportunities that those in the know take for granted. We have to change hearts and minds across the arts in Wales so that the cultural, moral and social benefits of embracing equality of opportunity are given higher priority in the ways we run our affairs.
Beyond questions of social justice, we’re simply wasting talent and creativity, joy-giving and change-making energies when we exclude so many from the arts workforce or from boards of management or from arts experiences as spectators or participants.
We have to do things differently, and that difference starts here.
Earlier in the year we asked Gary Raymond, critic, editor, novelist and broadcaster, to roam the country seeking out individuals with an important story to tell or experience to share. Thirteen of these voices are included in our Corporate Plan and they’re there to keep our minds and actions focused on the crucial matters of equality of access, social inclusion and community development.
In the pages of the plan, we hear challenges and aspirations from black, Asian and minority ethnic artists; from disabled artists; from older creatives. We hear challenges to the middle-class dominance of arts creation, attendance and participation. We hear challenges to patriarchy and old colonial attitudes. We hear passionate declarations of belief in the value of the arts in education, in community empowerment, in rural as well as urban or post-industrial Wales. And we hear a conviction that we have huge opportunities as an engaged small nation with big imaginations.
Some of these people have engaged with Arts Council funding and programmes and with the organisations which we fund. But for certain, they are all the kinds of people who we want to do more to support. And the clear messages they are sending us carry an urgency and authenticity that no bureaucratic strategy could match.
We must respond to these and other voices calling for the arts to reach much more widely across our society. So, we’re making targeted commitments to achieve this.
Some things won’t change. Our commitment to excellence remains undimmed, but we’ll be more curious about the many different places where excellence can be found. We’ll be increasing our investment in the creative work of black and minority ethnic artists, disabled people and those wanting to work through the medium of Welsh.
We’ll be campaigning for greater diversity within the arts workforce and in the boards of our portfolio of revenue-funded organisations – because more representative boards will result in more representative arts activity. And we’ll be ensuring that the Arts Council itself lives up to the values of fairness, equality and diversity.
The hard choices and disagreements about arts funding won’t disappear. But our plan offers a vision of the coming years. We hope that it will energise and excite all who care about the arts and their place at the heart of life and wellbeing in Wales – for the benefit of all.
THE hard Brexiteers’ plan for Northern Ireland is simply a re-hash of ideas already shown to be inadequate.
If they want Brexit they have to choose between staying in the customs union and the single market for goods or a border in the Irish Sea. Everything else is fantasy.
What they cannot admit is that their real agenda is to save their offshore tax havens because they do not want to pay their taxes for public services they have no need to use.
Their right-wing policies have destroyed the autonomy of local government through a series of draconian cuts which make “taking back control” a mirage to distract us from the damage they have done to our democracy.
These austerity cuts were not imposed on us by the EU but by Chancellor Osborne, and they cost us the growth in productivity needed for recovery from the 2008 international banking crisis. Thanks to the excessive profits being creamed off by the privatisation of our state we not only suffer vastly inferior public services, but we are also in danger of an even worse crash.
We can only hope that these failed Tories destroy themselves before they destroy our beloved country.
Margaret Phelps Penarth