The Guardian view on UK arts policy: big ideas wanted
The most eye-catching of the measures proposed by Ireland’s cultural recovery taskforce, set up last November, was a three-year pilot of a universal basic income (UBI) for artists. The Green party culture minister, Catherine Martin, is giving enthusiastic backing to the idea, and seeking cross-party support for the scheme. The notion is that self-employed artists and creative workers should be given a weekly income of €325 (£285), without losing any existing support, and be able to earn on top of that.
Such a measure, on mature consideration, may not be exactly right for the nations of the UK. But in a way that is a side issue. The point is that the Irish government is taking the arts seriously – and not merely as a set of institutions, the “crown jewels”, to use the UK culture secretary Oliver Dowden’s phrase, but as a set of highly skilled, professional people, who deserve to be nurtured and supported because of value they bring to the reputation and wellbeing of the country as a whole.
A UBI would, argue its backers, help to minimise loss of skills from a sector of the economy that is particularly hard
hit by the pandemic, and encourage growth as soon as it becomes possible. In some ways, the measure’s closest cousin, in UK policy terms, would be that Conservative invention of the early 1980s, the enterprise allowance scheme. While aimed at helping the creation of new businesses generally, it had the unintended effect of supporting a number of British creative businesses and artists, including Creation Records, Soul II Soul, and Tracey Emin. The Irish UBI pilot is, at the least, a piece of imaginative, bold thinking, the likes of which is utterly lacking in Westminster and Whitehall.
The feeling that there is no intelligent government interest in the arts, no voices in or near government coming up with any significant ideas, is reinforced by the nightmare-in-waiting of post-Brexit touring arrangements for artists, especially musicians. The bureaucratic blizzard of work permits, carnets and designated ports that will need to be negotiated by musicians hoping to export British culture to our nearest neighbours is being regarded with absolute despond by a sector that is already in dire straits – with the government showing a blithe indifference to the problem. Just when it should be showing artists support, it is demonstrating only how it can drag them down even further.
The truth is, though, that British artists are fizzing with energy and ideas. Last summer was ablaze with creatives setting up working groups and coming up with inspiring thinking about how to strengthen and renew the arts sector. (At least one of them, the Tasglu Llawrydd Cymru/Wales Freelance Task Force, also suggested a universal basic income for artists, as it happens.) The UK’s own hastily convened cultural renewal taskforce, despite the grandiose title, has no remit to come up with bold, long-term policy recommendations, and lacks the right membership to do so even if it had. But someone must. Instead of simply focusing on the mechanics of how to reopen venues, the government needs to be drawing open-mindedly on ideas generated by the creatives who themselves will make a recovery happen. There is no time to waste.