Creative Times

We all knew it was coming, but as the Coalition’s cuts agenda gathers pace it’s starting to feel like there’s an unstoppable tsunami rolling towards the creative sector.

The announcement that the UK Film Council is to be abolished and the impact of huge cuts to (and eventual abolition of) the Regional Development Agencies, have brought the situation into sharp focus. These cuts may feel below the belt but they are certainly not below the radar; big names such as Manchester International Festival and the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse are being hard hit already.

The talk, of course, is of necessity, that everyone has to do their bit and experience some pain in the battle to reduce the deficit. But behind all this contrition, you sense that some people are enjoying wielding the axe. This isn’t just about the economy, stupid. This is about ideology.

There’s a big conversation going on regarding the state’s role in supporting creativity but it’s all a bit one-sided. When the words ‘cuts’ and ‘billions’ become part of our daily diet of news, you know that job losses, businesses going to the wall and arts organisations shrinking or ceasing to exist are all inevitable. Those big figures being bandied about – the 25 per cent cuts to overall budgets, the closure of this quango here, the ceasing of funding to that arts project there – all add up to scenes of disruption and devastation for the sector. The creative landscape is changing in a way not seen since the Thatcherite ‘80s.

The cuts aren’t just about the economy, stupid. This is about ideology.

And yet, despite the familiar ideas wrapped up in different rhetoric – in place of Thatcher’s ‘there is no such thing as society’ we have Cameron’s ‘big society’ – things are clearly not the same as in the 1980s. With industry, compared to 25 years ago, now reduced to a bit-part in the UK’s economy, being a ‘creative’ is no longer some airy-fairy idea, a gap-year prior to getting a ‘proper’ job. It is a vital part of UK plc.

Which is of course why an organization such as the CBI (‘The voice of business’) has recently issued the report Creating Growth – A Blueprint For The Creative Industries, essentially a call to the government to develop a coherent strategy of support for the UK’s creative sector. The CBI believes the creative industries account for around 6-8 per cent of UK output and produce exports totaling over £16bn. That’s pretty significant.

CBI reports have never been top of my reading list, but on this occasion I felt like giving its director-general Richard Lambert a hug of thanks before I’d even got past the first page. With seemingly every day a bad news day at the moment, just the heading ‘Creative Industries matter’ was a bit of a boost.

There’s a serious point to all this and the CBI’s report is of course significant, both to creative individuals and businesses and to the funded arts organisations and bodies that support and nurture creative talent through grants and training. It won’t stop the cuts, but it restates the economic importance of creativity, that there is a hard-cash value to art, design, film, music, etc, that cannot be viewed in isolation, that overflows into the wider economy, that contributes to the attractiveness of living in a city, region or country.

But while it is on the one hand heartening to see the CBI arguing the business case for the creative industries, we all know that there are some things that, how ever hard you try to make the figures add up, are never going to be an investment in a business sense.

The prevailing view within government is increasingly that the funding of such things – much of the arts, essentially – should come from generous donors rather than the tax man. There is talk of looking to America and the way it funds the arts; a new age of old-style philanthropy could be on its way.

But before all that, there are cuts to contend with and with that will come both external and internal scrutiny of publicly-funded organisations. Determining and communicating the value of what an institution does, and refocusing on what it does best, will inevitably be the consequence.

These are tough times that are going to get tougher. Times when we all need to think long and hard about what we do, how we do it, and what we do next. Times, you could say, when we need to show just how creative we really are.

Image: Thomas Turgoose in Shane Meadows’ This Is England (2006), which received funding from the UK Film Council

Chris Sharratt is editor of Creative Times