How to Spend £107 Million



First, don’t get too excited. This is money that is replacing lost income…not a windfall. It’s primary use, as with the Scottish Government’s ten million announced on Friday, (which is part of this total) is supporting the infrastructure of the entire heritage and museum sectors as well as performing arts venues.  This is safe guarding already existing "national treasures" as the Minister put it.

And quieten that Calvinist suspicion and guilt. Of COURSE it’s at least in part a carve up (Andrew Lloyd Webber called Culture Minister Oliver Dowden by his Christian name in a press statement) But across the board, this is only to tide us over till the new financial year. This is money that has already, morally speaking, been earned.

What it is not, and what indeed seems to have rapidly suppressed and removed from the agenda, is a possibility for change. On the other hand, a concrete lobbying job about real and not just wished for money can now be undertaken to ensure that a good proportion of this new spending should be fulfilling two key aims. First, it should be supportive of employment, of activity. People should be getting paid now to do the work they need to do...as writers, designers, performers...in preparation for meeting audiences again.  Second, it should be future facing. 

A week after the announcement, I have my doubts as to whether anything like so positive will happen, but I suppose we should act as if we had faith that at least SOME of the cultural cash can be carved off into actual creativity....

There are a lot of ideas out there about how to do that, some good, some great, some not so great. Someone is going to have to assume the burden of selection. That needs immediate thought. I have a few ideas myself…like a deliberate over commissioning of playwrights whose resulting work is then entered into a programme of workshhops and readings…then competing for production. 

But I also think, more ambitiously, we should be looking to broadcast studio based TV  and sound drama, using theatre skills for transforming spaces to tell stories from inside the mind…and thus employ designers, directors actors and writers, as well as freelancers from film and TV and radio.

I think we can be exploring wider possibilities for outside performance and promenades. I think, in general terms, we need to be as focussed on audience recovery and development as we are upon developing our own skills and venues.  We need to go out and get them…in rural and urban communities, care homes, schools, hospitals, prisons, workplaces…reinvent touring as well as digital performance.

There’s a lot to think about…but ALL of it starts by carving off a slice of the pie that the heritage or museums and theater buildings could easily spend many times over without employing a single craftsperson or performer.

And I see no coherent plan for that happening.  So the aim must be to make one.

La lotta continua


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