Dear Christopher Frayling
As befits a former schoolteacher, Estelle Morris has asked us to argue politely on paper, presumably to stop us from coming to blows in the arts playground.
I was astonished when you accepted the chairmanship of Arts Council England. It seemed to me unfathomable that any person of intelligence and goodwill should wish to head a body that has so thoroughly discredited its chartered purpose.
It struck me further that it was likely to be an unhappy return for a man who had already served 13 years at the Council's head table, raising his hand tamely in support of any number of comic disasters. Remember Sheffield's now shut Museum of Pop? Or the £169m Richard Rogers scheme to glass over the South Bank? I'll spare you more blushes.
Under your immediate predecessor, Gerry Robinson, whom you have lavishly praised, the Arts Council ceased to be an independent body that gave moral succour and financial support to the arts. It became, instead, a new Labour policy-making forum that imposes all manner of petty correctnesses on creative institutions.
Never in my working life has the Council been so loathed by the bulk of its clients. They don't dare say so aloud, for fear of being cut off without a shilling, but they don't half whisper it to anyone who cares to bend an ear to the untended woes of an industry in distress.
The Arts Council in its present form is indefensible. Even if it were to be reformed - again? please no - its continued existence cannot be justified in an age when all major decisions are taken by the Department for Culture with the benefit of Downing Street meddling.
So why waste a good career on so un-deserving a cause? Please tell me.
Yours,
Norman Lebrecht
Dear Norman
I can't believe you really mean all that. Just look at the facts:
l the National Lottery has transformed the physical landscape of the arts;
l under Gerry Robinson's chairmanship, the Arts Council's revenue funding more than doubled;
l a major review - and an extra £25m - is helping to support a golden age of theatre;
l audiences are up right across the arts (by 10 per cent since 2001).
I took on the role of chairman for two very simple reasons: because I passionately believe that the arts can change lives, and because I believe that the Arts Council can make a big difference.
We now distribute more than £500m to 1,200 organisations and thousands of individual projects. It goes to artists, performers, galleries, concert halls, theatres and opera houses and, increasingly, to high-quality work in new settings: schools, youth clubs, even prisons.
I, too, enjoy a good conspiracy theory, but when the Arts Council publicly challenged the government a couple of years ago to give the arts an extra £100m, do you seriously think the Council had "ceased to be an indepen-dent body"?
I shall be as firm a critic as anyone when the government gets it wrong. But shouldn't arts commentators also help to lead the cheering when the news is good? All the media's sniping simply plays to age-old prejudices about the arts in the public domain: either that they should depend on "the market" rather than public subsidy; or that they should be directly funded by the Department for Culture. The former has not been true of the serious arts since the Mid- dle Ages, and as for the latter, perhaps you would like the BBC to be directly run by the government, too? "J'accuse" is so much easier to write than "J'adore". But you should still try "J'adore" every now and again.
Yours,
Christopher
Dear Christopher
Being of a charitable disposition, I shall assume that the first part of your letter was written for you by an Arts Council official, since it amounts to something considerably less than a row of beans.
Gordon Brown, credit where it's due, doubled the Council's funding. The Council then distributed the cash with more strings and paperwork attached than ever before. Any increase in audiences is traceable directly to extra gov-ernment funding rather than any Arts Council policy.
It will not have escaped your attention that the Public Accounts Committee has just castigated the last Arts Council, of which you were a member, for squandering Lottery funds on projects that should never have got off the ground and failed to be completed on time and within budget.
For most of my working life, I have championed the Keynesian arm's-length principle of arts funding, defending Arts Councils against Thatcherite incursions because they acted mostly in good faith and good practice. The present Arts Council does neither. It has made a mockery of arm's length by parroting the shibboleths of new Labour: social inclusion, equal opportunities and the like. It has further oppressed the arts by imposing political correctnesses and quotas of every colour before funding is given the green light.
Contrary to its charter, it has intervened in the affairs of arts bodies by, for instance, seeking to disband English National Opera and requiring Hampstead Theatre to sack a competent administrator. When challenged by the Public Accounts Committee, the Arts Council promises to do better next time.
Well, in my view, it has run out of time. The next government, whether post-Blair or Tory, will not put up with its excuses. The national companies will be funded by the Department for Culture and the rest will be regionally devolved. If you crave a place in history, it will be as the council's last chairman.
Norman Lebrecht
Dear Norman
Now you are beginning to sound just like Private Frazer in Dad's Army: "We're doomed, doomed, I tell you." In Norman-land, more than £1bn of Lottery investment and a huge increase in the number of people enjoying the arts amounts to "considerably less than a row of beans". The Baltic in Gateshead, the Lowry in Salford, the refurbishments of Sadler's Wells, the Royal Opera House, the Royal Exchange Theatre, the National Theatre and Rada, the new Laban Centre for Movement and Dance and many other grands projets the length and breadth of the country - these, too, amount to "less than a row of beans". (Actually, the phrase is "a hill of beans", but maybe you haven't seen Casablanca for a while.)
In Norman-land, the Arts Council and the Department for Culture had nothing to do with making such a successful case for the arts, against very strong competition, that Treasury funding doubled. And the Public Accounts Committee goes around "castigating" the Arts Council when in fact it was praising the sensible ways in which the Council has tightened up since the early days of the Lottery. The fact is that Arts Council projects have fewer delays and cost overruns than the commercial construction industry.
Yes, the Arts Council no longer does exactly the same job it was set up to do just after the Second World War. In those days, its prime responsibility was "to provide in the metropolis exemplary performances by national institutions", and about half its annual grant was spent on Covent Garden, Sadler's Wells and the Old Vic. The idea was to ensure the continuity of what was seen as the cultural patrimony after the devastation of the Blitz. Culture was pronounced "culcha" and it was in the singular; the regions, the visual arts and literature did not exist.
The Arts Council is now a genuinely national organisation. It does not believe that "access" and "excellence" are antithetical (as many of the pioneers of the 1940s and 1950s believed, and as, I suspect, you still do). It is concerned with cultures in the plural, and it doesn't any longer seem to be saying in a patronising way "we come bearing gifts".
And yes, we expect arts organisations to manage themselves effectively. Money for the arts is not magic money. It comes - credit where it's due - from taxpayers and Lottery players from all parts of the country and all communities. So, yes, we do expect the arts world to embrace equal opportunities policies. And yes - shock horror - we are increasing our support for black, Asian and Chinese artists in England. Even more shocking to you may be our expectation that arts organisations should connect with the communities in which they are based.
Finally, where on earth did you get that rubbish about the Arts Council wanting to disband the ENO? We've given it £14m to refurbish the Coliseum, twice provided substantial extra funding to deal with financial problems and increased its revenue support. If that's not a sign of commitment, I don't know what is.
Sir Christopher Frayling
No, Christopher: we're not doomed. You are. The next government will certainly dismantle an Arts Council that has outlived its usefulness, a body that no longer speaks for the arts but funnels them into little ticky boxes.
But I do hate squabbling with the doomed. Let me just finish by answering your question about English National Opera. At the final hurdle in ENO's funding last summer, a senior Arts Council official told a horrified ENO board that it should now move on to "Plan B" - closing down the company altogether. Since the board had itself raised £18m, on top of the Arts Council's £14m, the suggestion was, to say the least, undiplomatic and at worst highly destructive. Unfortunately, it is typical of the way the Arts Council treats many of its clients nowadays, with high- handedness verging on contempt. No tea and sympathy any more, only the smack of nanny government.
Adieu,
Norman
Norman
I still don't understand where you are coming from. Assuming you write from conviction - and I do assume that, deep down, you approve of public funding for the arts - would you prefer direct government or local government patronage? If the Council were reinvented, I don't think it would - or should - do things very differently.
As to "the smack of nanny government", do you really believe that the Arts Council is a sort of cashpoint machine? We have to ask questions of the organisations we fund. Were we not to do so, you would be among the first to criticise us and, on this occasion, you would be right.
Sorry to disappoint you, but opening doors wider to the arts and making the most of Britain's diverse traditions and cultures are not uniquely new Labour concerns. It is simply unacceptable to cater exclusively for a London elite.
The bottom line is £222m per year more than in 1999 - and new places, institutions, productions, exhibitions, concerts, performances and icons that will define our culture for years to come. Next time you go past the Angel of the North (a bit of a trek out of London, I know), why not wriggle out of your cocoon for a moment and, just for once, float like a butterfly rather than sting like a bee!
Au revoir,
Christopher Frayling
PS: For the record, and to repeat, where English National Opera is concerned, no plan was prepared that involved "closing down the company altogether".
