Singer-songwriter Calum Baird surveys the multi-layered crisis in the arts – and shows how the problems relate to wider patterns of ‘austerity’ and social decay
Raymond Williams – Welshman, New Left writer, philosopher and a lead thinker in British cultural theory – argued that culture is ordinary, that it is ours to make and remake as we see fit.
Williams’ meaning of the word culture in this context is profound, encapsulating a society’s dominant ideas and customs. Williams argued that culture is man-made, meaning that it is not bestowed by gods or imported from elsewhere. Cultural ideas, customs and values are ours, in other words.
As a musician, it seems clear to me that this idea applies to art and cultural production as well. These things, while capable of inspiring, enlightening, enchanting and so much more, are ordinary. At times, the way art is presented gives, it the appearance of being high and mighty or far away from the likes of mere mortals. However, music, art, poetry is man-made, human and should be ours.
Yet, culture and cultural production now finds itself embroiled in a litany of crises. Some of these crises stem from the fact that, while art and cultural production is ordinary, its delivery is not without complication. However, the present crises have a long tail stretching back at least as far as the coalition government in 2010 and, arguably, even prior to it.
I want to make an appeal for art and culture based on these principles of Williams and argue for a need to halt the crises in the cultural industries both in their production and in their delivery. I will argue that cultural production and the organisation of what are called cultural industries must be pulled out of their present crises and sustainably remade.
It is tempting to make this a fight about economics, and to highlight that cultural and creative industries (depending, of course, on which part of the ‘creative industries’ you focus on) generated income for the UK economy in the tens of billions prior to the COVD-19 pandemic.
However, I think this line of argument plays into the hands of the dominant ideas of contemporary neoliberal discourses, accepting that everything must have or be reduced to a cash value. Despite being highly profitable, the cultural and creative industries have deep structural inequalities and, thanks to more than a decade of austerity, they are being withdrawn from our communities. Consequently, better arguments than economistic ones are required to defend the arts and culture as well as to demonstrate a different set of possibilities for the arts and culture.
Instead of lapsing into economistic arguments for culture, we must develop arguments which centre around improving cultural provision and organisation as well as integrating this into our everyday lives.
The current crisis
Like in other parts of society, austerity and privatisation is taking a toll on the arts and culture which is increasing costs, making them something which only the wealthy can afford and exacerbating longer-standing problems of sustainability and inequality.
In his 2015 article for The Guardian, David Pountney described how swingeing cuts were falling hard on culture – particularly local culture which was treated as non-essential. This led to a severe erosion of the availability of culture to young people with the closure of local libraries, smaller theatres, and cuts to the provision of music services. Today, eight years on, we are beginning to see in real time the impact of these policies.
For instance, The Labour Party has calculated that, in England, thanks to Tory budget cuts, specific government spending in music, arts and cultural programmes equated to just £9.40 per pupil in 2022. This harms children’s learning opportunities as well as their opportunities to socialise and develop their creativity.
Meanwhile, Arts Council England is cutting £50 million from 2023-2026 from London arts organisations to fulfil a government instruction to divert money away from the capital as part of the levelling up programme. A number of UK arts organisations have already lost 100 per cent of their guaranteed funding. These include English National Opera, Donmar Warehouse, Oldham Coliseum, the Watermill, the Gate and the Regional Theatre Young Director Scheme. On what planet is this levelling up?
This simply spreads slashed funding, it does not create new funding for the arts through wealth re-distribution or progressive taxation. In the words of Juliet Stevenson: ‘This is an agenda of cultural vandalism to silence innovative work, attack terms and conditions, and throw arts funding into the hands of a wealthy few’.
Culture in Scotland has not escaped the decaying hand of austerity, either. At the beginning of the year, the Scottish Government responded to calls from the STUC and the Campaign For the Arts to reverse a proposed cut of 10 per cent to Creative Scotland funding. If delivered, this would have led to an estimated 8500 jobs being lost and seen a quarter of all Creative Scotland funded organisations close. The proposed amount being cut was a drop in the ocean in government spending terms: £6.6m. Yet, it would have hollowed out the arts and culture in Scotland.
Optimism that this existential threat had been seen off was short-lived. In September this year, the Scottish government announced that they would, in fact, be delivering this cuts package to Creative Scotland’s funding, meaning that the worst fears of many are about to be realised.
At the time of writing, the Campaign For the Arts have started an online petition to demand the Scottish government abandons this hellish policy, and I would strongly urge anyone with any interest in the arts and culture to sign it and follow the Campaign for updates. Restoring this funding is essential. However, we must act on as broad a front as possible amongst artists, communities, audiences and policy makers to secure a sustainable future for the arts and culture beyond this crisis point.
Despite words to the contrary in numerous Scottish government policy papers, most notably A Culture Strategy for Scotland – due to be updated in spring 2024 – this disaster has been proposed twice in one year, exposing the real contempt for the arts and culture within government circles and policy making.
In Glasgow … West Lothian … Edinburgh … Falkirk …
However, this contempt is part of a trend across Scotland. Cultural life in Glasgow, for example, is under severe attack from council budget cuts. Funding for festivals and events in the city centre is to be reduced. Service fees for Glasgow Life are to be re-introduced, and cuts will fall on sport and physical development as well as to swimming pool opening hours. There will be a reduction in museum learning and engagement and library opening hours are being reduced, too. Additionally, over a third of posts in the museums and collections service will be cut by Glasgow Life, a subsidiary of Glasgow City Council – a move which has provoked protests and strike ballots from unions.
In addition to these cuts, Glasgow has also recently lost – through tragedy and farce – The Glasgow School of Art, The Arches, The Art School venue and The 13th Note. The latter was closed by an employer who would rather see a cultural space lost than pay their employees a fair wage. What these venues had in common – besides being social spots – was that they were spaces for new, emerging and grassroots artists to learn, develop and build audiences. With the loss of these spaces and the above suite of cuts, Glasgow is having its cultural life crushed.
So, too, are other parts of Scotland. North Lanarkshire, for instance, has narrowly avoided a social disaster whereby the local council proposed the closure of five swimming pools and seven libraries. However. similar closures have already occurred in West Lothian.
As cultural capacity decreases, the number of people shut out of public life and access to the arts increases. Presented as being borne out of economic necessity, these cuts create the conditions for increased alienation, disconnection and misery in society. It is short-sighted cultural vandalism, to put it bluntly.
It does not end here. After thirteen years of austerity politics savaging public spending, a rot is, clearly, consuming cultural capacity. At the end of 2022, the Edinburgh and Aberdeen Filmhouses closed – through perseverance of staff, the Edinburgh Film House will re-open. Additionally, Edinburgh Modern (gallery) 2 closed, temporarily, while the Nevis Street Orchestra closed for good – further losses for Glasgow.
In smaller towns around the country, a chronic lack of cultural spaces and arts infrastructure is noticeable. Take my town, Falkirk, for example. I have been a professional musician for ten years and, in that time, the scene here has been led, organised and held together by a collection of musicians and artists themselves, volunteers, venues and bars. Only recently has Falkirk gained a music venue similar to something you might find in Edinburgh or Glasgow. There has been little or no help from public institutions with developing a vibrant cultural scene. In fact, the opposite. At the end of 2022, Falkirk Council delivered a huge step backwards when it announced the closure of Falkirk Town Hall. FTH hosted various community arts groups and events, touring groups, the local Christmas pantomime and even, once, hosted comedian Kevin Bridges in his early career. While there are proposals to renovate the dilapidated Grangemouth Theatre, this is only emptying one hole to fill another without greatly improving access to arts venues in the area.
Such assaults disproportionately impact on young people and emerging artists, limiting their growth and perpetuating a lack of diversity in creative sphere – but they also impact on communities. Far from levelling up, shrinking capacity and under-funded organisations working hand-to-mouth is a situation which drags the country down.
The erosion of cultural capacity in towns like Falkirk impact on audiences as well as creators. For instance, audiences are forced to travel to cities or locations where theatres, venues, galleries and so on exist – if they can afford to do so. This process squeezes medium and small venues – which tend to support emerging artists – as people with disposable income are more likely to spend their money on a known act/artist rather than something new or subaltern.
Here, the twin problems of austerity and the current cost of living crisis merge. A concentration of cultural spaces in urban centres means higher costs for creators and spectators. For the artists, they must meet the demands of higher living costs in the cities or pay for higher travel costs. For audiences, they must do the same if they want to live in an area where cultural offerings are easier – for now – to come by.
The ways in which the crises in the arts and culture are part of the many social crises initiated by austerity and privatisation are revealed. Increasing housing costs, particularly in the private rental sector, exacerbate the lack of affordable housing, especially council housing. In a similar way, the current crises of funding and shrinking capacity exacerbate long-standing inequalities and injustices in the arts and culture.
Who can be an artist, film-maker, actor …?
Earlier this year, Novara Media published an info reel on what they called ‘Posh culture’ and how it is ruining London. The reel highlighted how low pay in culture jobs as well as high rents in the city are driving working class people and culture out of London in place of a ‘corporate blob’. Increasingly, this means that the only people who can afford to work in the arts in London are from wealthy backgrounds.
Novara pointed out that nearly 40 per cent of the most successful TV, film and music artists in the UK come from elite, privately educated backgrounds. This, they say, has all been motored by the austerity agenda which has reduced the potential for working class people to work in and enjoy the arts. Although this reel focussed on London, there are lessons here for the whole of the UK.
While austerity is playing its role in damaging the arts and culture, it is wrong to conclude that inequalities are recent and purely a consequence of cuts. In Culture is Bad for You (2020), Orian Brook, Dave O’Brien and Mark Taylor argue that inequalities are more longer-term. They point out that, even in the 1960s, working in film, media and the arts was seen as placing someone at the top of the class hierarchy, not being a doctor, a lawyer or industry leader.
The reality is more likely to be somewhere between Novara’s position and that of Brook et al. For example, The Guardian reported in December 2022 that an analysis of Office for National Statistics data found that 16.4 per cent of creative workers born between 1953 and 1962 had a working-class background, but that this had since fallen to 7.9 per cent for those born four decades later. While a big drop, 16.4 per cent shows – Brook et al argue – that cultural jobs being dominated by those from elite backgrounds is not especially ‘new’. However, the scale of it is.
Now more than ever, pursuing a career in the cultural industries is an option only for those who do not have to depend on them to make a living, and who have the financial freedom to develop their craft. Not only does this mean that what art and culture is produced is decided by the elite, it keeps those with privilege centre-stage while denying those without it a platform.
Dr Lisa McKenzie, a working-class academic and author argues that ‘working-class voices and their lens on life are being disappeared, and their stories are being told through the inaccurate prism of the privileged’.
To confront all of these crises, government at all levels in the UK as well as leaders and organisations within the cultural industries must urgently devise a united and coherent approach that guarantees people equal access to their community’s economic and cultural life. The barriers of inequality prevalent in Scotland and the wider UK today must be tackled holistically, not one at a time, and access to the arts and culture must be seen as essential to life, not as an optional extra for the rich and privileged. The decision not to do so is a political one, not one ordained from on high.
Published 4 October 2023.
‘Culture in crisis’ is the first part of a two-part article: look out for the second part here later this month.
Calum’s website, detailing upcoming gigs and his artist-activism, is at https://linktr.ee/calumbairdsongs, with tweets / Xs @calumbairdsongs. The photograph of Calum Baird live at 'Culture For the Many', New Town Theatre, August 2023, with Ken Loach, Susan Morrison and Jeremy Corbyn (right to left), was taken by Neil McKenzie/Keep It Creative.