Arts figures launch cultural manifesto to uphold spending

Grayson Perry, the Turner Prize-winner, and Gurinder Chadha, the film director, were among figures across the arts who launched a new cultural manifesto urging the Government to uphold arts spending or risk damaging Britain's economic recovery.

Grayson Perry
Grayson Perry Credit: Photo: JANE MINGAY

The document, entitled: Cultural Capital: A Manifesto for the Future, claims it is essential that the UK's cultural institutions continue to benefit from public investment, particularly at a time when the eyes of the world prepare to focus on the London 2012 Olympics.

Cutting state funding would make poor economic sense and risk denting Britain's ''social and economic recovery'' from recession, the manifesto warns.

Among the other well-known faces attending the event at the British Museum were musicians Brian Eno and Julian Lloyd Webber, plus dancers from the English National Ballet and Sadler's Wells.

Campaign placards declaring ''You can bank on culture'', designed by UK artists including Damien Hirst, Anish Kapoor and Tracey Emin, were waved as the group posed for photographers on the steps inside the British Museum's exhibition space.

Mr Perry said: ''I do believe there is time for a debate when politicians start releasing not just the economic benefits of culture... but that cultural institutions can lead the debate. There are other ways of measuring the success of a country.

''Post-recession, perhaps now is the time to start putting values and specifics on non-economic ways of valuing what is a good society. For too long we've all been in thrall to 'the more pairs of shoes I have the happier I am', and perhaps we should be looking at more intangible values such as education and cultural fulfilment as opposed to just being able to have a second car.''

In its introduction, the argument is made that arts spending can revive the British economy.

The document says: ''As the economy begins to move again, the cultural sector is ready to contribute to the up-turn. We are ready to give our ideas and energy to help with the restructuring that will be needed as the country renews itself.

''The arts and heritage are on hand to help those who lost out in the recession: with jobs, training, skills, experience, hope. Our creative confidence offers a basis for renewal.''

The manifesto argues that a 15-year period of investment has created a public appetite for culture, adding: ''This manifesto is about the future. It is about building on more than a decade of success that has made the cultural assets represented by our museums, galleries, historic places, libraries and archives, orchestras, theatres, dancers, artists and writers, productive as never before.''

Ms Chadha said: "Film is a massive part of the British economy. It is absolutely critical for the well-being of the film industry that Government, in all its shapes and sizes, acknowledges the massive contribution, not only to culture here but globally."

The rationale behind the manifesto was explained to attendees and waiting media by a five-strong panel of representatives from Britain's largest arts institutions, comprising Nicholas Hytner, director of the National Theatre, Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, Jude Kelly, artistic director of the Southbank Centre, Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate, and Alan Davey, chief executive of Arts Council England.

Mr MacGregor said: "Culture gives us our place in the world, it reminds us of what we are, it makes us aware of what we could be."

He added: "All Governments in the future are going to be thinking of course about making economies... we want to remind them that culture works. This is the bit of public life that is extraordinarily efficient and extraordinarily effective."

Mr Hytner said: "After 15 years of sustained public and lottery investment we are in a really good place. Public investment has meant new places for vastly increased numbers of people to come and see new work and new talent."