Arts policy and time travel

The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation have just republished a  50-year-old report Help for the Arts. This kind of time travel is interesting. At the time it laid out what the priorities for the arts in Britian should be. What's changed? What's the same? The differences - and similarities - to modern reports on the state of arts in the UK are kind of interesting. Blogger Mark Robinson of Arts Counselling notes for starters that the language is so much more direct than you'll find in any report today. (Robinson is Executive Director for Arts Council North East, so presumably knows a teensy bit about the convolutions of the arts industry's language.)

The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation have just republished a  50-year-old report Help for the Arts. This kind of time travel is interesting. At the time it laid out what the priorities for the arts in Britian should be. What's changed? What's the same? The differences - and similarities - to modern reports on the state of arts in the UK are kind of interesting. Blogger Mark Robinson of Arts Counselling notes for starters that the language is so much more direct than you'll find in any report today. (Robinson is Executive Director for Arts Council North East, so presumably knows a teensy bit about the convolutions of the arts industry's language.)

The similarities are equally fascinating. The report highlights four key points that need addressing. Robinson quotes directly from the 1959 report:

The first is that far greater support is needed for the arts than in the past. Nor is this a temporary need. Once high standards of artistic creation and performance have been established, an increasing sum is required to maintain these new standards. This means that over the years public authorities will have to find more money for the arts.

The second is that far more needs to be done today to render the arts accessible, particularly in the provinces.

The third point is that there should be more scope for experiment in order to invigorate the arts.

The fourth point is that we think that more should be done to foster appreciation of the arts among the young. The introduction of music and drawing into primary schools has been of the highest importance. But in grammar and secondary modern schools, the practice and appreciation of the arts is apt to be crowded out after the age of 14; while little incentive or encouragement is given to boys and girls after leaving school to develop whatever interest in the arts they have acquired. The best means of doing this is something which would well repay enquiry.

Should we be surprised? The fact that three of those four areas remain a cause for concern probably shouldn't be that shocking. Art tends towards elitism; it's always being pulled away from the provinces to the centres of wealth and power and it's the job of institutions to counter that.

But it's the persistence last point that is the most depressing. How much has art education improved since 1959? There's plenty of evidence that rigid curriculum-based education has undermined the value arts in schools. This is something the RSA has been pointing out for some time. An emphasis on literacy and numeracy has meant that schools often fail to fire the imagination as this report by Cambridge Primary Review published earlier this year notes.

And as Ian McGimpsey, Director of RSA Education, suggested in a recent blog, if schools are to be given the chance to focus on happiness, self-worth and wellbeing as much as they have on employability for wealth-creation in recent years, then it's back to the drawingboard. The 50-year-old language of "fostering appreciation" might seem a little patrician, but the song remains the same.