Speech by Minister for Culture, David Lammy at the launch of Demos 'Cultural Value and the Crisis of Legitimacy' publication
29 March 2006
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Introduction
1. Very grateful to be here and to the Government whips for allowing me to be here in person.
2. I know how influential John's work for Demos has been. So I am pleased for the opportunity to contribute to the debate.
3. This is a vital area. It is at the heart of the changes I want to bring about as Minister for Culture. So this evening I want to develop some of the themes that have emerged from my recent discussions with people both inside and outside our strategic cultural bodies such as Arts Council England, the MLA and English Heritage.
4. When I spoke at the Association of British Orchestras at the end of January, I argued that we needed to establish a 'settlement' for culture similar to that enjoyed by education and health, where no one questions the case for public investment, or even that of sport where no-one challenges the right of football, cricket or tennis to occupy the airwaves for days at a time.
5. On Monday I spoke at the launch of the IPPR report on the future of culture, community and civil renewal. And I said that whilst we had rightly focused on extending access to culture, the critical new challenge was how best to move from a world in which the initial access is guaranteed to one where there is ongoing participation.
6. And I want to develop those themes this evening – how to move towards that settlement for culture and how to move on from the sterile access versus excellence debate. And I think it's right to be clear about this – these are not dry philosophical issues. They cut to the heart of the difficult decisions that those who represent their sectors at the national level have to take every day.
7. I'm going to suggest today that our guiding value, or if you like the moral compass, should be neither cultural monopoly – where a small minority enjoys culture and tells the rest of us what to think – nor should it be cultural populism – where we simply paint by numbers.
8. I believe our compass, our moral compass, should be one of cultural democracy.
The successes
9. In any discussion on this subject it's right to be clear about how much the sector has achieved. I want to give credit to the skill, dedication and sheer hard work of all those artists, curators and conservation experts who help to ensure that the sector is now more creative, innovative and popular than ever before.
10. Two-thirds of us visited a historic site last year and the same number took part in an arts activity. Two out of five visited a museum or gallery. Those are only the initial findings from our new national survey, and you don't need to remind me that those figures don't tell the full story. But they help to build the picture that what we do touches the majority of people's lives.
11. Elsewhere, after only two full years, the Renaissance in the Regions programme of investment in regional museums has increased visits from school children by a quarter and attracted nearly three-quarters of a million new visitors from groups who are not traditionally museum goers.
12. English Heritage now has 600,000 members. And as well as free entry for children to their 400 sites, almost 500,000 young people enjoy free educational visits every year. More people than ever take part in Heritage Open Days and London Open House.
13. And in the arts, over 1,000 schools are directly involved in Creative Partnerships, with many more benefiting from the learning and knowledge that that programme is generating. To date over 400,000 young people have had the chance to make the most of their talents and to realise the potential they probably never knew was there. And in a sector that is close to my heart, more than a million young people have benefited from Lottery investment in the Youth Music programme.
14. Its clear the Lottery has transformed the nation's cultural infrastructure in the last decade – we are witness to that in this building - with new buildings such as the Sage Gateshead, the Lowry, the New Art Gallery in Walsall and the Laban Centre here in London. Existing buildings have been or are being refurbished – such as the Tate Modern and the South Bank Centre - all over we've seen that development.
15. And I know that these successes would not have been achieved without the commitment and belief of dedicated professionals across a range of organisations including smaller as well as bigger institutions like Tate or the National. People who have been ready to make the investment - sometimes taking risks to do so - to put culture at the heart of people's lives. Those decisions are paying off. More people than ever before will have the opportunity to experience the best of our sector. . The experience to feel touched by the excellence all of us perceive.
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The problem
16. But those who are at the forefront of cultural innovation have long known that it is no longer enough to just put on good plays, or produce wonderful pieces of art, or to maintain captivating museums, galleries or historic buildings.
17. We know that those approaches will boost the personal or private value of culture to some people. They'll help some people to achieve self-fulfilment; to learn about others; to find creative ways to live their life to the full.
18. But people rightly now demand more of our national strategic bodies. They expect them to be responsive to what they think; to be inclusive; to reflect not only personal desires and values, but for cultural professionals to share their expertise and be open to having their views shaped by those around them. And when that happens – as it did with the Angel of the North in Gateshead or the Lowry in Salford – then we can all see that wider public value that is created.
19. That sense that people 'get it' at the local level - in part because they are able to see with their own eyes the impact of the investment – which has not yet been translated on a national stage. Tessa Jowell's essay set out the argument when she said sometimes we had argued for culture in terms of its intrinsic value, other times in instrumentalist terms. But despite the work done by many people, we still lack a coherent case for investment.
20. Many of you will know that between 1998 and 2008 Arts Council England funding will have had unprecedented increases. There is no question that the public backs that funding – four out of five people support public investment in the arts. And if we look at theatre, at music, at dance, we can see the benefits that additional money has brought. Across our great institutions, such as the Tate and the National Theatre there are very strong voices making the wider case for what they do. But across the piece, our strategic bodies have not yet found the universal language to bring together those strong voices at the national level to begin to make the case for the settlement for culture.
21. That inability to communicate our success important that we do not take either that level of investment or the public support for it for granted. We must look to our strategic bodies to construct the language that will enable us to tell the story of our sector. This is essential if we are to champion the cultural sector not just for the private value, or economic and social benefits, but also for the deeper cultural value that we all know our great artists and cultural institutions create. Is essential if we are to build the rationale for our ongoing commitment to public investment in art and culture.
22. And that is why I am arguing that we must now concentrate on building what I term cultural democracy.
What does that mean?
23. And I think that there are some lessons to be learnt from elsewhere that both help to explain what cultural democracy looks like, and gives us some hints as to how we might get there.
24. Two examples I want to draw on are the BBC and the NHS. We like individual programmes on the BBC. We get excellent treatment from doctors and nurses. But the BBC and the NHS are both more than the sum of their individual components. They are the embodiment of an enduring set of democratic values. We value them not just for what they do, but also for what they stand for, for how they engage us and for how they respond to us.
25. This doesn't mean that they don't need of course to modernise and reform over time, but it does mean that they have worked hard to define, live out, and communicate a core set of values. And those values then inform the way that the organisations modernise themselves.
26. This hasn't happened by accident. So in the run-up to the Charter Review the BBC began a wide-ranging conversation with people to ensure that their strategic purposes were in line with what people valued. It was a democratic process that brought broadcasting professionals into contact with the public – providing space for each to shape and inform the others' views. And as a result the evaluation of the BBC has shifted from one based on how much is broadcast to the value which is created. That is the approach that we have now sought to support with the creation of the new BBC Trust. The Charter Review isn't the end of the process of that conversation between the public and the BBC, it's the beginning.
Implications for the cultural sector
27. So what are the values in the cultural sector? How can we live them out through the way we work in Government and in the way that the sector and its strategic bodies work?
28. Berthold Brecht famously parodied the East German government's response to the German uprising in 1953, suggesting that it should simply 'dissolve the people and elect another?'
29. The point he made so effectively was that in a democracy it is not enough simply to wait for the public to realise that you were right all along. Democracy is about debate, dialogue, deliberation and, ultimately about the representation of what the public genuinely values. It is the product of people being exposed to the arguments and their informed views taken into account. Yet far too often those bodies that represent the sector have failed to take this to heart. And that is why we have so often failed to achieve the settlement we deserve.
30. Through John's work and those of the others who have been working in this area we know that the value the cultural sector produces is inescapably linked to how cultural organisations work and how they engage with the public.
31. That shouldn't be a shock to anybody. It's just how the individual artist works when they receive a commission. It's the same process of exploring expectations and boundaries, setting out ideas, explaining reasoning and thoughts. Each shaping and informing the other's views and the final outcome.
32. And,that is the kind of model we urgently need to adopt. Despite all our achievements, and there have been a lot of achievements, despite the better access, or the record numbers of people benefiting from this sector, we have not built the truly democratic mandate. We are not yet over the cliff. For too long those who have set the cultural parameters have been unaccountable to the people who they should have been obliged to listen to. Recognising and accepting that has fundamental implications for people working at all levels in the sector.
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Implications for government
33. This is an enabling Government. So we need to find ways to genuinely enable the creation of cultural democracy and cultural value, through setting the long, strategic direction for the sector.
34. Government needs to be more than just a funder for the cultural sector. We need to take our responsibility for letting people into the policy process seriously. As I said to the annual gathering of the Chief Executives of our strategic bodies two weeks ago, we need a fundamental shift to show that we don't only care that something is delivered, we need to show that we care as much about its quality and how it is delivered.
Practical implications for those working in the sector
35. The Demos work is a challenge to Government, but also a frank challenge to our national strategic bodies. In his new book John Holden talks about 'the crisis of legitimacy' in the cultural sector. I don't think that is an overstatement. It is clear to me that not only is it no longer productive for parts of the sector simply to demand 'let us get on with it', it's no longer acceptable.
36. But that doesn't mean the end of the arms length principle, or of the end of the independence of the cultural sector. It means individual organisations and their representative bodies taking on responsibility themselves for making the case for the settlement for culture.
37. We have always known that people have a real hunger to get involved. To experience the best that is on offer. And we know that our sectors, more than ever before, are producing high quality, creative work to meet hat need. The task is now to fill in the bit in the middle – to join-up that public hunger and that professional creativity. And we need to start with where people are – not where we might wish they were. So we need to make a better connection between how people currently express their creative interests – such as going to the cinema, in reading, in dancing – and leading people on to wider and deeper forms of engagement. I strongly believe that the long-term future of the sector depends on it.
38. I know that some of our cultural strategic bodies are already beginning to think about how they can change their focus to ensure that they build cultural value. There was a key theme at the Capturing the Public Value of Heritage Conference in January, when the heritage sector was challenged by participants from citizens' juries to engage with communities on their terms and in their language, rather than solely in the language of experts.
39. And in the arts, last year the Peer Review of Arts Council England made a number of key recommendations on the body's future direction. Amongst the recommendations – and there were some for us too – were a number which went to the heart of what we are talking about this evening.
40. The Review stressed the need to identify 'the key strategic interventions that Arts Council England needs to make in order to build the audience…'; to 'focus on forging partnerships within and outside the arts sector, driving cultural change…'; and '…position[ing] itself to lead the intellectual debate in the country about the arts and the place of culture in national life.'
41. To me, those recommendations are about the vital task of turning the organisation towards 'cultural value'. I believe that if we are to become genuinely democratic then as a matter of urgency the national body must urgently find ways of connecting with new audiences, not just throwing the doors open and expecting people to rush in. They need to find ways of communicating with people that doesn't make them 'hard to reach'. We must no longer leave out of this process of describing cultural value that those groups who seem less able or less ready to engage.
42. Some people might say that those kinds of approaches don't sit well with listening to artists themselves and that they are incompatible, that they will further alienate the artistic community.
43. But I know that when Peter Hewitt took his brief step away from his day job at Arts Council England to look at the strategic role of the Council, one of the key areas that he focused on was on the importance of re-engaging artists themselves.
44. And I think that Peter was absolutely right. And like him, I don't see a contradiction between a strategic focus on building cultural value and on bringing artists themselves back within the heart of our strategic bodies.
45. The fact is that this new language demands a better dialogue between the cultural 'expert' and the citizen, with neither trying to monopolise the conversation. So rather than being pushed away from the centre, artists and cultural professionals must be at the heart of this new approach.
46. This must mean a new approach to professionalism from our national representative bodies. A new professionalism that builds its legitimacy not just on in-depth knowledge of a subject, but also on the quality of relationships formed with the public. As I said before, that's the way that many artists themselves work and its how local organisations have long known that they needed to work in order to survive. But it now must become the heart of how the national strategic bodies work and it is how local organisations have long known they need to work to survive.
47. It is vital that this is not seen by those strategic bodies as a new way to describe the status quo. Done properly, there will be hard decisions to take. Hard decisions about the relationships with the wider sector, about the directions and levels of funding and how our strategic bodies themselves should look. But if the approach is done properly and rigorously, then those decisions will be taken in the knowledge that they are helping to build cultural value.
48. That's why I am very pleased that Arts Council England have already indicated that they are intending to make this approach part of their longer-term programme, and to set in train a fundamental process to look at the way in which organisations need to evolve to best create and support the cultural value that we all want. There is no doubt that this is the cultural challenge of the 21st century. I look forward to working with them as their plans develop.
Conclusion
49. I suggested at the beginning of this speech that the sector's strategic bodies must now help culture find its place in society on its own terms. To do that they need to show how it is more than just a collection of plays, or museums or historic houses. More that just free entry or reduced price tickets, important though those are.
50. I've argued that the defining value of cultural democracy is the quality of the relationship between cultural professionals and the public. Now is the time for the national strategic bodies to become renowned for their relationship with the public, not their distance from them. That doesn't mean a slavish desire to please, but nor does it mean a studied indifference to what people think or what they value.
51. Let me be clear. This is not about dumbing-down. It is about judging the bodies who are charged with providing strategic direction by their responsiveness to what people value, but also by their ability to influence and develop people's aspirations. It isn't an optional extra. Not something to be done after everything else is sorted. It is fundamental and it is the key to resolving the crisis of legitimacy that John Holden expresses so well in his new book. Cultural democracy has always been there – its been the lifeblood by which many organisations have survived - but it must now become a way of life for those who have the responsibility to speak for their sectors as a whole.
52. Government can help achieve this. We can play an enabling role. But this agenda cannot be delivered from Whitehall. It requires the commitment – and the ability – of all those working within the sector and those who provide strategic direction, such as Arts Council England, to build on the best of existing practice.
53. By definition this sector is brimming with creativity. The urgent challenge – and responsibility – for all those who lead in the sector is to make sure that this creativity is focused on creating the cultural value that people are rightly demanding. It is clear to me that as we look forward and look at our real challenges in the 21st Century, - whether understanding faith or race, building civil renewal and respect - that this is the sector with the answers. I very much look forward to discussing with you how we can do that in the months ahead.
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