Tomorrow, the much anticipated report by former Edinburgh Festival director Sir Brian McMaster into arts policy in England is published. There will be much rejoicing. There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth. There will be bunting flown, and there will be blood on the walls.
Arts funding is, after all, a blood sport. It is also one where the battle lines are regularly redrawn, although the combatants stay roughly the same. In shorthand, they are the "art for art's sake" battalion versus the "arts as an instrument of social change" troops. McMaster's report, commissioned by new English Culture Secretary James Purnell, will laud the pursuit of excellence and innovation, celebrate diversity and risk, and address some of the issues of access by demanding that the generously funded big beasts get out more.
This will be (exquisitely played) music to the ears of government critics such as Barbican boss John Tusa and Master of the Queen's Music Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, who have variously described current arts policy as the work of philistines and bureaucratic visigoths. It will make dispiriting reading for those organisations whose funding may disappear on the grounds either that what they do is essentially social work, or could be provided by commercial rather than subsidised means. And it will be of more than passing interest to the individuals and bodies trying to provide a working template for Creative Scotland, the new facilitating and funding body due to rise early next year following the decommissioning of the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen.
The McMaster report's writ does not run in Scotland, but it provides a new backdrop to our own national debate. If we are wise, we will cherry-pick those recommendations that allow us to jettison some outdated baggage without losing sight of the necessity to tailor the Creative Scotland agenda to the needs and priorities of a different cultural and political landscape. It is greatly encouraging, for instance, to hear the English culture ministry proclaim the value of taking risks, and acknow-ledging the necessary contribution of innovative non-mainstream com-panies to the overall mix.
Yet the pity of it is that the arts debate has become so polarised over the years. Evangelicals who insist that the pursuit of excellence must be pre-eminent regardless of any collateral damage to programmes designed to seduce a wider social audience are, after all, largely those to whom personal access and exposure came relatively easily. And those who are passionate about the ability of the arts to transform disadvantaged lives too often confuse the terms excellence and elitism - though sometimes not without due provocation.
Tusa recently derided terms such as "pathways" and "entry points" as evidence of vague and woolly thinking that would lead to products with the same characteristics. Now, that does smack of elitism. Finding ways to bring children into contact with the arts throughout their learning process is invaluable in a host of vital ways, from improving personal confidence and skills to giving them a springboard into appreciating the joys and pleasures of all that the cultural world has to offer. (The decision to kill off the cultural co-ordinators programme in Scottish schools by 2010 seems to me a false economy given the relative buttons it is costing. Creative Scotland, in tandem with the Education Department, has to find ways of replicating these opportunities.) Equally, those who are committed to what became known as cultural entitlements in the report of the Scottish Cultural Commission have to back off from anything that smacks of lobbying for the lowest common denominator on the grounds that it's better than nothing. Excellence and making provision for maximum inclusion are not at all mutually exclusive options. The standard of applications to the Dewar Arts Awards confirms we have some extraordinarily talented young Scots in every field of the arts. Some have already won international acclaim. They allow us to celebrate Scottish excellence. But what they all have in common is that a school or college, very often an individual, gave them self-belief and encouragement at a pivotal moment in their development.
These shooting stars are special but they are far from being unique. Any school that has the good fortune to be able to provide an orchestra will testify to the unexpected range of abilities it unearths. The visual arts, dance and drama are no different. Talk to outreach workers attached to national arts companies and they will wax lyrical about the enthusiasm quotient they encounter. This country has a huge reservoir of untapped potential and it is no more than enlightened self-interest to structure our arts and our education in such a way that we don't squander creative talents who will enrich their future and ours.
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