The art of the matter

It was inspiring to hear Sir Keir Starmer, in his keynote speech to Labour's Party Conference 2024 in Liverpool today, speak of his support for the arts.

Starmer doesn't often inspire but his acknowledgement of the importance of arts and culture in our society and his personal story of playing the flute in the Croydon Youth Philharmonic Orchestra as a fifteen year-old, which enabled him to enjoy a school trip to Malta, was as uplifting as it was unexpected.

During fourteen years of relentless Tory philistinism we have become accustomed to the arts, if mentioned at all, only being the subject of financial cuts and anti-woke culture wars. In an interview with the Guardian, Labour's Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, said: “Over the last fourteen years, there’s been a vandalism of the arts. Violent indifference to areas of the country that are becoming arts deserts. They were just not interested in arts everywhere, for everyone.” 

To someone like me who worked in local government arts most of his career and chaired a London Borough arts council, these statements were music to my ears. Oscar Wilde famously defined a cynic as someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. For me this epitomises the Tory attitude to arts and culture, which is presumably why they hollowed-out the sector when in power. 

At long last - and almost too late - it seems the arts have champions in government once again and hopefully Nandy will work closely with her cabinet colleague, Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, to repair some of the damage inflicted by the Tories on arts in schools. With a 47% drop in the uptake of arts subjects at GCSE level in schools, there is an awful lot of lost ground to make up.

Listening to Starmer and Nandy I was transported back to my own school days where music, drama and the visual arts were an integral part of the curriculum, and of extra-curricular activities. I was in the school choir and played the double bass in the school orchestra - largely because I was one of the few pupils tall enough to handle one. 

I acted and sang in school productions, participated in school concerts, including Easter and Christmas oratorios, and competed in singing competitions. My music teacher also used to take me with him to augment the choristers of two nearby cathedrals of which he was choirmaster.

What wonderful experiences for a teenager, broadening horizons, encouraging confidence and opening up career paths. The interests I developed then have stayed with me throughout my life, prompting me to go into arts administration. But my experience as a local government arts officer also encouraged my interest in politics, which has been another enduring passion, though not always as uplifting a one. Nevertheless, to hear senior politicians now advocating for the arts is a thrill indeed.

And in these dreary times one takes those where one finds them.

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