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MANIFESTO

We believe that great art needs great audiences, and that's why our Manifesto outlines our key messages for funders, policy-makers and the sector in England and the evidence behind those views. You can download our Manifesto here.

We should be unapologetic in the belief that objective data tells us more than subjective thumb-sucking. Precise judgements, however restrictive, are more informative than sweeping judgements. There is too much nonsense and too many unchallenged myths around about arts audiences and their behaviour.

Mark Hazell, Marketing & Publicity Director, Norwich Theatre Royal

Latest news

Rainy days and funding droughts

13th August 2010

This week the Prime Minister has chosen to highlight Tourism as a key driver for economic recovery.  But as I write this (in August), the rain is pouring down.  We’re not going to be either encouraging ‘stay-cations’ or attracting vast numbers of new inbound tourists by focusing on the weather.  So why do people visit these damp isles?

The Visit Britain website has a fantastic section on ‘insights and statistics’.  In February this year they produced a great resource called the ‘Culture & Heritage Topic Profile’.  It states that ‘57% of respondents from 20 countries agreed that history and culture are strong influences on their choice of holiday destination’ and ‘Britain’s mix of “culture” is key to our success: from heritage, the arts, museums, through our creative industries (eg fashion, music, design, media) to living / contemporary culture (eg language, traditions, festivals, sport, cuisine)’.

And the scale of that success?  ‘Visit Britain estimates that Britain’s unique Culture and Heritage attracts £4.5bn worth of spending by inbound visitors annually, equivalent to more than one quarter of all spending by international visitors, and thereby underpins more than 100,000 jobs across the length and breadth of Britain.’

£4.5bn is more than the DCMS currently provides in Grant-in-Aid to sponsored bodies (£2.6bn) and distributes from the Lottery (£1.7bn).  And that’s before the planned 25% savings.

So to summarise:

1.       Culture and Heritage is fundamental to the UK’s tourist offer

2.       The UK gets more back in from inbound tourist spend on Culture and Heritage than the UK Government invests in Culture and Heritage

3.       The government plans big cuts to Culture and Heritage in the next spending round at the same time as trying to attract more visitors to Britain. 

The Cultural sector has been very mature at not special pleading in the current financial climate, but if tourism is key to the recovery, do you really want to diminish your principal asset? 

‘Come to Britain in 2011 – it’s still wet and there’s less exciting things to do than last year’. 

David Brownlee, Chief Executive, Audiences UK

 

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Does it matter how fast the axe falls?

6th August 2010

We know big cuts are coming to cultural funding from national government. There may be some who believe it's better to get the pain over quickly by front-loading savings. They're wrong.

 
The sector simply isn't ready to respond to big cuts in 2011/12 in a way that won't have a major impact on 'front line services'. Organisations will not find other sources of income in time. They will not be able to look meaningfully at savings by mergers and shared services.
 
Co-funders will not be able to have intelligent conversations about organisations they jointly support. Instead the organisations will be far more likely to face like-for-like cuts, making them potentially less viable than organisations reliant on a single funder.
 
The result of all of this could be a disaster for the arts in the short term. But in the long term it will be the public who suffer as opportunities to access high quality cultural experiences could all but disappear around parts of country.  
 
The arts sector has (generally) been remarkably mature and sensible in its reaction to making its contribution to reducing the national debt. I hope that will mean the Secretary of State, Chief Secretary to the Treasury and Chancellors will take a similarly considered approach to the phasing of the cuts.
 
David Brownlee, Chief Executive, Audiences UK
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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

23rd July 2010

This week’s blog is by Alison O’Hara, CEO of Audiences North East.

Many of you will know that over the past few months I’ve been battling with the dreaded ‘c’ word… I returned to work cancer-free a few weeks ago only to find that I’m now battling another ‘c’ word – yes the dreaded cuts to arts funding. During my sick leave I felt fairly immune to these but the harsh reality of the economic downturn and the prospect of some tough decisions ahead for cultural sector funding have certainly brought home the fragility of working in the arts.
 
Whilst off work I had plenty of time to consider life, the universe and everything and I counted up how many people had been involved in my recovery – a conservative estimate of 50 based on face-to-face interactions alone. In a kind of day-dreamy way I mused on the similarities between the arts world and the NHS – the huge amount of team work involved, the whole spectrum of skills required and the sheer brilliance of the lead performers.
 
Thinking about the cuts in government spending I pondered Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and the relative positions of health and creativity in the pyramid. Arts Council England’s ambition to help arts organisations thrive not just survive applies just as equally to me as an individual – whilst clearly I need to be healthy to survive I also need to enjoy life and for me, as well as many others, that includes the opportunity to experience those skin-tingling moments of really great art.
 
Last week we held our annual subscribers’ event at Belsay Hall, Castle and Gardens in Northumberland. Extraordinary Measures, English Heritage’s latest contemporary art exhibition at the country estate, surely shows how great art can be. My favourites - Ron Mueck’s beautiful Spooning Couple and Mat Collishaw’s huge zoetrope The Garden of Unearthly Delights – were simply amazing. Spooning Couple, a miniature man and woman, was so tender and intimate, so lifelike and mesmerising whilst the zoetrope (spinning wheel) conjures up a 3-D flickering world of birds, snails and mischievous imps. Even now I still try to work out the mechanics of the zoetrope.
 
This week I’ve been at the Arts Marketing Association Conference at the Royal Armouries in Leeds which started with a rousing performance by duet Upneet Singh (tabla) and Giuliano Modarelli (guitar). This year’s conference, Pulling Power – The Social Marketing Revolution (cue lots of references to the dating game!) attended by c. 500 arts marketing professionals, explores the social, interconnected world and new ways of engaging with the public.

Two speakers really got me thinking about how as a sector we could create a more positive future despite the economic uncertainties. Mark Earls, author of HERD: How to Change Mass Behaviour by Harnessing our True Nature got us on our feet in a practical demonstration of his thinking with the herd behaviour implicit in a Mexican Wave. We might like to think that ‘We’re all individuals”, but in fact we adopt ritual practices and constantly mimic other people - where we live, the brands we use, the music we listen to, the clothes we wear and the names we give our children reveal us to be social creatures. The challenge for us is how we harness the herd effect not only to increase audiences but also to create public support for the arts in the face of government spending cuts.

In a session about leadership Chris Grant, Director of 14a Conversations, asked the workshop participants to give a one word view of how the past few weeks had been for them. Given my own current absorption with spending cuts I was amazed by the results. Whilst around half the group used words such as ‘pessimistic’, ‘precarious’ and ‘at risk’, a fair number of participants were ‘buzzing’, ‘excited’, ‘liberated’ and even ‘on fire’! As a group “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times”. For me, this simple exercise demonstrated how inspiring the arts can be – despite the uncertain future for the cultural sector, the arts still have the ability to excite people and transform their lives and we need to harness this powerful message to protect the arts.
 
Alison O’Hara, Chief Executive, Audiences North East
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