It was fascinating watching the faces of the dozens of cultural leaders listening to Lord Wei this week.
He has been donating his time to promoting the concept of the Big Society. It's a rather nebulous philosophy not least, as he explained, because it is still work in progress with the details to be filled in from the bottom up by communities.
Much of Lord Wei’s speech focused on the key principals of the Big Society (I will refrain from reducing it to an acronym for obvious reasons) and how the arts and heritage might be able to contribute.
For me, everything Lord Wei said on the subject was very clear, well explained and difficult to disagree with. As he said, localism and increasing community engagement are not issues that divide the political parties. What was causing the perplexed looks on faces in the audience is that they knew that culture has been contributing to building social capital in communities for decades. And it's not been in a top down, 'Big Government' way: it's been due to community-led and volunteer-driven initiatives. Does central government not know this? If it does, it’s keeping very quiet about it.
Community-led cultural initiatives may have a small cost to Local Government, but in the overall scheme of things it is incredibly tiny amount of investment. The irony is that just as national government is championing what many cultural organisations have been doing with their communities for years, in many places local government is clawing back the loose change that has been supporting the infrastructure.
We know there are tough choices to be made, but he vibrant cultural life in many of our communities has evolved over decades. In some places it could die in a matter of months. Society will be a lot smaller without it.
David Brownlee, Chief Executive, Audiences UK
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