It was hardly surprising that the Arts & Theatre industries were scarcely touched upon during the General Election campaigning this summer. Most people in the country were quite understandably more worried about issues such as the Cost of Living, and the state of the economy in general. Nevertheless, with half a dozen ministers whose job it is to champion Arts & Theatre causes, I think that they should have been included in all the party manifestos, even if this was only by touching upon them briefly, especially given that the theatre industry is one of the UK’s fastest growing industries at the moment.
In 2022, music, performance and visual arts collectively contributed approximately £11.5 billion to the British economy, an increase of 17.9% on its pre-pandemic levels. This significant economic growth, already much sharper than other creative industries or the cultural sector as a whole, is made even more impressive by the fact that it has come at a time when the growth across the entire UK economy overall has been just 0.8%. Moreover, whilst the £1.6 billion Culture Recovery Fund that the government granted the cultural and creative sectors during the pandemic was essential for enabling the survival of the theatre industry, this funding was not sufficient for a full recovery that would return it to its former glory as a healthy and thriving industry.
When arts funding doubled between 1997 and 2007, dance, opera and classical music all flourished. This shows that there is a direct correlation between public funding for the arts and their success. Despite the fact that the theatre industry is currently experiencing lots of growth without public funding, I believe that Arts & Theatre could be even more of a powerhouse industry if the government invested in them. Moreover, in the 2023 British Social Attitudes Survey, 79.3% of people said that they were “proud” or “very proud” of British arts and literature which suggests that further investment in these sectors will continue to help the British economy as a whole because people will be interested in them and willing to spend their money on them. What is also important is that for every £1 spent on theatre tickets, an additional £1.40 is generated in local economies in areas such as hospitality, transport and the hotel industry.
However, whilst Arts & Theatre still seem to be surviving at the moment, their future has been put at risk by decisions that schools have been forced to make. At my high school, drama GCSE was not offered and the only way to get involved with theatre was through the after-school club that was run by a volunteer. Whilst it was amazing that even this extra-curricular drama was available, I think that it is abysmal that schools are being forced to make difficult decisions, such as cutting arts provision, due to a lack of funding from the government. I am sure that this lack of investment in Arts & Theatre in schools is going to have a drastic impact on the quality of British output in the future because it restricts who has access to them so lots of potentially very talented children are likely to never have a chance of a career in the Arts.
These issues tend to more negatively affect children from outside London as there are simply less opportunities to get involved in or experience the Arts and Theatre, even outside of school. Although the previous government recognised this, their “levelling-up” technique did nothing to actually help the situation. Instead of bringing the rest of the country up to London’s level by creating more funding, in February 2022 Nadine Dorris (the Culture Secretary at the time) instructed the Arts Council to take £24 million from London’s funding and distribute elsewhere in the country. This led to a “levelling-down” with the funding not leading to any miraculous transformations and instead devastating London-based art groups such as The National Opera who relied on the funding that was taken away from them.
Given that the theatre industry has grown so much since the pandemic, despite a lack of funding, I sincerely hope that the current government allocated additional spending to Arts & Theatre since I am sure that it would generate even more turnover for the theatre industry that could in turn be used to help other struggling industries. However, I honestly do not know what more Arts & Theatre industries can do to convince politicians to care about them since that are already more important in the minds of the British public, as well as to the British economy, than several of the issues that were prioritised during the General Election.
