Far from a McMaster class

Published Tuesday 29 January 2008 at 10:25

In response to the front page article, Arts world welcomes McMaster’s ‘excellent’ review (The Stage, January 17), one might welcome a real move from “crude top-down targets” towards “judgements of art based on intrinsic quality”. No-one should welcome the McMaster review.

All McMaster’s concrete recommendations make it that clear that implementation is to “be managed” by the funding bodies - ACE, for example - but he has not made one recommendation about how those funding bodies might be made fit for purpose.

May we at any rate be spared yet another round of ‘reform’ and ‘consultation’ at the £50-million-a-year-on-administration ACE?

McMaster’s assumptions are in any case all wrong. I value “culture’s potential to change lives” but resent the idea I “must be drawn into it”. To propose a policy that suggests organisations are “cheating” audiences “out of the deepest and most meaningful experiences” is offensive. The arts do not have the power to provide experiences such as being present at the birth of a child, or sitting up with a dying partner, and it is manipulative to suggest that they do. That is all from the same paragraph of McMaster’s, in the right order, and in his sense - nonsense.

McMaster’s “excellence” is undefinable, and so he defines it in terms of “innovation” and “risk-taking” - twin calves of a sacred cow, and no criteria fit to be used in public policy.

And then he gives it all to the funding bodies “to manage”. Has anybody thought how expensive his “self-assessment” and “peer review” will be? We will be up to our necks in algorithms and matrices before you can say ‘Gordon Brown’ or ‘McKinsey’. Funding will depend on yet more form-filling. What price time in the rehearsal room?

Never mind. When the “Knowledge Bank” to control appointments has been set up, there need be no rehearsals. The script will have been written. The arts will be parrots.

Or marooned, or in fetters. Do go and see Treasure Island at Derby - on until February 2.

Douglas Slater

Vice chairman, Derby Playhouse Limited (in administration)

Address supplied