Excellent diverse work must come from grassroots - Purnell

Published Tuesday 13 November 2007 at 15:30 by Alistair Smith

Equity Diversity Conference: Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport James Purnell has called for a “bottom up” transformation of the arts sector to put diverse work at the centre of cultural institutions’ artistic policies.

Purnell said that he wanted the industry to create “excellence through diversity” and pointed to shows such as Zero Degrees by Akram Khan and Damon Albarn’s Chinese circus opera Monkey: Journey to the West, as examples of productions that had achieved this.

“Creating diverse audiences, diverse arts and diverse audiences is intrinsic to the artistic process,” he said. “It can’t be achieved by using the management consultant’s tool box or by setting crude top down targets. If we reduce it to ticking boxes, it puts people who are trying to do diverse work in a box. Instead, we need a transformation of the whole sector, but that can only happen from the bottom up, not through central fiat.”

He added that while targets for access and participation, for groups such as ethnic minorities, had been the right way forward ten years ago, it was now time for a new approach.

Purnell added: “I think we need to see transformations in leadership and staff in cultural organisations, including our major institutions. We need to see a transformation in the content put on in the cultural sector and the opportunities for artists and, of course, once we have transformed staff and content, that will help us to make further progress in terms of access and audiences.”

He added that the idea of “excellence through diversity” would be explored by Brian McMaster, former director of the Edinburgh International Festival, as part of his review into excellence in the arts, which will influence future Arts Council England policy.