The Stage

Jowell told ACE to focus funds on New Labour schemes

Published Wednesday 27 April 2005 at 12:35 by Jeremy Austin

Exclusive: Material that has been released to The Stage under the Freedom of Information Act reveals culture secretary Tessa Jowell instructed Arts Council England to concentrate grants on schemes that are in line with certain key New Labour policies.

Jowell’s letter to the funding body accompanied December’s disappointing below inflation three-year allocation of central government funds. In it she stresses that ACE will be expected to concentrate funding on schemes that use culture as a tool for social regeneration or relate to education and health.

Jowell writes that while she “strongly supports” the development of strategies to support key artforms, she hopes “these would strike an appropriate balance between ensuring equity of access by audiences to the very best new art, rewarding and nurturing professional excellence and promoting and supporting participation”.

She adds: “I would expect that the allocations that you decide upon for individual organisations will be underpinned by these strategies and I would be grateful to be kept informed of the key elements surrounding the strategies and the allocations as they develop.

“These artform strategies should also support individual artforms in playing a full part in delivering on key related agendas, for example promoting the potential contribution of dance to our efforts to improve the level of physical activity.”

Later on she writes: “In particular I want to do more both to pilot complementary models of delivering cultural education to young people… and to capture more effectively the contribution that Arts Council England’s wider work with young people can make to this offer.”

With the country in the middle of a general election campaign, news of the statement has been highlighted by the opposition as further proof of government interference in the arts funding system. Tory spokesman Hugo Swire cited one demand that ACE pay money towards a survey into participation in public-funded schemes by the demographic groups the government deems a priority.

Said Swire: “This letter represents a further erosion of the arm’s length principle under Labour and confirms their wish to control and interfere in the arts. It underlines Sir Christopher Frayling’s criticisms of the government for wanting to treat the arts as a government department.

“Tessa Jowell makes no mention of supporting the arts for their own sake but focuses instead on participation surveys and PSA [Public Service Agreement] targets. It seems that Labour is still interested only in using the arts as tools for social engineering.

“It is also revealing that Jowell instructs the arts sector to pay for Labour’s own survey to ‘demonstrate to the Treasury that we are delivering against our PSA targets…’ This shows again that Labour are more interested in the instrumental benefits of the arts, rather than for their own cultural value.”

The shadow culture spokesman added that Jowell’s emphasis on meeting efficiency targets was a matter of further concern. Jowell stresses in her letter that the final part of the settlement - which holds central government funding of ACE at under £413 million for the next three years - will be dependent on efficiency targets being met in the years 2005/6 and 2007/8. ACE says that it is on target to achieve this.

Publication of the letter comes just weeks after ACE chairman Christopher Frayling warned that the once-sacrosanct arm’s length principle had been reduced to “Venus de Milo length”. In February he told the Royal Society for the Arts that ACE was considered merely an extension of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

At that time he said: “While it was the Conservative government of the eighties that first introduced the mantra ‘culture should serve the economy’, since 1997 New Labour has added a whole list of priorities… The DCMS is becoming more ‘hands on’.

“Our independence is less well understood and commitment to the benefits of the arm’s length principle may be slowly ebbing away.”