Robert Hewison - Cultural Capital: The Rise and Fall of Creative Britain

First published by Verso 2014
Robert Hewison 2014

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The moral rights of the author have been asserted

Verso
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ISBN-13: 978-1-78168-591-4 (PB)
eISBN-13: 978-1-78168-592-1 (US)
eISBN-13: 978-1-78168-751-2 (UK)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hewison, Robert, 1943
Cultural capital : the rise and fall of creative Britain / Robert Hewison.
pages cm
Summary: What was Creative Britain? Was it the golden age that Tony Blair vaunted in 2007, or a neoliberal nirvana? In the twenty-first century, culture the visual and performing arts, museums and galleries, the creative industries have become ever more important to governments, to the economy, and to how people live. Cultural historian Robert Hewison shows how, from Cool Britannia and the Millennium Dome to the Olympics and beyond, Creative Britain rose from the desert of Thatcherism only to fall into the slough of New Labours managerialism Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-78168-591-4 (paperback)
1. Arts and society Great Britain History 20th century. 2. Arts and society Great Britain History 21st century. 3. Great Britain Civilization 1945
I. Title.
NX180.S6H475 2014
700.103094109049 dc23

2014026259

v3.1

For Erica

C ultural Capital: The Rise and Fall of Creative Britain is constructed as a narrative of the period 19972012, from the decision to continue with the Millennium Dome to the opening of the 2012 Olympics. The approach is broadly chronological, but each chapter has a governing theme for instance, the creative industries in that is pursued further within the overall time frame. There are also sections where I have gone deeper into the details of a particular project or policy because it serves as a test case. My source material is the aptly named grey literature of policy documents and reports, together with academic commentaries, contemporary journalism and my own observation of events.

No interviews were conducted specifically for research purposes, but I have had many helpful conversations, and several people have commented on versions of the manuscript, while others have answered questions of detail or supplied me with documents. I would like to thank in particular Vivek Bhardway, Stuart Davies, Alan Davey, Christopher Gordon, Andrew Haydon, Stephen Hetherington, Robert Hutchison, Sam Jones, Naseem Khan, Henk van Klaveren, Rnn McDonald, Rachel McGuire, Gareth Maeer, Franois Matarasso, Irene Morra, Roshi Naidoo, John Newbigin, Dave OBrien, Margaret OConnor, Kate Oakley, Toby Sargent, Sara Selwood, Simon Thurley, Jenny Williams and Karen Wright.

There are three people to whom I owe special thanks: my friend and collaborator John Holden, who has long been a sounding board for this project, and who rightly appears in its pages; my editor, Leo Hollis, who has reminded me what editors are for; and my wife Erica, at whose kitchen table so many interesting debates are to be had.

We can justify the subsidised arts on the grounds of cost effectiveness, or as tourist attractions, or as investments, or as commodities that can be marketed, exploited and profited from, but the arts should make their own argument. They are part of our life, our language, our way of seeing; they are a measure of our civilisation. The arts tell us truths about ourselves and our feelings and our society that reach parts of us that politics and journalism dont. They entertain, they give pleasure, they give hope, they ravish the senses, and above all they help us fit the disparate pieces of the world together; to try and make form out of chaos.

Richard Eyre, Report on the Future of
Lyric Theatre in London, 1998

I n March 2007, three months before he resigned as prime minister, Tony Blair addressed the leaders of Britains cultural establishment in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern. He began by reminding them of a promise made before he was elected: that he would make the arts part of the core script of government. He now suggested that the ten years since he had come into office would be looked back on as a golden age for the arts.

Imagine what the world would have been like if we had continued with the funding regime and the policies we inherited. Many of the countrys finest regional theatres would have closed, or would exist as shadows of themselves on a diet of light drama. Many orchestras would have gone to the wall. There would be no new programmes for art education. Museums, far from being full, would have gradually diminished in importance as charging reduced the audience to the middle class. Im not sure there would be a British film industry, or at least not one so healthy, or the same huge success at the National Theatre.

And Blair was right. In 1997 the British cultural world had been in a decayed and fractious state, stale and starved of public funding. By the time Blairs successor Gordon Brown left office, in May 2010, the scene was transformed. Government spending on the arts had nearly doubled, the removal of entry charges to all national museums and galleries had helped to raise the annual number of visits from 24 million to 40 million. There had been substantial help to regional museums. After years of neglect, the nations cultural infrastructure had been refurbished and extended, from the Great Court of the British Museum to the Sage Gateshead. The National Lottery had been turned into an engine of urban regeneration. The film industry was flourishing; the BBCs Promenade Concerts were booming; regional theatres, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre were adventurous, and their theatres full. Labours 2010 cultural manifesto, Creative Britain, boasted that the creative industries contributed 10 per cent of Gross Domestic Product.

Tate Modern was the obvious venue for Blairs speech. Although the project had started long before Blair came to power, and was made possible by the Conservatives under John Major, who in 1992 recast the funding of culture by launching the National Lottery, the opening of Tate Modern in May 2000 had been appropriated as an emblem of New Labours success. The conversion of the decommissioned Bankside power station into a cathedral of contemporary art, facing St Pauls across the Thames, symbolized the alchemy that had taken place. Southwark was one of the ten most deprived boroughs in the country, and although Tate Modern produced nothing, turning a derelict power station into a museum of modern art displayed the economic magic that cultural investment could make.

The early years of the twenty-first century seem even more of a golden age because they have been followed by an age of lead the deepest and longest recession of modern times. The ConservativeLiberal Democratic coalition has vigorously pursued the cultural retrenchment begun in the last New Labour budget. Dominated by the Thatcherite values of the Conservatives, it has used the recession to pursue an alternative experiment in the management of culture. The arts and heritage will have to live with the consequences of that experiment for some time, unless there is a revision as a consequence of the general election in 2015.