The “overarching goal of public policy should be to increase happiness”, writes Darren Henley, the chief executive of Arts Council England (ACE), in his latest iteration of The Arts Dividend: How Investment in Culture Creates Happier Lives. Why, then, are the arts in England so miserable, and equally miserable under their respective jurisdictions in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?
Henley has been in charge of ACE, the principal source of public arts funding in England, for the past ten years. This is the third edition, substantially revised and brought up to date, of a publication first released in 2016 and then 2020. His model is J.B. Priestley’s English Journey of 1934, but there is nothing here of Priestley’s severe account of the Depression. The fragile link between the two is that Henley travels a lot for his job. He claims to have seen more art than anyone else in England.
During this time of real crisis in the publicly funded arts, which began with the launch of austerity in 2010, he has also found time to study at Middlesex University, Henley Business School and Buckinghamshire New University, where his subject was applied positive psychology. Henley is utterly positive in his account of the publicly funded arts, museums and libraries that are his responsibility. After an introduction that brings his copy up to date and makes judicious and respectful references to ACE’s chairman, Nicholas Serota, to past Conservative politicians and present Labour ones, he devotes several chapters to the dividends of investment in the arts: creativity, opportunity, happiness, innovation, place-shaping, enterprise and reputation.
Austerity the elephant in the room
As conveyed by Henley, these concepts are so bland that few people would disagree with them. Creativity turns out to be more about the need for diversity; opportunity is about cultural education; happiness is about the arts and health; innovation warns the arts against losing out to new technologies; place-shaping is about regeneration; enterprise addresses the creative industries; and reputation is the product of consistent investment. Evidence for these benefits is drawn from the projects, performances, exhibitions and libraries he has visited on his travels.
His account bears almost no relation to the present dire condition of the arts—one that is daily getting worse. He writes in praise of cultural education, but makes no mention of the EBacc, the “reform” introduced in 2011 that excludes art and design subjects from the suite of general certificates of education the government expects students in England and Wales to take. Arts subjects still exist, but participation since 2010 has fallen by 47% at GCSE level and 29% at A level, with a corresponding decline in the number of teachers. While the 6.5% or so of children who attend fee-paying schools are lavished with access to the arts, the 93.5% in state schools have gradually been starved, making the arts a privilege of the rich.
On the brink
While Henley does mention Covid-19, and the £1.6bn in culture recovery funding that saved the arts from almost total destruction, there is no mention of the 30% cut that was imposed on ACE after the change of government in 2010, nor of the 25% cut made to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport the same year. At present, 2,800 arts organisations are carrying a combined deficit of £117.8m. ACE-funded organisations are closing or at risk of doing so, national and local museums and galleries are in deficit and laying off staff, and public libraries are shutting their doors. Local authority arts funding has halved, and in some places been cut altogether. The British Council, responsible for promoting British arts abroad, is in such a poor state that its chief executive has warned that it may disappear in the next ten years. If, as has been suggested, it sells off its art collection, local authorities will follow.
None of this seems to be of concern to Henley. He admits the arts should be more diverse, that not all children do as well as Prince George and Princess Charlotte in their private school, and that there are “challenges” to funding libraries. But he steers well clear of controversies such as ACE’s recent treatment of English National Opera. And wherever possible, the connection of ACE—and indeed himself—to the matter in hand is mentioned. Commonplace and complacent, this book is dangerously irrelevant to the crisis the arts face.
• The Arts Dividend: How Investment in Culture Creates Happier Lives, by Darren Henley, published by Elliott & Thompson, 240pp, £12.99 (pb), revised edition 30 January
