ARTS COUNCIL IN BRITAIN

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28153, 17 December 1956, Page 21

ARTS COUNCIL IN BRITAIN

CALL FOR PUBLIC SPENDING MONEY REQUIRED FOR CULTURAL AIMS (From a Reuter Correspondent) LONDON. Public organisations in Britain will have to spend more than twice as much money as at present on the fine arts if Britain is not to lag behind other countries, according to the independent but publicly financed Arts Council. The council states that the £1.000,000 which it and local authorities throughout the country now spend on maintaining the arts in Britain is not enough. In a report covering the first 10 years of its existence and the outlook for the future, the Arts Council says that most nations have recognised the obligation to sustain the arts from public funds. About the same time there came an attack on the lack of interest in the arts from another quarter, Sir Albert Richardson, President of the Royal Academy. “In private circles you meet many well-read intellectuals who are entirely ignorant of the meaning of the fine arts,” he said. “As for those circles presided over by the princes of commerce, the atmosphere is even more depressing. “Scientists, doctors of literature, historians, engineers, theologians and even politicians look askance when art is discussed in serious vein. Seek-

ing for the genius of the English nation in matters of art is like searching for the proverbial needle in a truss of hay.” In spite of this condemnation, the Arts Council states that the present audience in Britain for music, opera and the theatre is larger than ever before—and with more money, present audiences could be doubled in the next 10 years. The council, which helps to finance opera, ballet, art exhibitions, drama and concerts, emphasises that more than £500.000 a year is spent on Britain’s public education system, public libraries, art galleries and museums. The proportion of this sum which should be spent on the fine arts, it declares, is half of 1 per cent., or £2,500,000. This sum would adequately finance the range of enterprises which the council now supports, and the cost of which will increase with the higher wages, as well as provide money for the long term rehousing of the arts. This rehousing would mean building, adapting or reconditioning, over a period of years, a number of theatres, concert halls and art galleries in places all over Britain where they could be expected to increase public interest in arts. “Results Not Discouraging” Although asking for more money in the future, the Arts Council says that the results achieved in the last 10 years are not discouraging. Britain’s national talent is prolific and promising, and there is an abundance of actors, musicians, producers, painters and dancers. The council is particularly proud that London’s Royal Opera House at Covent Garden has become, since World War 11, a permanent and continuous home for opera and ballet, whereas previously the private syndicates which ran it held only short international seasons. The Sadler’s Wells Ballet, which

opened at Covent Garden in 1946, has achieved fame not only in Britain but abroad on tour, and has justified the council’s ambition to create a

“truly national institution of ballet,” says the council. The council claims that the Covent Garden orchestra is the best Opera House orchestra in the world. In the field of drama, the council supports the Old Vic, the centre of Shakespearean acting in London, which has been attracting ever-increasing audiences.

The council has been criticised for concentrating the major part of its grants on London, and in particular for the £270,000 sterling given to the Royal Opera House. Covent Garden, last year. It answers this by saying that, its first duty is to maintain

“effective ‘power houses’ of opera, music and drama in the capital and larger cities.”

“Unless these quality-institutions can be maintained, the arts are bound to decline to mediocrity,” it declares. At the same time, it recognises that it has an equal duty to take the arts to people outside the big centres. The over-all grant given to the council by Parliament is determined each year. This has risen from £235,000 in 1946 to £820,000 this year. The Arts Council was set up to take over from a body created during World War II to prevent a complete “black-out” of the arts in Britain. It now believes that to preserve the standards reached in the last 10 years and to improve performances in the various arts in the next decade, the British taxpayer will have to increase his contribution to the country’s cultural life.