Britain behind Europe in arts funding and education, ‘crisis’ report shows
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/article/2024/jul/21/britain-behind-europe-in-arts-funding-and-education-crisis-report-shows?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Posted by mozartbond
4 Comments
But we we left because we were richer than them, right lads?
Also, we are giving a goodbye to our soft power (if any) with these actions.
The tragic thing about this is that creativity and the arts are a sector of the economy which can spin up multi-billion pound properties and associated franchising, cross media properties and foster connections between industries of professionals, all mining the one thing that doesn’t deplete. Human creativity and expression.
So even on the terms of the hard-nosed short sighted, business-minded, money-first, STEM/Economics only education types, not investing in the arts is just shooting the UK economy in the foot over and over by ignoring the economic possibilities of the arts.
France does it, they’re well known for their arts and animation, Japan does it, everyone watches anime now and plays their videogames. America does it, any cartoons in English are probably authored by Americans, their movie industry is THE movie industry. Videogames? Japan, America and increasingly European devs dominate and the UK has a thriving dev base with more or less no government support.
Free money left on the table by the UK. Can only imagine it’s because there’s a genuine desire by our political class to force anyone who isn’t STEM/money focused out of higher education.
Maybe British art can stand on its own feet?
I wonder if this includes things like the funding which enables British museums and galleries to be free, while even the most minor provincial gallery on the Continent charges and is often deserted.
Part of this is that, like in other sectors, the pay for so many staff in these sectors is abysmal and we’ve allowed for purposeful degradation of these sectors as part of an ideological pursuit.
In the way that many on this sub cheered the downfall of Universities many think that art is superfluous and frivolous to our economy, our culture and our societal flourishing because it is not strictly utilitarian and doesn’t capitulate to value metrics so easily.
I work in the arts and young folks are mostly in the 28-35k bracket and lucky to advance beyond annual payrises.
Like nursing and education we’ve allowed the public to secretly harbour the opinion that to work int he arts is a vocation or a “nice” job and so you can’t expect to me paid well for doing something you love.
There’s also the false idea that the fields are populated by “elites” when the shows and films we all enjoy are 95% the product of the hard work of everyday people.
Couple that with the absolute slandering and patronising of those with “useless” humanities degrees who bolster these industries and we’ve created another area where wage stagnation has set in despite the industry being one of our largest and most productive.