Photo: Darkday. Flickr. Some rights reserved. “The arts are essential, if only one knew what for” – Jean Cocteau
Jeremy Corbyn’s arts policy focusses on reversing spending cuts and restoring cultural infrastructure without offering a substantive vision. While repairing financial support would represent a welcome change, it hardly amounts to a ‘radical transformative vision for the arts’. Its major proposals are entirely defensive: ‘reinstate arts funding’, ‘safeguard our galleries and museums’, ‘protect the BBC’.
In contrast to Labour’s recent proposals on the economy, the environment and digital democracy, Corbyn’s arts policy is disappointingly lacklustre. It does not have to be like this; in 1965 Labour Minister Jennie Lee published Britain’s first cultural white paper, ‘A Policy for the Arts: The First Steps’, in which she addressed uneven regional distribution and unequal access to the arts and committed state support for infrastructure. The paper led to the creation of countless museums, galleries and concert halls across the country and completely transformed Britain’s cultural landscape. Rather than attempting to merely return to this post-war model of funding however, we should apply its principles to the challenges of the present.
