Tim Almond

Just picked up an Oliver Kamm piece on arts sponsorship

Unlike Stephen, I have a blind spot about ballet, and never attend it (though I admire the ballet music of Stravinsky and many others). But I believe I should contribute to the public provision of ballet if other taxpayers do, because the alternative is a system of sponsorship that on average would militate against aesthetic quality.

That is one alternative. Another is that people who want to see the ballet should put their hands in their own pockets.

I’m a fan of opera and cinema. If I go to the opera and see Carmen, I get about half my ticket price funded. If I go and buy a DVD of The Godfather PT 2, I don’t. Carmen is good musical entertainment. Lots of good songs and a bit of tragedy. But it’s not really high art. If I had to choose which was more profound, it would be The Godfather.

No-one would call people like Kazuo Ishiguro or Martin Amis as lightweight populists, but they survive on people buying their books.

There are opportunity costs as well; as populists are wont to point out, what we spend on the arts is not spent on kidney machines. I strongly argue that those costs are worthwhile and make for a more civilised society.

I know that some people will make the "kidney machines" argument. I don’t. My argument is that arts funding has achieved little.

It’s aim is to improve the arts - that on the one hand, it will bring high culture to the masses, and on the other, will produce challenging work that the free market cannot. It fails at both. On the one hand, the audience for the subsidised arts of theatre, ballet and opera are still largely, the middle classes. On the other, the cultural impact of new, subsidised works has been almost non-existent.

There’s little justification any longer. People can pay for their own entertainment.

Tags: Politics, Music, Art //