I oppose arts subsidies not only because arts subsidies are thieving from people who do not want art thank you very much, although it is that of course. I also oppose arts subsidies because I really like art and I think arts subsidies damage art, by separating artists from audiences and by separating nob audiences from yob audiences, the aristocracy from the groundlings. With arts subsidies, you get High Art in one tent – precious, clever, obscure, self-regarding and pretentious, and expensive; and Low Art, brain-dead trash, in the other bigger tent. Without arts subsidies, they all go into the same tent and you get, well: Shakespeare basically. Shakespeare, nineteenth century classical music, the great nineteenth century novelists, twentieth century cinema (before that too got to subsidised into Posh and Trash), twentieth century pop music, all that is artistically vibrant, fun and profound.
So, arts subsidies are really bad, both morally and artistically. And the good news is that, at any rate here in Britain, they are about to be “cut”, which is a cultural word meaning “not increased very much”. And who or what do we have to thank for this semi-excellent circumstance? Why, the Olympic Games:
The Treasury has warned of a tough spending round and the Culture Department has let it be known that there will be no extra money for the arts so long as the country is paying for the Olympics, a bill we will be paying well beyond 2012.
This means, at the very best, seven lean years of standstill subsidy for the arts and, at the worst, selective cuts that will drive some ensembles out of existence.
This is especially good news when you bear in mind that “so long as the country is paying for the Olympics” and “well beyond 2012” actually mean “for ever”.
Yep, look at poor Montreal. 30 years on they just stopped paying for the 1976 Olympic games and that was a lot closer to its budget than the British one is going to be (already £900m over budget and no work done yet). I hope my great grandchildren will be able to crack open a bottle or two in 2106 in celebration that the UK finally stopped paying off Red Ken’s Kolossal Kircus.
You have to admire the organisers. 16 months after winning the bid, they announced that they were 18 months behind schedule.
Now that’s incompetence.
As an (honorary) Mancunian I fail to see the problem.
Manchester hosted the (admittedly much smaller, but then Manchester is smaller and had much less central gov money than the Olympics are going to get) Commonwealth Games very successfully. The whole thing has resulted in a transformation of the city. It helped drag Manchester out of it’s grim post-industrial milieu and into the C21st and all of this was done affordably and, critically, the legacy was handled correctly. The big athletics stadium was handed over to Man City – it already had a future use (Maine Rd being well past it’s “use by”) and the other sports facilities have found their uses. My wife regularly swims at the aquatics centre for example. So, Manchester was tidied up a bit (it needed it), it gained international recognition and top-notch sporting facilities and the city didn’t end up in queer street.
Now the trams… That’s a different matter.
The Commonwealth games were put on realistically. There were no grandiose plans for large-scale urban “regeneration” like the London plan…
Too often these big schemes funded (one way or another by the public purse) create as winners private landlords. They see their property values (and rent) increase through the expenditure of public money. This happened with the building of the Jubilee extension in London and it is going to happen in spades with the Olympics.
I object to this extremely. I object to the weird alliance of public and private which Blair’s “third way” represents. This is not capitalism. It isn’t even socialism. It is pure grift and thievery.
Let’s look at a counter example. When the first London Underground lines were built they were built by private enterprise. As they were “cut and cover” the Metropolitan Railway Co. had to own the land. They made a profit from their endeavours but not so much by charging for train tickets. They made their real cash from the higher desirability of the land they had connected. Of course they also provided London with an enormously useful facility.
So what is different? Simply those Victorian private landlords saw their property rise dramatically in value through their own dealings and endeavours – not through the expenditure of cash from the public purse.
We have put the cart before the horse and the irony is that the solution is 150 years “out of date”.
I despair. The Olympics could represent a real economic boost to London (and the rest of the UK) but, alas it looks like that ain’t gonna happen.
Now, now, chaps. Fair’s fair.
Montreal has finally finished paying off the debt they incurred from their Olympic Games. I’m sure they all still think it was a good idea.
Of course, they still have to pay off the loans the took out to pay off the money they borrowed for the Olympic Games…
“You have to admire the organisers. 16 months after winning the bid, they announced that they were 18 months behind schedule. Now that’s incompetence.”
When asked, the organisers said they attributed their failure to the activities of a mysterious figure who traveled in a police public call box.
Andy Worhol subsidised the Velvet Underground.
Commercial art supporting Commercial art, till the punters get the hang of things.
What a novel idea!
Common Tracy and Daimien, Get your cheque books out!
Another artistic argument for the Olympic Games:
They build new and architecturally nice stadia(Link)…..
Good point, Brian. Once you separate art into subsidised highbrow and market-based popular, you get garbage in both.
I wonder whether a similar argument applies to culture generally, e.g. science, philosophy. Now that those things are only allowed to be done in the state-subsidised temples of high culture (aka “universities”), we get postmodern gobbledygook on the one hand, and Why Penguins Don’t Eat Wasps and Alain de Botton on the other.