Arts debate

Our chief executive introduces the arts debate

01 November 2006 by Peter Hewitt

I'm delighted to have this opportunity to welcome you to the arts debate - Arts Council England's first ever public value inquiry.

The arts debate marks a renewed commitment at the Arts Council to public engagement. Our core purpose is enshrined in our Royal Charter and reflects a dual responsibility – to enable and support quality and innovation in artistic practice and to encourage public participation in the cultural life of this country. In my 2005 paper Changing Places and in my recent Smith Institute lecture I acknowledged that while we’ve always cared deeply about the artistic community, we perhaps haven’t always been as well connected to the wider public. More active participation in the arts by adults and young people everywhere will require us to capture the imagination of the public, and to better understand their hopes and concerns. It’s time we found out more about how people perceive and engage with the arts – and how they might do so in the future.

It’s also time we led a fresh debate about one of our most fundamental challenges: how we in the arts community can best hold ourselves to account for the money we receive from the public purse. Like other parts of the public sector, we have found this territory difficult to negotiate, and many commentators have expressed their dissatisfaction with output-based or instrumental performance measures.  I believe that by giving members of the public a voice in the debate, we can shape a more contemporary notion of accountability in the publicly funded arts sector, one that is meaningful to the Arts Council’s own ambitions, to the individuals and organisations we fund and to wider society. Collectively we can develop a more challenging vision of what could and should be achieved through public investment in the arts, and how we can foster a 21st century arts ecology that more fully reflects public preferences and aspirations.

Of course the Arts Council does not represent the entire artistic community in England. Most artists and arts organisations work in a mixed economy, maximising commercial opportunities and balancing the often competing priorities of multiple funders. But by taking a broad view of the arts, our debate can lend clarity to the best contribution that public investment can make to this rich and complex ecology.

The arts debate will drive a continuing process of reform and renewal inside the Arts Council, and in the long run has the potential to engender a profound shift in the way we operate. But the outcome will not be some crude distribution of what we’ve got and already do; rather it will be a vibrant set of possibilities for new forms of engagement, for new priorities and a route map for how the Arts Council and the organisations it funds may need to be different.

I invite you all to join us in this important initiative – and help shape the future of public investment in the arts in this country.

Peter Hewitt
Chief Executive
Arts Council England