Think of our consultation paper, Achieving great art for everyone, as a set of ambitions. It tries to outline how, over the next 10 years, we will approach our mission of enabling great art to happen and great artists to make, develop and show their work; and how we will make sure as many people as possible can experience the challenge, provocation, understanding, insight and pleasure the arts can give.

It’s about the art itself. We know the arts can give individuals a rich resource – perhaps best described as a hinterland – that is of value for a person’s whole life. We know the arts lie at the heart of a healthy community, or, indeed, a healthy nation. We know the arts do drive regeneration and are the engine room of our creative economy, fuelling it with fresh ideas, creative energy and invention. As such, they have a key part to play in our economic recovery.

However, this paper starts from the premise that none of this happens if the arts, if artists, are not able to follow pathways of discovery to take audiences to places they never knew existed – to show truths and insights rather than simply to say them. It also does not happen if there are physical, educational, attitudinal, economic barriers, or barriers of knowledge that prevent people from engaging with what the arts might offer them.

It seeks to provide a framework within which the power of great art can emerge and its impact be truly felt.

It’s not a prescription. You can’t prescribe great art, and bodies that give out public money in the arts certainly can’t. What we can do is use our judgment and the judgment of others to create space to make things happen. It’s about ambition. It’s about excellence in every field of artistic endeavour, wherever it takes place.

Excellence is a loaded word that we all debate a great deal. It doesn’t refer only to so-called elite artforms. For me, excellence is about authenticity, the artist trying to push boundaries into the unknown. It is an uncompromising approach, where artists go to the limits of what they can do and take audiences to a new place where they can look at things they didn’t know were there to be seen, heard, understood or felt. It is about artist and audience coming together with a new insight on what it is to be human.

Some people say that this ambition for excellence is excessive – in some circumstances good enough effort will be good enough. I disagree. I think audiences see that they are being short-changed and don’t go back. They spot the fake, the lacklustre, or the lazily formulaic. Without an ambition for excellence the arts in this country will not be as good. If we didn’t have an ambition for excellence, our achievements in the arts would diminish. So one of our jobs is to have real ambition for the arts and try hard to create the space within which great, or excellent, art can be created.

Some of it will be about how we work and what we ask of people. We’re changing that right now, in many ways, saving significant sums that we used to spend on ourselves, and spending instead on the arts. We rely on you to tell us if that’s working. We aim to be less bureaucratic and to be intelligent in how we talk to artists and audiences.

But there is a shared territory between those we fund and audiences, which is the territory of ambition, and it’s this we are trying to describe here. Truth will lie between these words and the debate we have about them.

Let me explain some of the threads that I think are important. In all the artforms, we can talk about marvellous things happening. But are we helping them to happen enough? Are we setting the conditions for more and greater things to happen? We’ve got great theatre directors, but are we seeing enough work by the best foreign directors, who have different ways of looking at things and doing things? Do we allow our theatre-makers enough research and development time – are we investing in the future? We have great choreographers working in this country – are we allowing them the space to develop at all stages in their careers? The symphony orchestras in this country have young exciting conductors – will we allow them to develop and to programme for artistic growth for them and their audiences? Do we and others properly encourage new music or new approaches to old music? We have beautiful galleries and spaces for the visual arts – are we happy with what audiences encounter and how it is presented and curated? Are we supporting in the right ways the experimental in literature, including the unfamiliar and work originating from abroad? In all artforms, are we exploiting new ways of dissemination and exploration, allowing richer and deeper experiences for audiences? And is there enough stuff in the right places around the country? Is the reach of the arts good enough?

There are some big questions which are woven into the consultation document, as well as some suggested answers.

One which I want to highlight is the suggestion that we look at how we fund individuals. Within this is the possibility that we might offer longer-term or more flexible grants to individuals – who might be established in their careers – to develop as artists and produce work they want to do and offer audiences something extraordinary. And also how we might fund individuals or organisations for longer periods to allow proper long-term development for experimental or long gestating work.

The consultation paper sets out long-term ambitions – our goals – directions of travel we believe are fundamental to the future of the arts: giving space and support to talent and excellence; enabling more people to be inspired by the arts; fostering rich engagement for children and young people – the audiences and talent of tomorrow; ensuring we have inspiring and capable leaders and that people who work in the arts have the right skills; and maintaining a sustainable and resilient arts sector with new business models that is fit for the future.

We have spent the past year having informal conversations with our stakeholders, especially artists and arts leaders. Those conversations and our own research, collective experience and knowledge have led to this consultation paper.

The goals seek to reflect the development needs of our six artform areas – theatre, music, visual arts, combined arts, literature and dance – and the partnership approach required for the arts to continue to flourish and grow in our towns, cities and rural areas. The consultation paper includes our thoughts on both longer and shorter-term ambitions and areas of focus for each artform in relation to the goals.

These areas will probably be familiar to you because the Arts Council, alongside our partners, most notably local government, has invested ideas, energy and resources in them over many years. But to sustain and build on what has already been achieved we want to take a longer-term view – one that will transcend political or funding changes and allow us to keep our eye on the ball in pursuing the best for artists and audiences.

That’s what this is about. So why now?

In 2010 we will receive our financial settlement from government and undertake the process by which we make our next set of major investment decisions about our portfolio of regularly funded organisations for the period 2011 to 2014.

So we need to be even clearer about why and what we fund, and how we view our own role in developing the arts and seeking to achieve our mission.

In beginning to consider the most effective ways our goals might be achieved, we think we need to work differently as an organisation, as a leader, partner and enabler, and become more flexible in the way we use the money available to us.

There is the potential for a much more joined-up and collaborative arts sector embracing the possibilities of digital technology, supporting sustainability and connecting more effectively with audiences. There may be new business models, with more clarity about how public and private money works together, and new ways of supporting talent.

The richness and value of the arts in 2021 depends on the quality and depth of our individual and collective response within and beyond the ambitions for each artform, the excellence and reach of the programmes we devise jointly and our ability to articulate a truly compelling narrative about the future of the arts.

I believe the consultation is an important milestone in the evolution of Arts Council England. It reflects an Arts Council determined to work more closely with the arts and cultural sector and funding partners over the longer term and will mean our next investment decisions are informed by stronger understanding of the priorities that matter to you, our stakeholders.

Whatever, it’s how we allow the arts in England to be marvellous and beautiful, challenging and powerful, inspiring shock, awe and pleasure as the artist wills.

It’s about what it is to be human, as Brian McMaster has said.

I think that makes this an important consultation. Please join in.

Alan Davey
Chief Executive, Arts Council England