A year of adversity, compassion and determination

2020 is almost over. The nights are at their darkest, the days are startlingly brief, and in keeping with long-established tradition I’m using this period of stillness – this deep breath between one year and the next – to reflect on the 12 months that we’re leaving behind. In typical times, such reflection is often perfunctory: a ritual stocktaking that allows us to celebrate what’s gone well, and think about what we’d like to do better. In 2020, it’s anything but. As I look back over this year’s astonishing trajectory – from the bustle and business-as-usual of January, to March’s sudden silence; from the summer months when doors began tentatively to open, to autumn and winter when they closed once more – I feel both chastened and inspired. Chastened by the level of disruption and devastation that we’ve been asked to weather as a country, as Covid-19 wreaked its havoc, stealing loved ones and upending lives. And inspired, beyond all expectation or measure, by the bravery and strength of purpose with which we’ve come together, in families and in communities, to meet these challenges, and to endure them.

This fortitude has, of course, been evident in every corner of the country and across every profession, but in my role as CEO of Arts Council England, it’s the cultural sector whose grit and tenacity I’ve seen up close.

There’s no question that, for those who work in the arts, in museums and in libraries, 2020 has been a year of adversity unlike any other. As well as the personal losses that so many of us have experienced, and the difficult reflection triggered by the killing of George Floyd, which required so many organisations, the Arts Council included, to look inward and think honestly about what they saw, we’ve had to grapple with a crisis that has prevented us from carrying out the work that, for many, is both livelihood and vocation. Venues have been shuttered; organisations mothballed; the army of freelancers – from artists and performers to suppliers, technicians and front-of-house staff – that keep the wheels of our sector turning have had to down tools. The hardships and heartbreak that have resulted from this have been intense, and that pain has not been spread equally across our sector.

At Arts Council England we’ve done everything we can, first via our own Emergency Response Fund and then via our dissemination of the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund, to mitigate that hardship; I’m fiercely proud of the commitment and care with which our team has worked over the course of this year, and I know I can count on them to work just as hard over the next 12 months, as we reset and rebuild. But when it comes to the far harder job of mitigating heartbreak – of lifting loneliness, and assuaging grief – it is the artists and cultural organisations themselves who have stepped up.

I’ve spent my career making the case for the value of culture and creativity.  This year, for the first time in my lifetime, I haven’t needed to marshal my arguments, because the evidence of their unique and necessary benefits was all around us. Never has culture’s power to uplift, to entertain, to touch our hearts and souls, been so vividly rendered – and never, in living memory, have we had greater need of it. As we sat alone in our houses, as we did our best to entertain our children, as we recognised the need to nurture our mental health in the face of unprecedented stress, we turned to culture. Theatre and dance productions, concerts, exhibitions and festivals moved online and attracted record audiences. Book sales and audiobook downloads skyrocketed. In our own homes, meanwhile, individual creative acts – from crafting to cookery – became central to our wellbeing.  Culture and creativity have made tangible differences to all of our lives this year. Our appetite for the transcendence that they can deliver has been insatiable - and the thing that has inspired me most profoundly in 2020 has been the endeavour by artists and cultural organisations, at the most difficult of moments and in the hardest of circumstances, to meet it.

In March and April, during the first acute stage of the crisis, organisations set aside their daily work to do anything and everything that was needed. Theatres washed scrubs, libraries used 3D printers to produce PPE, and arts organisations with canteens cemented their place at the heart of their communities by turning out meals for vulnerable neighbours. At the Arts Council, we played our part too, distributing Let’s Create packs filled with art supplies and creative resources to over 37 thousand children across the country; working with the BBC to support their Culture in Quarantine season; and collaborating with Google to create The Way I See It, an online gallery that showcased moving and original works of art produced by young people in response to the pandemic. But as the crisis became chronic, and the needs of the country evolved from physical to psychological, artists and organisations returned to what they do best: making art.

Everywhere, cultural organisations provided the solace and sustenance that the public passionately needed. In a year of devastation and desperation, culture helped us get through.

So, when I think about the year to come, I do so with hope. Not just because there is, at last, light at the end of the tunnel in the form of a vaccine: while this is brilliant news, the social and economic aftershocks of COVID-19 will linger for a long time to come, and there’s no doubt that 2021 will test us in ways that may be just as serious as those we’ve faced this year. Rather, my optimism stems from the resourcefulness and resilience of those that make up our sector, from the power of art and culture to support us through the months ahead, and from its capacity to allow us to imagine a better, brighter, fairer future, in which talent is fully met with opportunity. There is, of course, a huge amount to be done: at Arts Council England, we’ve already begun to prepare for the challenges ahead, and I’ll write again in early January to describe that work in detail. But now remains a moment for reflection, and my final thought is this: in 2020, artists, arts organisations, museums and libraries have been our life rafts. As we turn to 2021, they will play a critical role in our national recovery. They will help us to heal. And they will help us to grow.