Arts in the UK post-Brexit

[Lat-Literal]

Health issues translate across cultures in a way that music doesn't, quite apart from the fact that they have an obvious greater urgency. The thing is that it's a fact that institutional financial support for non-commercial artistic activity is primarily a European phenomenon, and the extent to which it exists in other countries is in direct proportion to the influence of Europe on their cultures (as in for example Australia or Canada). There's really no getting around this, however one might with to cast one's net wider than the immediate vicinity. Everything that you suggest is no doubt possible, but it doesn't seem very likely to me to become reality, and it certainly isn't going to be possible for individual artists to make it one. I'm not speaking as a fan of the European Union, as you know.

That is quite an interesting, helpful, post but I am still on the trail for facts here. It is the phrase "non-commercial" which stands out. I don't want to trivialise this but if for all my years on this forum and my hobbyist music background I still don't know what is purportedly at stake, you can bet your life on the fact that the average member of the public won't know. They will be thinking that the biggest issue is all those pan pipe groups busking in shopping centres who appear to be from the Americas but probably were born in Holland or Sweden.

Womad was set up by a British committee. So was Real World Records. World music was advanced by enthusiasts, not least by Messrs Kershaw and Peel. It would have happened had we been or not been a part of the European project. From early on, it was ostensibly private enterprise at the fluffiest end. In truer popular culture. Well, not long ago we did here the European hits from across history including the likes of Y Viva Espana. Nowadays, there is a lot more accommodation of Euro dance/rave. It is hardly even now high culture and it's so branded by the global industry in which it sits that it is not narrowed to Europeanism, can't be defined substantially as European and operates mainly by aeroplane as if international boundaries are irrelevant with perhaps the exception of North Korea. Classical music? The numbers of people involved in an important way in, say, orchestras, at this continent's level. How many? A few thousand at most? Maybe even at times just hundreds? I just don't see quite what the issue is. I'm not saying there isn't one. I'd just like it explained to me properly.

[oddoneout]

'Think global, act local' is an unhelpful oxymoron.

Please don't lower your horizons, or we're all done for!

(scary how the EU has made us think that it's all impossible outside of its yoke. )

If I feel overwhelmed by the problems facing the world and my inability to fix them I have a choice of ignoring them completely or finding something I can do, however small that may be, on which basis I find the think global thing useful. I couldn't do anything to solve the problems faced by the Lithuanian school with which my children's school had formed links - but I could help raise funds for airfares, and provide board and lodging for two of the teachers to attend an arts conference to exchange ideas and share best practice with staff from the other european partner schools.
I assume you are being ironic with your request - flattering as it is to think that if I lower my horizons I take everyone down with me it isn't the case! And I don't know what I've said that suggests any movement of them one way or the other.
I'm not sure that I can agree with your EU yoke statement - choosing the easy option(operating within a known, understood and common framework) is not only human nature but makes sense in other respects - time, effort, cost, in relation to outcome; it doesn't necessarily imply that alternatives cannot be or are not envisaged outside that framework, or yoke as you put it.

[Lat-Literal]

My 21st Century political thesis would be entitled "We are with you and we are not with you". The married couple stays together until the kids grow up. Then they simply drift apart. There is no animosity. They continue to live in the same village and exchange genuinely friendly words once a week when they bump into each other in the Post Office. Two sons. The one who is like her is living at 30 with him along with his girlfriend. The one who is like him is living with her at 32 as is his girlfriend. No chance of getting on the mortgage ladder. Where there is too much similarity with one parent there is constant clash. Consequently, the older man and woman have not quite said goodbye to each other. It is in their kids and the choices they have made to be under their preferred parental roof. We are with you and we are not with you. This came up as a genuine example socially this week. Economics. We are with you and we are not with you. As senior figures in a working establishment, ludicrously highly paid and with trade unionism battened down, we shall go on an awayday and decide that we must accentuate the workplace as, quote, "a family". Most of the inferiors react with, at most, scepticism. Two months later the country gets itself into a state and the powerless family members are dealt with only slightly more kindly than those people who are perhaps rightly in Guantanemo Bay. We are with you and we are not with you as indeed we never were. The Conservative Party and the Labour Party. They are stuffed to the gills with people who are saying, albeit in other words, to their own "We are with you and we are not with you". Neighbours. "Hello, Good morning". Civil. At least a modicum of that remains. Any more involvement. Oh no. Definitely not. We're with you but would rather be not with you. Information technology. Stick your handbag down on the train seat as quickly as possible so no one sits next to you. Scroll obsessively for unknows, not perceiving they are without. That Thatcher idea of there being an enemy within, simultaneously very wrong and very right but, much more crucially, for many persuasive....that would just not be possible now.

Nationalism. We can share an opening of our hearts to every nationality and nation apart from the one closest from which we want separation. We are with you and we are not with you. Sport. We are your ultimate symbols of family background, identification, allegiance and even hero worship but we will demand annual salaries that you will never earn in a lifetime. We are not with you but oh but oh we are with you. Health and charity. We will bombard you with messages in commercial media in a way that is reminiscent of the Soviet Union or the Moonies, saying it is in your best interests, not concerned about what offence and upset we cause to people close to you who have those conditions, and the hidden motive is making money. We are not at all with you although we'll convince you that we are. Europe. You know the thing about Europe. Remainers and leavers.....they are actually on the same side. They just disagree on who is with them and who is not because what actually they can't see is that in each direction Britain and the EU "relate" in this 21st Century way. It is not only typical but will ultimately lead to the decline of western civilisation. That is, each is with you - as in the other - and yet not with you. The main problem is that as imposed on the unsuspecting it structurally equates to schizophrenia. I doubt it would be very far fetched to say that the use of that word is not merely throwaway but truly indicative of that medical condition, more widespread than presented. I have seen the future. I see it clearly. It is, actually, a change to cannabis laws. It will tip the so-called advanced world into kowtowing to the east - and if the east is more like the Europe of the 20th Century in key ways, good luck to it. I have not always been right in what at the time were considered to be laughable theories but I've been right more than wrong, especially at my wilder ends. Of course, no one ever comes back and says "blimey, that thing you said in the 80s - you were right". Most of my generation moved on, did well, forgot. The joke has long gone and to have it revisited now would be too much. Too much of a dent to egos at an age when limitations emerge.

In case charidee feels awfully put out by these remarks, I have finally identified one which isn't a bloodsucker. RNLI and I am minded positively in that direction. It doesn't get government funding, a big plus, nor does it do brainwashing, terrorising, adverts. Also, giving money to lifeboats for drowning people works well for me on a much broader symbolic level. Incidentally, I thought until yesterday a drone would cost a few thousand quid. You can get one via tv for £69.99. The forthcoming nightmare is obvious. Watch the skies!

[Richard Barrett]

But funding, crudely understood, is purely a material phenomenon. And again, a very western one. The dynamic need not purely be money to get this going.

It isn't just a material phenomenon, it's an expression of cultural-political priorities. And these at present are somewhat different in different parts of the world, as I indicated.

I stress again that I'm not making any predictions. I think there's still a chance that none of this will happen. But do bear in mind that of the two members of this forum regularly involved in collaborative musical activities on an international level across Europe and elsewhere, neither of whom is what might be described as accepting of spin from politicians or anyone else, both from their different perspectives on Brexit are saying that it's very possible that cultural life in the UK is going to be negatively impacted by Brexit, to an extent proportional to how "hard" it ends up being. This isn't ideologically inspired grandstanding, it's coming from people at the receiving end of cultural policy. Not to the point of losing sleep over it, I dare say, since anyone involved in non-commercial artistic activity in the UK since the 1980s has learned to be prepared to respond creatively to the various ill-considered whims of successive governments, but the fears expressed are real, and grounded in experience.

[ahinton]

It isn't just a material phenomenon, it's an expression of cultural-political priorities. And these at present are somewhat different in different parts of the world, as I indicated.

I stress again that I'm not making any predictions. I think there's still a chance that none of this will happen. But do bear in mind that of the two members of this forum regularly involved in collaborative musical activities on an international level across Europe and elsewhere, neither of whom is what might be described as accepting of spin from politicians or anyone else, both from their different perspectives on Brexit are saying that it's very possible that cultural life in the UK is going to be negatively impacted by Brexit, to an extent proportional to how "hard" it ends up being. This isn't ideologically inspired grandstanding, it's coming from people at the receiving end of cultural policy. Not to the point of losing sleep over it, I dare say, since anyone involved in non-commercial artistic activity in the UK since the 1980s has learned to be prepared to respond creatively to the various ill-considered whims of successive governments, but the fears expressed are real, and grounded in experience.

Very well said!

[aeolium]

I stress again that I'm not making any predictions. I think there's still a chance that none of this will happen. But do bear in mind that of the two members of this forum regularly involved in collaborative musical activities on an international level across Europe and elsewhere, neither of whom is what might be described as accepting of spin from politicians or anyone else, both from their different perspectives on Brexit are saying that it's very possible that cultural life in the UK is going to be negatively impacted by Brexit, to an extent proportional to how "hard" it ends up being.

But how can the "cultural life" of the UK be separated from the whole of life and as it were treated distinctly? Indeed how meaningful is the topic "arts in the UK post-Brexit" without considering the life of society as a whole in the UK post-Brexit, and by implication the life of society as a whole pre-Brexit which of course influenced the outcome of the Brexit vote? How can "the arts in the UK" - or, for instance, in Greece - be considered separately from the economic conditions of the last decade?

I suggested earlier that I thought that at least some in the arts world had been complacent about this, partly as a result of the increasing social homogeneity of those within it (which statistics confirm). And similarly with regard to the close cultural associations with Europe, which are of course undeniable. But the UK, and many other European countries, are indissolubly culturally linked with countries beyond Europe through their colonial history and its aftermath. Not only that, but since the C20 the forces of globalisation have resulted in the sharing of cultures worldwide and the dominance of exclusively European influences has receded - a development wholly to be welcomed, in my view. I thought it interesting that Hytner in his article concentrated on the benefits of free movement within Europe for the arts in the UK, but ignored the issue of interaction with artists from outside the EU, or whether it was a good idea - from a cultural point of view - to have advantageous structures in place for interaction between European artists but not for those outside Europe. That seems to me a different kind of complacency.

[french frank]

I would contrast the vision of those who rebuilt Europe from the ashes of 1945 with that of the politicians of today. The former sought consciously to create a more equal society in every respect, including access to and subsidy of the arts as well as many other public goods which had in most cases never before (perhaps in human history) been so extensively available to all sections of the population. Indeed, most measurements of levels of equality in Western Europe by the end of the post-war Keynesian period, roughly the mid-1970s, showed what had been achieved since 1945. All of that achievement has been eroded, as far as I can see, and we seem to be heading back, here at least, to a dark age of huge inequalities, with public services starved of funds, widespread job insecurity and low pay, inequality of education, an arts world in which access is educationally restricted by those same inequalities and lack of social mobility. And this is the result of a flawed and morally bankrupt economic philosophy which overthrew the post-war vision, and which despite the widespread evidence of its clear failings still survives in societies of increasing discontent and political volatility.

You may be right, but I do get a sense of 'post hoc ergo propter hoc' in your reasoning (I found your argument slightly opaque last time e.g. on Windrush). In one sense it was an enormous task to rebuild Europe, but in another it was an easy task. Determined efforts to rebuild from utter destruction seem bound to show early improvements. Where I agree with you is in highlighting the successful outcome of the general aims and methods. Though I presume we are speaking selectively of 'Europe' since these economic improvements were not seen over the entire 'EU-to-be area'. and it's easy to forget the military dictatorships in several countries up to the 1960s - in Spain, Portugal and Greece - as well as those in the the grip of communism, under both of which regimes 'equality' might well have been the norm. The EC had to forge alliances between a hugely diverse set of histories. Was it even possible? The 'values' of the EC/EU were very much in line with the post-war rebuilders. The more ambitious aims brought mistakes, but not, I think, mistaken aims. You may disagree with that!

What was formed was a huge capitalist alliance, where the tension between capitalism's inherent inequalities and the democratic aims of the EU rocked the entire system. But does the EU make 'things' worse than they would have been (okay, Greece - I have to concede that one; though Ireland was able to pull itself out of poverty)?

It seems to me that as least as important as the mistakes (or 'flaws'!) of the EU have been the disasters of the 2008 crash (no one has suggested that the EU caused it) and simultaneously the migration/refugee crisis which stemmed largely from western attempts to regulate matters in the Middle East - and that, too, wasn't initiated by the EU. The EU has had to cope with the consequences, and it didn't respond by threatening to build walls.

[Richard Barrett]

But how can the "cultural life" of the UK be separated from the whole of life and as it were treated distinctly? Indeed how meaningful is the topic "arts in the UK post-Brexit" without considering the life of society as a whole in the UK post-Brexit, and by implication the life of society as a whole pre-Brexit which of course influenced the outcome of the Brexit vote? How can "the arts in the UK" - or, for instance, in Greece - be considered separately from the economic conditions of the last decade?

I suggested earlier that I thought that at least some in the arts world had been complacent about this, partly as a result of the increasing social homogeneity of those within it (which statistics confirm). And similarly with regard to the close cultural associations with Europe, which are of course undeniable. But the UK, and many other European countries, are indissolubly culturally linked with countries beyond Europe through their colonial history and its aftermath. Not only that, but since the C20 the forces of globalisation have resulted in the sharing of cultures worldwide and the dominance of exclusively European influences has receded - a development wholly to be welcomed, in my view. I thought it interesting that Hytner in his article concentrated on the benefits of free movement within Europe for the arts in the UK, but ignored the issue of interaction with artists from outside the EU, or whether it was a good idea - from a cultural point of view - to have advantageous structures in place for interaction between European artists but not for those outside Europe. That seems to me a different kind of complacency.

Let me be clear once more that I'm not talking about the problems engendered by Brexit per se but about the incoherent approach being taken to it by the present government. I don't think the "artistic community" has been in any way complacent but what we haven't been getting is any answers. Too many of our requests for clarity and expressions of concern are met with responses beginning "but surely it must be possible to... " which I don't think is good enough coming from people who are supposed to have a vision of what benefits being cut loose from the EU is supposed to bring. Of course it will be possible for us all to carry on, because that's what we've always done, because our commitment doesn't waver in the face of political vagaries. But, as you say, cultural activity can't be separated from the rest of society, and what's being specifically discussed here seems to put in particularly sharp focus the way that we (ie. all of us) are being failed by a government that seems to be primarily concerned with conflicts of self-interest within itself.

[oddoneout]

Let me be clear once more that I'm not talking about the problems engendered by Brexit per se but about the incoherent approach being taken to it by the present government. I don't think the "artistic community" has been in any way complacent but what we haven't been getting is any answers. Too many of our requests for clarity and expressions of concern are met with responses beginning "but surely it must be possible to... " which I don't think is good enough coming from people who are supposed to have a vision of what benefits being cut loose from the EU is supposed to bring. Of course it will be possible for us all to carry on, because that's what we've always done, because our commitment doesn't waver in the face of political vagaries. But, as you say, cultural activity can't be separated from the rest of society, and what's being specifically discussed here seems to put in particularly sharp focus the way that we (ie. all of us) are being failed by a government that seems to be primarily concerned with conflicts of self-interest within itself.

The nature of this forum is such that the opinions would tend to focus more on the cultural/arts issues in relation to Brexit I would suggest.Elsewhere (in my local paper for instance) there are similar questions regarding what plans are being made, what might happen, what needs to be done/prepared for, being asked and put to MPs by those involved in business, research, agriculture etc. Given that ignorance not just of how the EU, but also this country, functions seems to be one of the qualifications for being an MP it is hardly surprising that answers, useful or otherwise, are not forthcoming. The government's playground squabbles seem to be the only thing considered worthy of its attention or effort.

[Lat-Literal]

I understood Richard to be speaking of the government, not the Conservative party. In normal times one expects the government to speak with a single voice. The divisions in the Conservative party are clear, as is the fact that they failed to gain a majority (in fact lost their majority) in the last election. This situation being factually true, what is their mandate to 'govern' at all?

Well, a key question in political theory is "is there really such a thing as a mandate?"

Manifestos, for example, aren't binding.

[oddoneout]

Well, a key question in political theory is "is there really such a thing as a mandate?"

Manifestos, for example, aren't binding.

Except when politically expedient....

[french frank]

I do not disagree there is internecine squabbling. There was […] in Wilson's Government on EEC membership

I'm not sure that that's totally correct. I take it you're referring to the referendum of 1975 under Wilson's government (we had joined under Heath's government). The Wilson government was clear: their leaflet sent out to all households recommended a Yes vote. Additionally there were Yes and No leaflets sent to all households with the views of the equivalent of the Remain and Leave camps, both clearly marked that these were not from the government).

I had all three leaflets up to about six weeks ago when I gave them to a friend who collected political literature.

[Lat-Literal]

Except when politically expedient....

That confirms the flexibility.

Lib Dem activists want to cancel Brexit without having another referendum. The referendum was not binding. They probably see votes in it. There may be, There may not be. The SNP and PC say that they do not want to cancel Brexit without having another referendum. They say they want a Norway style deal at least for their areas. But that is only because if they said what they really want which is precisely the same as the Lib Dem activists' position it would mean that a precedent had been set ironically by them for a yes vote for independence in any future referendum to be ignored. The Lib Dem activists do not have to concern themselves about such issues. Many of them, though, may have forgotten one thing. It is a thing called proportional representation. If they get their way, a PR referendum wont count. We'll have first past the post forever. They won't be thanked for it by many of their natural voters.

[Beef Oven!]

The divisions in the Conservative party are clear, as is the fact that they failed to gain a majority (in fact lost their majority) in the last election. This situation being factually true, what is their mandate to 'govern' at all?

Their mandate is not necessarily big like in the days of Maggie and Blair, but it is valid. They are the majority party with 318 seats following the last election, their nearest rival being Labour, some 56 seats behind. And with their agreement with the DUP, they have a working majority in the house.

Other European countries who have leading parties in the same position as the UK Conservatives, that can't go it alone and require collaboration with other parties to govern include Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Greece, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Norway, Cyprus, Croatia, Serbia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Romania, Estonia, Iceland, Luxembourg, and many more!

Looking at that list, it would seem that Europe, and especially the EU, has a bit of a mandate problem!

[french frank]

Well, a key question in political theory is "is there really such a thing as a mandate?"

In terms of a government mandate, it's generally recognised as being bestowed by the general election vote: a large enough majority of Commons seats to be able to carry through a programme of policies, more or less outlined in the election manifesto.

Manifestos, for example, aren't binding.

No, not binding for obvious, practical reasons: no government could carry out every single policy in the manifesto in the time they have available: there will be priorities; and as time goes on intentions can be scuppered by 'events'. A government with a small majority can be a hostage to a handful of rebellious MPs. Manifestos are no more than 'This is what we'd like to do, this is what we aim to do'. Such a document can't 'binding'.