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Arts

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Bragg for securing the debate. He is a man of many parts, who makes a significant contribution to the arts. If noble Lords tuned into Radio 4 this morning, they will have heard that he was away with the fairies—in a literal, not a colloquial, sense—examining their role in myth and legend. I also want to thank my noble friend Lady Young—my namesake—who encouraged me to participate in the debate. It forced me to think about my first encounter with art, which was a visit as a young child to the Whitechapel Art Gallery to play around with bits of clay—not very convincingly, but I found it enjoyable. Perhaps a more fundamental influence on me was when a friend of mine took me on my first visit as a teenager to the British Museum and I was exposed to the wonders of the Egyptian department and the Elgin marbles. I found that to be a lasting influence. Why is art so important to us? The economic contribution has already been stressed and defined by the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, and I do not think we can underestimate that. But it is the aesthetic contribution that I want to focus on, because we know that art has the capacity to enrich people’s lives, to nourish the soul, and to provoke and challenge deep-seated prejudices. I do not want to shoot the cuckoo of the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, or disagree with his overall assessment, because I think he is right, but I was interested in yesterday’s Times and the remarks made by Grayson Perry—that iconoclastic, cross-dressing, award-winning potter and artist who, simply by his appearance, challenges ideas about sexual orientation. He said that he was walking through the city on his way to the Whitechapel gallery when he came across a group of skateboarders jumping off some steps. ““Do you know that Tate Modern is putting up some skate ramps as part of the long weekend festival?””, I asked. They looked blank. ““From futurist Friday, 26 May till minimalist Monday, 29 May, they are celebrating their new displays with films, performance music, DJs and skateboarding””, he enthused. He said that they were nice lads. One was from a village in Essex where he lived as a teenager, but they did not seem impressed. They seemed happier with the steps. I do not want to caricature all teenagers in that way, but I do think it exemplifies the challenge that we face as a society to engage all young people in art. In the 11 April edition of The Guardian, Simon Fanshawe talked about the role of the arts in education—a very important area. He said that an argument rages about the significance of the different goals of the Government’s education policy; standards and league tables on the one hand, and a genuine commitment to social justice and inclusion on the other. But, he argues, it is the aesthetic outcomes that are probably as important, and that there are incontrovertible and clearly researched benefits to teaching the arts in school. He says that they do not guarantee that they improve results; their effects are on social skills, confidence and empathy. I stress the point that he makes; it is art for art’s sake that makes a valuable contribution in education. We may not be able to measure it in SATs, but we know that it is vital. I shall quote from another equally important article in the Sunday Times on 9 October on the policy of free access to national collections. I, too, pay tribute to the introduction of free access to national collections, as the lack of such access was a deterrent. But we should not look at these institutions through rose-coloured spectacles. Interestingly, a recent examination by John Goldthorpe—a sociology fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford University—which is due to be published in full next year, finds that 80 per cent of people from poorer families rarely go to museums and galleries. That should concern us. The study asked 6,000 people across Britain whether they had been to a museum, gallery or exhibition in the previous 12 months. It quotes—I hope it does not misquote—my noble friend Lord Smith as saying that the situation highlighted by Goldthorpe is very worrying and that his response was to say, ““Let us redouble our efforts””. I think he is right. I should say to the Minister before he replies that it is not enough simply to open up the museums and galleries if it simply reinforces the existing population of people who visit. We must encourage all of them to have an outreach strategy to engage with their communities, and I would welcome whatever the Minister has to say in that context. We should not look at the arts from one narrow perspective, as I think the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey, warned us. She reminded us of the glorious contribution made by the Notting Hill carnival. We live in a multicultural, multiracial society, where concepts of art can be very different in different communities, and we need to ensure that we recognise this and the fact that art, as we define it, genuinely embraces everyone. The noble Lord, Lord Colwyn, talked about his enthusiasm and love of jazz. These days, jazz is a narrow definition of music that engages with and embraces a whole range of other forms of music. I welcome an interesting development from the Arts Council called, I think, the decibel legacy—a short-term initiative that ran from May 2003 to May 2004 with the long-term aims of supporting and raising the profile of African, Caribbean and Asian artists in England. That is a very laudable objective. I believe that there are some useful legacies from that programme. The role of art is changing. It is being impacted on by technology in many ways, which has to be recognised in any government art strategy. My assessment of what the Government are doing is good, but there is no cause for complacency. I echo the points that noble Lords have made about the importance of ensuring that funding increases rather than declines.