Working- and lower-middle-class citizens should not have to fund through their taxes and the lottery arts organisations that deny opportunities to their children. One of the most admirable men I know is Martin Bright, who threw in a career in journalism to found the Creative Society, which gives working-class teenagers the same opportunities in the arts that their middle- and upper-class contemporaries receive. Diversity creates uniformity, he says, because it ignores class. As a result, projects for women or the ethnic minorities are colonised by the middle class. The only positive discrimination that works is for arts organisations to go into jobcentres and find talented young people on the dole who deserve a break, and too few want to try it. What applies to artists applies to the audience. The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts has told recipients of public money that they should at least think of putting Royal Opera House shows, for example, or National Theatre productions on the web once their runs are over. The overwhelming majority of people who cannot get to London, and could not afford tickets if they did, would then see the work their taxes helped pay for. It does no good. The notion that publicly funded art must be publicly available does not occur to todays generation of cultural bureaucrats.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 11:16:34 +0000
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