Inside the Index: public funding

The National Campaign for the Arts and Sam West

Tuesday 17 January 2012

In the week the UK Arts Index goes open access, NCA trustee Sam West offers the first of five detailed digests of its findings

Consumer takes money from a purse Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

 

When the National Campaign for the Arts launched the UK Arts Index at the House of Commons in December – calling it 'an annual health-check for the arts' – it was not just a sound bite.

The arts body is a complex system where collaboration across disciplines, public-private cross-fertilisation and the relatively small size of the UK combine to produce a healthy whole. And like any complex system, there are different ways of measuring how well it's working.
We've chosen 20 measures. We call them indicators. They measure the stuff that goes in, like investment, and the stuff that comes out, like audience size. They can go up or down, and they're measured against a base year: in this case 2007/8. From now on we have a yardstick. It allows us to put figures on the cultural, financial and social benefits of the arts, and it tells this story across the regions, across the four UK nations and across the whole country.

I suspect I'm not alone in thinking one aspect of the Index feels dodgy – the idea that art can ever be reduced to a set of figures. Of course it can't. It's a subjective thing. We must resist attempts to 'mark' it and be on guard against a return to target-driven art. We mustn't let the budget tail wag the artistic dog, either – the most important thing about a good idea is not how much it costs.

If art is worth anything, it's worth funding for its own sake. But as responsible citizens and conscientious receivers of public investment, we can prove our worth to the UK economy. We can play our part in its recovery. The Arts Index allows us to do that.
How do we use it? It gives power to the elbows of those who lobby for the arts. It lets commissioners, policymakers and arts organisations see the effect arts have as they plan for their future. Perhaps most importantly, it's an independent and objective measure; the first of its kind in this country.

We took the idea from the US, where Americans for the Arts have been producing a National Arts Index for more than a decade. It was compiled by Audiences London in partnership with Audiences UK – we're very grateful to them.

Today we start our series of five articles with a look at what the Arts Index can tell us about public funding.

Public funding

The Index includes three indicators that measure public money: treasury funding, local government funding and lottery funding. From 2007/8 to 2009/10 we see stable levels of Arts Council England (ACE) and local authority funding combined with extra lottery funds to mitigate recession. Their average taken across the three years shows a small increase, almost all down to increased money from the lottery.

There was no change in public funding between 2007/08 and 2008/09 and an increase of 5% (£1.04 per person) in 2009/10, from £21.52 in 2008/9 to £22.56 in 2009/10. The jump in the lottery figure for 2009/10 comes from ACE's Sustain programme, a £40m lottery fund for organisations under pressure as a result of the recession. This will not be repeated.

I've written before about the advantages of public investment in the arts and the dangers of so-called "philanthro-capitalism" and I won't re-run those arguments here. Suffice to say that we believe the continuing health of the arts from 2008-2010 came from stable levels of public funding. The confidence this gives the sector is impossible to over-emphasise. While public funding was stable, the overall Index was constant. Importantly, the 2011 Index pre-dates widespread cuts in arts funding made during 2010/11. The 2012 Index will help measure the impact of the "double squeeze" already taking effect during 2011.

Across the nations, we can see that the recession hit the arts more deeply in other parts of the UK than in England. In Scotland, the overall Index score drops from 121 in 2007/08 to 85 in 2009/10 (and the lottery funding score from 284 to just 41).

http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/visualizations/national-indicators-of-arts-fundin-3/comments/f4fa5e74403d11e195bc000255111976

Interactive: click on the graphic below to see some of the Index's funding data visualised comparatively
Among the regions, London's dominant position is eroded slightly over the three years (its overall score falls from 292 in 2007/08 to 226 in 2009/10, while other regional scores increase) but it is still hugely far ahead. It gets more public money than any other region (an average score of 265 for treasury funding for instance, more than two and a half times bigger than the next largest regional score). The narrowing of the gap between London and the other regions is less to do with a redistribution of public funds, which have remained fairly constant, than the effect of recession on the other indicators.
The East of England scores are lowest, largely because of low investment, particularly from public funders. The region has the second lowest contributions from Treasury funds (£1.89 per person, compared to £22.43 per person in London in 2009/10) and local government, and the lowest contribution from the Lottery (£1.15 compared to £4.00 in London in the same year).
Local government funding has similar inequalities; from £11.64 per person in the West Midlands in 2008/9 to £6.85 in the South West.
The big story is that the first Arts Index shows the effect of sustained public investment over many years – a healthy, profitable, vital sector. Many of the figures in the first edition look good, so we were delighted but not surprised when, at the launch, all three party spokespeople welcomed it. This edition takes us to the eve of and local government cuts.
We hope the arts continue to show robust health. But if they don't, and the recession really begins to bite, we must use the Index as an argument for change. If we are going to allow a generous government to trumpet their triumphs and a squeezed sector to complain about their cuts, both sides must speak fluent Index.

This article is the first in a five part series. Next week: private funding. The first UK Arts Index can be downloaded here. The second edition of the Index will be published in April 2012

The Arts Index was produced in collaboration with Audiences UK, Audiences London and with help from Americans for the Arts, Arts and Business, Arts Council England, Arts Council of Wales, Arts Council Northern Ireland and The Department for Culture, Media & Sport

Samuel West is an actor, director and NCA trustee. Follow the NCA on Twitter @artscampaign and Sam's personal account @exitthelemming

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The Guardian - Inside The Index