There was once a utopian vision of UK arts funding. What the hell happened?

Exactly 60 years ago, in February 1965, Jennie Lee, the former wife of Aneurin Bevan and the UK’s first minister for the arts, presented to parliament A Policy for the Arts, the first-ever government white paper dedicated to the question of how the state should fund culture.

It was a landmark moment in British art history, for Lee proposed an enduring template for how the state could support and sustain creativity. Public arts funding existed in the 1960s, but it was inconsistent, incoherent and often a minor consequence of other policy decisions. Lee worked out how to join it up. Her document articulated how the nation could invest in its artists. Today, over half a century since A Policy for the Arts was brought before parliament, it might be worth taking a few leaves out of Lee’s text, and the principles that underpin it, for the UK arts sector, and economy as a whole, is facing a turbulent and uncertain time.

Just this week, the Royal Academy, an independent cultural charity housed in a government building in London, announced that up to 60 roles, representing around 18% of its workforce, are at threat as part of a budget-cutting restructure. The redundancies were “required to sustain [the RA’s] position in the future”, a spokesperson told The Art Newspaper. The RA is a 257-year-old arts organisation situated on London’s Piccadilly, directly opposite The Ritz and Fortnum and Mason department store. It is difficult to think of a location in the UK better situated for passing footfall, and yet the RA’s annual visitors in 2024 were just 622,000, roughly half of its visitor figures pre-pandemic, which stood at 1.25M.

Born in 1904 in Scotland, Lee became a member of Parliament at just 24, making her one of the youngest MPs in history. Through the Labour Party, Lee met Bevan, a young, outspoken and controversial socialist with a thick Welsh Valleys accent and a speech impediment that would worsen when he was nervous. They married shortly after she turned 30. Bevan worked in the coal mines as a teenager and came into Labour politics through the trade union movement. Lee supported her husband, an often unpopular figure within his party, as he fought to become the founding architect of the National Health Service, a system that would provide free healthcare for everyone at the point of delivery. “No society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means,” Bevan said shortly before the NHS came into being in 1948.

Harold Wilson’s Labour government appointed Lee to be the first minister for the arts in 1964, a few years after Bevan’s death at the age of 62 from stomach cancer. Her white paper was in part inspired by her husband’s belief in universalism.

The UK, at the time, faced huge economic problems. In 1964, we imported more than we exported and owed around £800M in payments deficit. Sterling was no longer considered the world’s primary reserve currency, losing out to the dollar, while inflation was at 4% a year. It was in this context that Lee argued that access to the arts should be a fundamental right comparable to education and health care. The document laid the foundations for increased funding to regional arts organisations, museums and public libraries. It proposed an expansion of the Arts Council’s remit and made arts education part of the curriculum in primary and secondary schooling.

From 1965 to 1975, the white paper led to both increased funding and operational autonomy of the Arts Council which grew significantly as a result. Pursuing a policy of localism in decision making, Lee’s white paper allowed for the greater financial stability and community-based reflexivity of theatres, galleries and orchestras across the UK. Cultural hubs flourished, including the Crucible in Sheffield (which opened in 1971), the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh (which first opened in 1963) and the Liverpool Everyman Theatre (which first opened in 1964). The white paper also laid the foundation for major institutions like the National Theatre, which opened in London in 1976. The white paper led to the establishment of institutions like The Open University and the continued growth of public broadcasting operations.

What would Lee make of the UK’s arts sector today? A new Labour government, one in power for less than a year, is overseeing an economy that stubbornly refuses to grow. The government is already sinking in the polls and faces an insurgent populist opposition. It must consider how, and indeed if, it should reintroduce arts funding to a state sector that has suffered wave upon wave of shocks – an austerity agenda that led to bone deep cuts to local council provision, the COVID-19 pandemic, the inflationary pressures of foreign wars and, to top it all off, an accelerating revolution in digital innovation that has left the traditional model of museology obsolete. The last government’s concern for arts policy can be summed up by the churn of 12 secretaries of state at the Department of  Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) between 2010 and 2024 – eight of which came and went after the Brexit referendum.

Cultural organisations across the UK, and spanning every creative discipline one can think of, are now grappling with funding cuts, venue closures, falling attendance and rising costs. Yet the political debate, in many respects, remains the same as the 1960s. Is the arts a public good and a universal right? Or should the government assume a rigidly Keynesian (or even Hobbesian) approach, gauging the arts purely as an economic lever in its pursuit of growth, and cutting where appropriate?

On 20th February, Lisa Nandy, the current incumbent at DCMS, paid tribute to her predecessor’s white paper on the anniversary of its release. In a speech at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Nandy commented on Lee’s “driving passion, that ‘all of our children should be given the kind of education that was the monopoly of the privileged few’ – to the arts, sport, music and culture which help us grow as people and grow as a nation.” It was an acknowledgement that Lee’s blueprint remains unerringly of the moment.

Despite the shocks it has faced, and despite our recent government’s lack of belief in centralised arts funding, the industry remains in relative economic health. According to statistics accrued by the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC), arts and culture contributed approximately £124.6B to the UK economy in 2022. Research by Arts Council England, meanwhile, found that the industry contributes approximately £2.8B annually to the Treasury through taxation, while the export of British arts and culture is valued at £5.2B. More than 84% of these exports end up in markets outside the European Union. The world is listening to our music, watching our films and looking at our art.

Some might look at these figures and conclude that the private sector is doing its thing – so why should the hard-pressed taxpayer intervene?

And what of the road not taken? Where would we be now if Lee’s white paper had been executed, with commitment, by successive governments? What if the country had taken her principles to heart, assumed them as part of our national identity, as we have the NHS? What would the revenues look like then?

Consider further facts from PEC. As of 2023, approximately 60% of people employed in the UK arts sector were raised in households where the primary earner held a managerial position. Their research also found that 90% of arts workers identified as white. The arts sector, in other words, is not properly inclusive of people from working class – or even lower middle class – backgrounds. And it is not yet reflecting the diversity of our society by some distance.

Lee imagined a Britain where everyone had access to the arts. The universalism she envisioned remains that – a sight on the horizon, not yet evident in reality. But it remains there, out of reach, but visible.

The work began in the 1960s. Perhaps it’s finally time to see it through.