2

The arts context

Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of the arts as a background for the examination of the arts–tourism relationship in later chapters. The overview will enable tourism managers and students to approach the arts with understanding. The point is often made that the arts and tourism don’t fully comprehend or appreciate each other’s particular methods of operation or objectives. The chapter therefore covers a wide range of issues especially those that have a bearing on the arts–tourism relationship.

The chapter includes a discussion of:

  what the arts and entertainment are and the distinction between them;

  how popular arts and entertainment are and who goes and doesn’t go: participation and non-participation;

  who provides the arts and entertainment: the supply;

  the relationship between governments and the arts.

Culture, arts and entertainment

A distinction is commonly made between the arts and entertainment. Table 2.1 includes a number of terms that have been applied to each and which distinguish them. The word ‘entertainment’ is used to include a wide variety of activities such as watching television or playing computer games at home, listening to compact discs, cinema visits, watching sport and visits to theme parks and going to discos (see Figure 2.1). In addition it is applied to live performances of musicals, variety shows, band concerts, cabaret, street performers, pop concerts, rock, reggae, jazz, folk music, dancing, circus, comedy and magic, etc. It is the ‘live performance’ aspect of entertainment that is one of the concerns of this book (along with the arts).

Table 2.1   Some terms used in relation
to the arts and entertainment

‘The arts’ usually refers to works and activities such as classical music, ballet, plays, opera as well as paintings and sculpture (see Figure 2.1). They are sometimes referred to as ‘the high arts’. The arts are associated with ‘refinement’ and as being something more than the ‘ordinary’ man or woman could either produce or appreciate without training, education and effort (Tusa, 1999). They are regarded as the work of a few talented people and represent the highest levels of human creative ability. There is a view that they are created for their own sake as an expression of the creator’s vision and are not created primarily with a view to making money. Similarly performers have chosen to enter this field because of some inner impulse and natural talent and not necessarily because of the prospect of financial reward. When reference is made to the ‘culture’ of a nation or society it often refers to these arts. The terms are, for some, interchangeable (Williams, 1988). People who understand and appreciate the arts are said to be ‘cultured’.

Figure 2.1   Entertainment and the arts

Entertainment has overtones of being light, pleasurable and undemanding, requiring little effort to appreciate. Entertainment is considered to be, in some way, inferior to and less valuable and serious than the arts. At its most extreme, people who want entertainment and have no interest in the arts are said to be ‘uncultured’. Entertainment and many other activities including football, shopping, watching television and visits to bars and clubs have been labelled ‘popular culture’ or ‘mass culture’ (Fiske, 1989; Storey, 1993). Most of this entertainment is provided by commercial enterprises and sold to consumers to make money rather than as an expression of human creativity. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries the cultural experiences of the majority of the population of the industrialized world are received through television, video, compact discs and computers. They are industrially produced for mass consumption and consumers are persuaded to purchase through intensive marketing.

The reality may be that there is very little difference between the arts and entertainment and it is impossible to say what activity falls into which category. This entertainment–arts distinction is ultimately a matter of judgement and it has become exercised in a particular way to include, quite arbitrarily, some activities and not others as arts. The distinctions really are a matter of judgement: ‘artistic value is an arbitrary aesthetic system. It is based upon and inscribed within social positions. It is not an “essence” that lurks within an artistic object’ (Lewis, 1990: 11). The definition of what is or is not art has been made by people who have been educated and powerful and until recently this was a small body of people. Such a process enables them to differentiate themselves from others who are excluded from participation by the claim that the arts are something which are difficult to comprehend. An understanding and appreciation of the arts is limited to a few and is used as a distinguishing feature in society to distinguish those who are ‘cultured’ from those who are not. The terms ‘arts’ and ‘culture’ have become associated with each other in a common overtone of superiority and worthiness.

This view may however be much more difficult to sustain as populations become better educated, as the right to vote has become more widespread, standards of living have risen and as it becomes more readily recognized that what is or is not art is not easily decided. From a postmodern perspective, it is inappropriate to make such a distinction anyway (Featherstone, 1991). This view of the world, initially associated with architecture but now applied to many aspects of life including culture, regards clear distinctions such as those between arts and entertainment as unjustifiable. The (post) modern world is such that there are no certainties and everything has its own validity. There are no clear rules for interpreting the world and each individual can give and derive meaning from objects and activities as he or she wishes.

Participation

Going to the theatre or to a concert is a leisure activity that very many people do. Outside the home the most popular activities in Great Britain are going for a drink or meal, followed by visits to the cinema (a third of adults in the previous three months). Visits to historic buildings were made by 23% and to museums or art galleries by 19%. The same percentage (19%) went to the theatre but only 8% went to a pop or rock concert and 7% to a classical concert or opera. A quarter of all adults, however, had been to a nightclub or disco during the previous three-month period and just over 20% had been a spectator at a sports event (1993–94; Central Statistical Office, 1995). Participation figures obviously do not indicate frequency of attendance and the similarity, for instance, in museum and theatre participation disguises the fact that in the same period 90 million visits were made to museums and art galleries and only 23 million were made to the performing arts (Casey et al., 1996).

Surveys that focus solely on the arts indicate the relative importance of each of the art forms. In the USA about a quarter of the adult population attended a (musical) play and 16 per cent attended a non-musical play during 1997 (NEA, 1998a). Jazz and classical music, opera and ballet were less popular. Visits to ‘art museums’ and ‘historic parks’ were more popular than any of these and were undertaken by a third and nearly half of the population respectively. Total attendances at arts events grew from 441 million to 604 million between 1992 and 1997.

In Australia less than one in ten of the adult population attended a classical music concert in 1998–99, 16 per cent attended musicals or went to the theatre and 9 per cent went to a dance performance (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1999a). As in Great Britain a far greater percentage of the population had been to the cinema (67 per cent).

During 1998–99 it is estimated that 22 per cent of the adult population in England attended plays and 12 per cent went to classical music concerts (Arts Council of England, 1999). Opera, ballet, contemporary dance and jazz are less popular but nonetheless are still seen and listened to in live performances by, literally, millions of people. Attendances at the performing arts in England have been steady over a long period of time.

Who goes to the arts?

The surveys discussed above show a very similar picture of the arts-goer. Participation rates are highest amongst people who are relatively well-off, well educated and in the older age categories. In the USA ‘adults between 45 and 54 years of age had the highest attendance rates in seven out of the eleven activities covered in the 1997 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts’ (NEA, 1999a: 3). These seven included classical music, opera, plays (musical) and ballet. In the case, however, of non-musical plays, jazz and other dance, the highest participation rates were in the 18–24 age group. The same survey shows ‘a solid relationship between education and arts participation. Adults who attended graduate school had the highest attendance rates for every arts activity’ (NEA, 1999a: 6). It is also clear that in terms of race and ethnicity the highest participation rates were amongst whites. African-Americans and Hispanics had lower participation rates in all categories except jazz and ‘other dance’.

Participation rates were also highest amongst the highest income groups. For instance, 11.6 per cent of those with annual incomes of $10,000 or less went to musical plays whereas 51.3 per cent of the highest category (over $100,000) attended. For activities such as opera and ballet the differences were even more noticeable.

The result is that in any audience for the arts there is usually a distribution of people that does not match the general characteristics of the population. There are above-average numbers of people who are white, who have high incomes, who are well-educated and who have white-collar employment. In London West End theatres, for example, the average age of the audience is 42 and over half have completed further or higher education. Over half classify themselves as being middle or senior management (MORI, 1998).

What explains participation?

The motivations for attending the arts are wide-ranging, from engaging in a deep relationship with the art that heightens awareness through to escapism and boredom with other aspects of life (Cooper and Tower, 1992). The arts and entertainment provide the opportunity to expand the mind and senses but also to relax, to escape and fantasize, to be out in the company of others and an opportunity for display. Whilst these apply to all forms of the arts and entertainment, the motivations of relating to the arts at the highest levels of understanding and appreciation are often associated with the arts whereas factors such as escapism and relaxation are associated with entertainment.

Going to see a live performance may have particular attractions compared with home-based entertainment or any form of pre-recorded entertainment. The appeal is believed to lie in the opportunity to see, meet and be with others and, equally, to be seen by others (social interaction and display). It is considered to have a ‘sense of occasion’ that staying at home does not. The performance itself has a sense of excitement about it derived from the interaction of performers and audience and a directness that is unfiltered by television or compact disc.

Underlying the choice however are some deep influences. ‘Educational attainment … is the single most powerful determinant of (high) arts participation’ (Heilbrun and Gray, 1993: 41). In Australia, four in ten of people with a higher degree went to the theatre compared with less than two in ten of people with a basic vocational qualification (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1999a). Education will influence income and occupation, all of which have a positive connection with participation, but education seems to be the single most important influence (see Figure 2.2). Education may be necessary in order to understand the arts though it is obviously not a simple connection and in fact may be a myth cultivated by art-lovers. To understand art may require knowledge of the ‘codes’ which can make sense of it. This process of acquiring knowledge and understanding of the arts has been termed the accumulation of ‘cultural capital’ (Bourdieu, 1984). There is a common set of values that determines these codes and what constitutes arts and this is acquired through family, experience and education.

Going to see or listen to the arts is also influenced by childhood exposure to the arts. People who have grown up with little or no experience of the arts or theatre-going are less likely to go in adulthood. This means that some people are ‘comfortable’ with going to the theatre, they know what to expect and how to behave. People who were not familiarized in their early years will lack this ‘comfort’ factor.

Figure 2.2   Participation in the arts

The arts have become associated with the more educated and wealthier sections of society. In those ‘upper’ sections of society, going to the arts is regarded as the usual thing and there is peer group pressure to attend. In others, peer group pressure is not to attend. This gives identity to sectors of the community (a middle class person is someone who goes to the theatre), it reinforces their sense of community (they have something in common which binds them together) and it acts as a means of excluding others (by not going to the theatre a person is not admitted to the circle of middle class) (Dimaggio and Useem, 1978). Leisure pursuits generally and arts participation may be explained therefore by the view that they are used to nurture relationships and consolidate identities (Roberts, 1981). There is an element of simplification and exaggeration here but nonetheless leisure does play a key role in the formation of social identity and class structure.

The association of the arts with the middle classes, in particular, means that people participate in order to raise their own status (Harland et al., 1996). Going to the high arts boosts self-image by being with others who are regarded as being in the upper levels of society and also seeing or listening to something which is similarly regarded highly.

What explains non-participation?

Non-participation can be explained by practical factors such as cost, especially for low income groups (Moore, 1998), but also, more significantly, by the ‘cultural’ differences discussed above (see Figure 2.2). Certain dominant sectors of society have defined what was art and in the process have, in effect, excluded others from it. Theatre and the arts generally have been regarded as the pursuits of the middle classes rather than of working classes. This process probably started in the mid nineteenth century and by now is difficult to reverse. Many people do not go to the theatre as they do perceive it as something that is not for them. ‘The main barriers to the enjoyment of the arts are psychological rather than practical … Perception of the arts as being exclusive, difficult to understand and expensive’ (Mass Observation and Greater London Arts, 1990: 3).

People believe that they would not understand what was going on and it would be too heavy and incomprehensible; this is referred to as the ‘talent’ barrier (Harland et al., 1996). Others believe that the arts are irrelevant to them and are only for others. For some, especially ethnic minorities and lower status people, theatres and concert halls are seen as unwelcoming, which is referred to as the ‘lack of relevance and the comfortability’ barrier. Non-participation may also occur because of ‘image’ barriers: ‘involvement … does not sit comfortably with an individual’s self-perception or results from an anticipation of external negative attitudes and the reactions of others’ (Harland et al., 1996: 55). Some people just do not see themselves as ‘arty’ people or believe that their esteem in the eyes of others would be reduced by participating. Among certain sectors of the population, theatre-going is not a usual pursuit and for any individual to do so would invite adverse reactions.

There are obvious attractions too in being entertained at home. There is a variety of activities offered by television, computer, music system and video. These do not require leaving the comfort of home and are accessible without having to be concerned about the correct way of behaving. Theatre-going and concert-going are constrained in terms of time whereas home entertainment is more controllable by the individual. It is also regarded as cheaper even though it may not be so in fact.

The supply

The supply has several dimensions including (see Figure 2.3):

  people: composers, playwrights, choreographers, the people who create the artistic works; performers such as musicians, actors and dancers; technical staff for lighting, sound, scenery, etc.;

  venues: the places where performances are held, which include theatres, concert halls, arts centres, arenas, bars and clubs.

Figure 2.3   Supply of the arts and entertainment

Any individual performer may be self-employed or employed by a producing company such as an orchestra or dance ensemble. Performers and producing companies may receive income from sponsors or government grants. The arts, in particular, are dependent upon such non-box office income in order to survive. They are often referred to as ‘the subsidized sector’. Entertainment, however, is characterized by performers and producing companies that operate commercially and which rely upon box office income to generate sufficient income to make a profit.

Similarly, theatres may operate on a commercial basis or may receive sponsorship and grants. One of the distinctive features of the arts is the high number and continuing existence of organizations that do not earn a profit and which frequently, by any commercial standards, make a loss. In the UK, most theatres outside the West End are either owned by or depend for finance on local government or are run by trusts and are non-profit making. Many theatres are run by non-profit making trusts though often the building itself is owned by local government (Audit Commission, 1991; Myerscough, 1988).

Despite the large number of subsidized people and companies in the arts there are a significant number of commercial theatre operators especially in the West End and Broadway and in most major towns and cities. Although this is more likely to be in the entertainment rather than arts sphere, the subsidized arts are often performed in commercial theatres (if ‘receiving’ – see below). There are also some significant commercial producing companies. The Apollo Group owned over twenty theatres and arenas in the UK, most of which were outside London. Apollo was taken over in 1999 by the US group, SFX Entertainment. This enterprise owns a large number of theatres on Broadway and is the largest concert promoter in the USA. Ownership of London’s West End theatres is dominated by a few commercial companies such as the Really Useful Group, which now owns 13 theatres after the purchase of the Stoll Moss theatres in 2000. This group is owned by the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber whose work includes ‘Cats’, ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ and ‘Phantom of the Opera’. The integration of activities (production and theatre ownership) and widening of ownership are part of a move towards reducing risks and sharing costs.

Some theatres, halls and arenas are ‘receiving’ organizations (see Figure 2.3). They do not produce their own events and productions but present those of others. A producing company may produce a play which is then performed in several different receiving theatres across the country. The company producing the play may be part of some large producing organization or may be a small band of performers in a form of worker’s co-operative or anything in between, including individuals. The financial arrangements are varied and operate on differing shares of risk applying to the theatre and the producing company. A straight hire means that the producing company pays a fee for use of the theatre and bears the financial risk, taking the profits or accepting the loss. A guarantee is the opposite: the theatre pays a fee to the producing company and also bears the risks (profit or loss). The risk is shared where there is a form of box office split. Most receiving theatres operate on shorter runs of productions than those in the West End or Broadway, often a different production every one or two weeks. These are often productions that are on tour around several theatres nationwide.

Others are ‘producing’ theatres and mount their own in-house productions. They hire directors and performers, construct sets, etc. and may commission the writing of plays or music. The producing theatres may (or may not) have a ‘repertory’ company of performers who are linked with a particular theatre and perform in all or many of their productions. Such in-house productions may, of course, be toured and performed in receiving theatres elsewhere.

Government and the arts

Many arts organizations depend on non-box office sources of revenue, especially government grants and sponsorship, in order to survive. The English National Opera, London, had an income of about £21 million in 1997–98, of which only £7 million was box office income. Arts Council funding was £12 million and nearly £2 million was from private and other sources (Eyre, 1998). Arts organizations receiving Arts Council (of England) and regional arts board funding received an average of less than half (45 per cent) of total income from the box office in 1998–99 (ACE, 1999). In the USA, not-for-profit (tax-exempt) theatre producing organizations outnumber the commercial organizations (NEA, 1998b). Theatres in Germany are even more heavily subsidised than in England: public theatres received 86 per cent of their income as a local government subsidy (Feist, 1998). Tax-exempt theatres in the USA received half of their income from admissions (1992) and nearly a quarter from private support (NEA 1998c). An international comparison of orchestras showed that in the USA, central and local government provided 6 per cent of total income whereas in England the figure was 30 per cent (Feist, 1998).

In the USA there has always been more reliance than in the UK on funding from charitable trusts and foundations and on sponsorship from individuals and corporations than on government. The US situation is a reflection of a philosophy about the role of government that differs from that in most of western Europe. The US, as one of the most successful free-enterprise economies, has always been more imbued with a sense of minimum government intervention and, at the same time, a sentiment that individuals have some obligation to distribute their wealth in a philanthropic way.

In large part, the justification for the continuation of the ‘uneconomic’ arts lies in the idea of ‘market failure’. If the arts were to be supplied solely on a pure commercial basis, the market mechanism would underproduce and the output would be less than desirable at a ‘socially optimal’ level. Outside support, especially from government, is given in most industrialized countries to both artists and performers and to performance spaces (theatres and concert halls). Many governments have set up ‘arms-length’ bodies through which they finance the arts: the Arts Council of England (ACE) (founded as Arts Council of Great Britain in 1946), the Australia Council (1975), the Canada Council for the Arts (1957), Creative New Zealand (1994) and the US National Endowment for the Arts, the federal grant-making agency created by Congress (1965). They all operate on the similar principle of national and federal governments passing money to them but the decision about who should be financed lies with the arms-length body and not with the government. These bodies have similar objectives, which are to encourage ‘excellence’ in the arts, including encouragement of new performers and new art forms, and to encourage the widest access to or participation in the arts. The support is usually confined to the ‘high’ arts though there is an increasing desire to promote cultural diversity and in the case of Australia and New Zealand, for instance, to preserve and stimulate the arts of the original cultures of those countries: Aboriginal and Maori arts.

In the UK the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is the government department responsible for government policy on the arts, museums, tourism, and a number of other related matters. It, in turn, provides funding to the Arts Council of England, the British Tourist Authority and others. Seven ‘national’ companies such as the Royal Opera, the Royal National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Ballet are funded directly by the ACE (£63 million, which was a third of all ACE grants in 1998–99). Others are funded indirectly through the network of Regional Arts Boards which, apart from the ACE funding (£58 million), also receive considerable funding from local governments.

In the UK, local government has been a particularly important supporter of the arts. There is no obligation on them to do this but they are the largest single funder and provide nearly half of all non-box office income for the funded performing arts (Casey et al., 1996). Their expenditure is comparable with that of the Arts Council. Their assistance takes many forms including providing and operating theatres and concert halls, funding arts organizations and artists, contributions to local arts boards and support for festivals. In seaside holiday towns their role has been critical. Local government provides and operates most of the theatres and concert halls outside London and about one-third of these are in seaside towns (Audit Commission, 1991; Myerscough, 1988).

The reasons for support by national and local governments are many and include (Casey et al., 1996; Audit Commission, 1991):

  The arts are important and deserve to survive even if they cannot do so commercially. Their importance is considered to lie in their representation of the best of human achievement and the ability to enhance the quality of life of people who experience them. People in audiences can be raised to the highest intellectual and emotional experiences. ‘The arts are an end in themselves: through participating and understanding the arts we grow, we learn about ourselves … They are not essential to our existence but they are central to it’ (Eyre, 1998: 38). ‘The arts matter because they embrace, express and define the soul of a civilisation’ (Tusa, 1999: 22).

  The arts find difficulty surviving because there is little scope for productivity improvement and, in the case of new works and minority interest works, there is a problem of generating enough revenue to survive. Support is therefore given to encourage new talent as well as to ensure that existing artists survive. Innovative and experimental arts are important for the health of the arts and of society and are usually nurtured in the subsidized theatre. The subsidized sector provides opportunities not available elsewhere for new work which may, eventually, become mainstream.

  A ‘civilized’ society is characterized by a diversity of artistic activity and by a continuing desire to create and be innovative. The enabling legislation for the USA’s National Endowment for the Arts in its ‘Declaration of Findings and Purposes’ states that it is ‘necessary and appropriate for the Federal Government to help create and sustain not only a climate encouraging freedom of thought, imagination and inquiry but also the material conditions facilitating the release of this creative talent’. The implication is that without such support the quality of life and a free-thinking democracy would be lessened and new artistic outputs would not emerge.

  Support is also based on the view that the arts are so important that access of everyone to the arts should be encouraged. Therefore government support is justified in the form of enabling the arts to survive and also keeping prices down. In this way, the widest participation and attendance are encouraged. It does also reflect the view that the arts are superior to entertainment and that people would gain more benefit from the arts if they were exposed to them.

  Arts are considered to be worthy of support because of their ability to attract tourists or create jobs or help the balance of payments. The cost involved in subsidizing the arts may be considered to be a good investment if a good financial return is received elsewhere. In a similar way, the arts may encourage people to live in a particular town and may encourage business-people to set up factories or offices there because it is a desirable place to live and work (see Chapter 8). This sort of argument for the arts is relatively recent and has been proposed since the 1980s in particular. The arts are not valued for their own sake but for what they can achieve for some other purpose. In the case of holiday areas and especially seaside towns, local governments have been willing to support the arts as ‘an investment’. Theatre and entertainment have a role to play in attracting tourists and therefore it is important that they should be available. The argument is extended to make the point that the inflow of tourists generates income throughout the town and therefore the cost borne by local government as an investment is worthwhile.

These justifications for support for the arts reflect the views that they are somehow ‘special’ and worthy of support, more so than many other leisure activities including entertainment.

Despite this discussion highlighting the special issues surrounding the arts and how these might justify subsidy, there has been increasing pressure on the arts, in the last two decades of the twentieth century, to be ‘more commercial’ (Casey et al., 1996). The particular nature of the arts, with artistic matters having priority over profit, has meant that many arts organizations have been run without a commercial edge to them and they may have been regarded as less than efficient in their operations. The encouragement to be more commercial may mean many things including adopting more of the management strategies of the business world. It also implies reducing dependence on subsidy and becoming more self-reliant. The activities of funding bodies such as the ACE and NEA have been curtailed. The NEA’s budget, for instance, was cut from $162 million before 1996 to $98 million after and the number of full-time employees reduced by 43 per cent (NEA, 1999b).

Sponsorship and lotteries

In the UK there has been considerable encouragement for the arts to seek partnership with the private sector and raise funds from sponsorship. Government funds are increasingly diverted to schemes where the arts are encouraged to raise matching funds from the private sector and to schemes that do not support on-going expenditure but which are one-off payments to enterprises that will become self-supporting.

Sponsorship has, especially in the past, been a philanthropic activity. People and corporations have donated to the arts because they were public spirited, they believed it to be ‘the right thing to do’ and it gave them a sense of fulfilment. It was an act of unselfish concern for others. This continues but sponsorship is increasingly regarded as a mutually beneficial business arrangement. Sponsors are looking for a ‘return’ in the form of a raised corporate profile or the promotion of particular products as well as a favourable public relations image. The organization A&B (ex-ABSA) has operated since 1976 in the UK to encourage partnerships between the arts and the private sector.

One of the issues that arts organizations have to face when raising money from governments or sponsors is that not all art forms are equally popular with funders. There is limited sponsorship of novel, adventurous and controversial artistic activity and there can be threats to artistic independence as evidenced for instance by Mayor Giuliani of New York threatening (in 1999) to withdraw financial support from the Brooklyn Museum of Art. This was mounting ‘Sensation’, an exhibition of contemporary art from Britain, which had been uncontroversial in Britain. The focus for protests was a painting of the Madonna that included dung in the artist’s materials. The UK Secretary of State for Education expressed the view in 1999 that taxes should not be used to finance some performances abroad of a controversial contemporary play ‘Shopping and Fucking’.

National or state lotteries exist in most countries, though only since 1994 in Britain. The British lottery provides funds for the arts usually on a basis of partnership funding from other sources. Most of this funding was initially for capital projects – for buildings and equipment – rather than for revenue. Undoubtedly there has been a considerable number of new venues developed and re-furbishment of others, including the Royal Opera House, London (£78 million grant) and the reconstruction of Shakespeare’s Globe theatre in London (£12 million). The theatre stock in the UK is largely ‘old’, many having been built in the early part of the twentieth century. This means that they are often lacking the facilities expected by modern audiences and also that they experience considerable maintenance and restoration costs.

There has been criticism of the approach nonetheless, as the main financial issue facing the arts has been that of survival and of paying for productions. There have been instances of theatre companies closing because of inability to meet running costs even though they had received substantial lottery capital grants. There has though been some recent modification by introducing funding designed to secure the existence of some companies and to encourage strategies to develop new audiences.

The allocation of National Lottery funds has been through the Arts Council. In 1998–99 the Arts Council of England’s own grants were £188 million and the National Lottery arts grants amounted to £143 million with a total of over £1000 million having been distributed since 1995. The lottery is a major source of arts funding but there has been some concern that is displacing government funding and removing the ‘obligation’ of government to ensure the existence of the arts. Lottery funds are subject to fluctuation according to the popularity of the game and this introduces a degree of uncertainty that many would prefer to see replaced by firm government commitment to arts funding.

The lack of government financial support for the arts in the UK has led many, including the Theatre Trust, to be concerned about the future of theatre. The Theatre Trust is a statutory body (established 1976) with a remit to protect the theatre stock. It warned, in a 1999 report, that the new lottery funded performance spaces would stand empty for a lack of revenue. The reduction in the real value of funding to the ACE has been on-going for some time and despite a considerable increase in 1999 there is concern that the Labour government (since 1997) has been more interested in the popular arts and the cultural industries (including pop music and film) than in culture and the minority interest (high) arts have been neglected. Access has been promoted at the expense of excellence. The government’s policy undoubtedly reflects a desire to move away from the past and the support for the interests of the few. In addition it has been a recognition of the economic worth of the popular creative industries compared with the high arts and, of course, the fact that they do not require subsidy, which is in line with current government thinking (Smith, 1998). The arts always understandably plead a case for special consideration but there is a genuine concern that financial constraints and preoccupation with business management methods will stifle creativity, inspiration and innovation and leave the new and less popular arts short of funds because they are seen as elitist and not popular enough (Tusa, 1999).