For more up-to-date posts, and for more information about Graham Hitchen, go to: directionalthinking.net

He wasn’t against much of what is being developed – and, indeed, the Local Economic Partnership (LEP) model was identified as a potentially ground-breaking way of focusing energy and resources around industrial and demographic requirements, rather than arbitrary borough or regional boundaries – bringing together public and private sector to develop long-term programmes for growth.

But the main threat to the regional and local infrastructure that underpins cultural and creative activity is the lack of funding, and the absence of any top-down co-ordination of local initiatives. Local authority funding cuts are severe and uneven – and do not appear in any way to reflect recent LEP selections.

There’s a view that RDAs have become bloated bureaucracies, but at least they brought a clarity and co-ordination to economic development – and they have been absolutely instrumental in fostering and promoting a new energy and enterprise regionally: whether it’s Media City in Salford, the London Design Festival, or initiatives such as ‘Own It‘ or DoTT in the south west and north east.

It would be foolhardy to think that under-resourced LEPs can somehow provide a lean-and-mean substitute for much of this. There are no plans, for example, to transfer the specialist staffing, knowledge and resources within many RDA teams; and, despite getting a government imprimatur, it’s clear that the LEPs won’t necessarily get any Regional Growth Funding, which will be distributed via a completely different system. Approving plans for a LEP in Somerset isn’t much use, if central government is cutting back on the local authority funding which supports the arts in the county.

Locally-driven visions for growth are to be welcomed, and a new compact between the public and private sector focused on economic renewal could provide a real platform for new ideas (take, for example, the proposals emanating from some of the city-regions such as Bristol/West of England and Stoke-and-Staffordshire). But their success will depend on clear leadership – and investment – from within Westminster and Whitehall, and a long-term plan for growth.

East London has, or had, been a priority for the LDA for a number of years, and huge effort has gone into fostering business growth and, not at all unconnected, investing in regeneration and local skills projects. If East London is now a place where business wants to move, then due recognition needs to be placed at the door of the LDA, and other public sector partners who – in various different ways – have helped to make London east of Old Street Roundabout a good place to live and do business.

Of course, it’s not all down to the public sector. Business was moving east long before the LDA came into existence. Adventurous creative businesses seeking out new environments (with cheap rents to boot) were followed close behind by less-adventurous and slightly more unscrupulous property developers and estate agents. But the vast majority of the former will simply have disappeared, had it not been for the foresight of local authority planning and regeneration departments, protecting opportunities for local business development, and supporting investment in creative workspace, business support and skills programmes.

Creative London, for example, identified a series of ‘Creative Hubs’ across the capital, and supported locally-driven creative business partnerships in places such as Shoreditch, Stratford and Deptford – incentivising other public and private sector partners to support business growth.

Creative London also played a significant part in ensuring that there was a firm, written, commitment to creative and cultural legacy on the 2012 bidding document. The chance of sustaining a creative cluster on the site of the International Broadcast Centre has appeared increasingly difficult over recent years – but the commitment remains, and Cameron’s speech made that clear.

So, in many senses, David Cameron, Jeremy Hunt and others are following a long, and strong, line of activity in East London – and the various initiatives they announced last week are to be welcomed.

But it would be very naive of them to think that the level of activity they describe can be sustained without the active input and support of the public sector.

This is an exciting initiative, which could work in partnership with the Council to keep Design high on the Government and business agenda, at a time when there might be a tendency to focus on cost-cutting and deficit-reduction.

The exact brief for the Commission has not yet been agreed, but the draft paperwork states that the Commission will focus its energies as follows:

- thought leadership on where design/ designers/ ‘design thinking’ can add value to some pressingconcerns, e.g. national identity, community/ big society, social inequality, education and skills,competitiveness in a global market, public health

- examination of how to maintain and surpass our current position as a global leader in design

- monitor policy and sector developments and respond if and when appropriate

- pursuing, where appropriate, issues raised by the report ‘Design and the Public Good’

- critique of design quality in specific cases

- critique of use of design in government, of interaction between government and the designcommunity

- other issues: design on the national curriculum and in HE, design skills in planning departments,wielding design for behaviour change, examination of the issues raised by ‘Ingenious Britain’.

This list should keep the Commission going for a while.

Members of the Commission include:

Lord Bichard, Chairman of the Design Council

Hilary Cottam

Sir George Cox

Jeremy Davenport, CITIN

Bill Dunster, ZedFactory

Julian Grice, The Team

Laura Haynes, DBA

Wayne Hemingway

Graham Hitchen

Emma Hunt, CHEAD

Mat Hunter, Design Council

Dick Powell

Barry Sheerman MP

Andrew Summers

John Thackara

Baroness Janet Whitaker

David Worthington, Chair Creative and Cultural Skills.

More information here, in due course.

But it’s worth looking at some of the initial headlines, because they will help give us an indication of the shape of things to come.

This is the first of a number of responses over coming days.

* The headline is, and will be, the cuts to the arts.

Some say it’s 30%, others say 15.

ACE has been asked to restrict funding cuts to “frontline organisations” to 15%;  and has been asked to slash its core running costs by a massive 50% (this for an organisation which has shed lots of staff over the last couple of years, and reduced its regional office base from 9 to 3).

The first fight will be to determine who or what is “frontline”.

Education activity is unlikely to fit that bill:  Creative Partnerships, as was, has already gone.  So expect any educational or community-focused work to be considered ‘back-office’.

Second-tier organisations, supporting infrastructure or promoting partnerships across other sectors (for example, A&B) can hardly be called “frontline”.  So, their sterling work in leveraging support from other sectors, or advocating on behalf of a fragile sector is likely to suffer dramatically.

And, just to be clear:  a “frontline” company getting a 15% cut will be considered to be a very good deal.  Imagine that even just two years ago.

There will be a lot of blood on the arts carpet.

* Local authority cuts

That’s the national arts carpet, by the way.  The vast majority of arts organisations rely on local authority funding – alongside their own self-generated income.

DCLG was hit hardest of all government departments, and local authorities will be expected to bear the brunt of much of the public sector savings over coming years.

So, many, many arts organisations can expect to have funding cut, with all other opportunities for funding from other budgets massively diminished.

And libraries, and museums?  All under threat too.

So: so far, so bad.  Big cuts to what some might describe as core activities.

But the indirect and wider sphere of culture and creativity has already been damaged by earlier announcements:

* The Design Council has lost its NDPB status, and is being encouraged to be more entrepreneurial.
Although its core budget will have been hit, I can see new money being generated in response to various project initiatives. That may well benefit the Council in the short term, as it demonstrates the capability of design on a wide range of cross-departmental issues.
But longer-term: the loss of NDPB status will inevitably lower the profile of design, and will diminish the ability of the Council to argue the case at top tables.  The CEO of a Design charity will have a much tougher time making his or her case to Ministers and senior civil servants than one who sits, by right, on a number of inter-departmental panels and committees.

* NESTA was already operating in a different way from other ‘NDPB’s and has the benefit of an endowment to keep it going.  It has also recently identified creative industries as one of its three core programme areas.  All good news.  But the chances of it retaining its BIS funding for additional activities must surely be questionable.  Watch this space!

* UK Film Council.  For good or ill, that has gone.  Where the funding goes is not clear – but the BFI has taken a 15% hit on its already meagre funds (and of course funding for the National Film Centre on the South Bank has already been stopped).

* CABE:  funding has gone completely.  Presumably, it too can compete in the Big Society for some project funding, but this is likely to be very damaging longer-term to the profile and clout of design and architecture across the UK.

I will be watching forthcoming statements, announcements and commentary, to elicit more information and insight.  But so far, it is difficult to detect anything other than a very heavy hammer-blow for a sector which appeared to be in the sympathetic hands of Hunt and Vaizey……

Its thesis, very briefly, is that our definition of culture  has altered dramatically since Government first started ‘doing’ Culture - public policy debate has shifted, and there have been wider and more fundamental cultural and technological changes to how we engage with, consume and practise culture.  The pamphlet argues, logically, that the way in which culture is dealt with in Government needs to change to reflect this.  He recommends a range of mechanisms for fostering cross-Government commitment to a new, much broader, concept of culture.

All very well. Except of course, Government has changed its approach fairly comprehensively over the last 15-20 years.

What was once called the Office of Arts and Libraries, in the Department for Education, is now a fully-fledged Department for Culture, Media and Sport, with a Cabinet position and a massively increased budget.   A Creative Industries Task Force was established in 1998 engaging ten different government departments, and a wide range of departments and public bodies have signed up to the cultural and/or creative agenda in one form or another – from Education, to Communities, Foreign Office to BIS;  from CABE to the Mayor’s Design London unit.  And local authorities and RDAs across the land are investing in and championing culture.

Or, at least, they were until quite recently.  This, it seems to me, is the real ‘shock’.

Amidst the “blitzkrieg” rhetoric regarding anticipated cuts to arts funding, very few – if any – of our senior cultural commentators are commenting on the threats to the indirect funding and support for the cultural sector which now pervades so much of Government activity.

How much has been spent on culture by RDAs over the last five years? What is the Coalition government’s policy on arts teaching within Free Schools? How are LEPs being encouraged to embrace culture and the creative industries?  Will the cuts to the BBC affect their arts broadcasting?  What impact will cuts to local government have on their ability to fund the arts?  What impact will the abolition of the UK Film Council have on film, video and media production?  What are the implications of the Design Council no longer being an NDPB?

It’s unlikely that any of the current campaigns to “save” or “value” the arts are asking these questions.   But Government policies and decisions on these issues could have a massive impact on a wide range of cultural activity.

It’s not that those campaigns aren’t important, or that ‘core’ funding through the DCMS and Arts Council, aren’t critical to the strength and sustainability of our cultural sector.

But, I find it strangely depressing – and in the light of the Demos report – that, despite the huge, hard-won, achievements which have been made in writing culture and creativity into the script of Government departments and agencies right across the public sector, that it’s the cultural sector itself – not Government – who seem unable to think beyond their own back-yards. It’s shocking, really.

• Publicly-funded organisations and agencies as diverse as NESTA, Tate, the National Gallery and, of course, the BBC are generating on-line creative content.  How are their public service remits fulfilled by so doing?
• Three very different types of public funding are utilised to support state funding of the cultural sector:  Lottery, Tresury-derived grants, the Licence Fee.  What is the logic behind the different ways of levying funding?  What other means are there?
• Historically, there are fantastic examples of other sectors using public sector platforms to deliver public service objectives – for example, the Open University’s use of the BBC to broadcast its lectures.   What scope is there for the health service, or energy utilities, to do the same?

The landscape of public funding and public service, with overlapping objectives and the considerable scope for collaboration, is complex and cumbersome and – primarily on account of technological change – in need of refreshing.

The pressure on DCMS to find savings should – or should have – provided the perfect incentive to review and reform the way in which public sector support is organised.  Imagine the savings which could be made by encouraging the Arts Council, BBC and others to share resources – people, expertise and money – in promoting and commissioning innovative digital content.  And potentially, the commercial impact of generating new content could be huge.

Remember when the BBC and the Open University collaborated to fulfil Reithian ambitions to have the BBC educate and inform?  OK, so it did not make for great telly – but it was a no-brainer in terms of sharing of resources to meet comparable public service objectives.

Is it too late for the Government to take a strong lead in this area, facilitating a debate on how best to intervene and support the generation of creative content for today’s audiences?

My fear, when reading the following two articles, would be that logic takes us to a permanent cut in funding for the arts.

Logic tells me that 2 + 2 = 4.

An article from a business perspective which encourages the arts world to work harder to engage with business, on the same day that David Cameron tells us that public sector funding cuts may be permanent, leads me to a fairly pessimistic view that the arts are in for a tough time.

Not even Jeremy Hunt believes that private sponsorship can replace public sector arts funding.  In a series of recent speeches and letters to newspapers he has attempted to set out his commitment to public funding, and to put up a fight with the Treasury.

He may be right.  Maybe he has sacrificed the UK Film Council for a bit of extra funding for the arts.  Maybe he believes that the fragile ecology of the cultural sector can be sustained by some trimming and pruning here and there (for which read: 40%+ cuts in some places will allow for negligible cuts in others).

So how does one end up with an answer of “5″?

One should turn to David Micklem for an astonishing example of illogicality.  How else to describe the ‘optimism’ outlined here?

A timely reminder of how a straightforward process of Treasury accounting may not have the capacity to deal with the imagination of the arts world.

In an impressive speech at London’s Roundhouse, Hunt has demonstrated an understanding and empathy with a sector which has, historically at least, viewed Conservative governments with a significant degree of suspicion.  A far cry from the apparent philistinism of Thatcher, Tebbitt and co, this government is made up of enlighted, public school educated young men (mainly), who appear to share a more traditional Tory approach to the arts.

And that old, mainly philanthropic, tradition of supporting the arts for the masses is what underpinned what Hunt outlined.  While Thatcher’s Victorian Values provided echoes of the poor-house, Hunt talked of the role of public libraries and national museums, the benefits of private giving, the importance of supporting “good causes”, and the value of education.  A very different set of Victorian ideals indeed.

What will this mean in practice?

Hunt’s commitments are impressive:

• additional funds through the Lottery (he estimates an additional annual £50m for the arts);
• promoting the culture of ‘giving’, and reforming Gift Aid; and
• extending the length of funding agreements for some arts organisations to five years and longer.

This is all good news for the arts, just as we enter what will be the harshest reduction in public spending for more than a generation.

With or without extra funding at the DCMS, the main source of new funding for the arts and broader cultural sector over the last few years has not come from the Arts Council or from DCMS – but from DCLG, RDAs and a range of other government departments (including DWP, DCSF and BIS).  Hunt has made it clear that he will fight for the arts.  But he needs to do it across Government – not just with Treasury, but with a range of other departments, whose cash could be a lifeline for a vital but fragile sector.  It’s no good resisting DCMS cuts, for example, if the DCLG and local authorities see their budgets slashed or if the RDAs are abolished.

There’s the rub.  It’s all very well being knowledgeable about the arts, but that probably won’t get you very far when making the case for the arts across Government, not least the Treasury.

And, as the Guardian states in its review of the new Lib-Con partnership: “the culture and arts commitments are the thinnest in the entire coalition document” agreement.

Nominally, only one of the three big ‘promises’ made by Hunt will be affected by Treasury cuts – that relating to the length of funding contracts.

But let’s look at them in more detail:

Philanthropy and private giving:  research has shown that giving tends to go down in a recession, not up.  And, in any event, it does not replace public funding – it adds to it.  In short, the best context in which to enable growth in philanthropic giving is one in which public sector funding is rising, and the economy is booming.  Neither look likely for some years to come.

More secure, longer-term funding contracts:  look at the small print.  Hunt’s speech makes this commitment with the very clear proviso: “in return for coming forward with even more ambitious fundraising programmes”.  In other words, secure contracts can only be offered where they are matched with increases in fundraising.  Given the difficult financial climate referred to above, even the biggest, most established arts organisations are going to have trouble meeting that demand.

Lottery giving:  this could be Hunt’s saving grace.  I hope so.  But, it’s worth remembering how the first raid on arts lottery funding came about.  The establishment of the New Opportunities Fund by Labour in 1997/98, with its funding for out-of-school education and a range of health initiatives, came in response to those sectors being starved of treasury funding.  A few years from now, the pressures on the public purse will make it very difficult indeed for any Government to stick to this commitment to divert this ‘additional’ money to the arts.

Hunt appears to have made a good start.  But he’s got a long way to go.

It’s a shame really, since the last twelve years – most of which when he was Chancellor – has seen a massive growth in the public and private sector book trade, and in reading more generally. The massive increases in public sector investment in schools, universities and the arts (and libraries) has helped to liberalise reading – which, perhaps only with the hindsight brought about by the forthcoming period of cuts and austerity, will we really appreciate.  Meanwhile the private sector book trade will have benefited from the huge growth in the economy up until the recent downturn, including fantastic revenue sales of books via Amazon and more varied consumption through other on-line channels.

But before embarking on a post-6th-May reading marathon, there are one or two books he might want to make time to look at over the course of the next few days.

Shakespeare’s Henry V might help inspire him, as he goes once more “unto the breach“;  or, if he dare, he might turn to Coriolanus – whose capacity to keep fighting despite advice to the contrary, seemed endless:  even when being advised to stand down he remained determined: “do not bid me to dismiss my soldiers or [to] capitulate” (Act 5, Scene 3).

If he wants further inspiration – and informed by the debacles of recent days – he may simply turn to the poem ‘To a Bigot’ by George Essex Evans.  Reading it, he might be re-inspired – noting that there is always a “spark Divine that glows within”, even when all appears lost.

Finally, however, he will probably turn to his own favourite poem (one I have written about previously – here).  But he should aim not to do so before the early hours of 7th May….

Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard – which notes that “perhaps in this neglected spot was laid some heart once pregnant with celestial fire” – might end up, sadly and ironically, being Brown’s own political epitaph.