Culture

Keep out of politics

Thursday, 19th October 2006

Frayling suggested that targeted cultural policy, imposed by British arts organisations, can win the hearts and minds of foreign peoples better and more subtly than political leaders such as the globetrotting Tony Blair. This sounds like a case for the Arts Council to go into places where British forces have intervened; as they would put it to ‘deliver democracy’. And anyone who doesn’t support this development will be convinced by cultural professionals instead of soldiers.

Frayling warned in his speech that arts organisations will have to be careful to avoid coming across as top-down and imperialist: ‘The risk is that a cultural foreign policy both sounds and may act as cultural imperialism, at which the UK, like many other countries, has proved extraordinarily adept over the years.’ He implies they will have to be watchful about this impression and spin it differently.

This is a subservient relationship, one that those involved in culture will come to regret, and one that anyone interested in supporting the arts should fight. Cultural organisations and artists must be very careful before they embrace this latest political responsibility. In doing so, they are acting as an approved wing of the British government, a more friendly form of propaganda. In the future, Labour, or the Tories, could use this relationship against these organisations and continue to dictate the remit of their role abroad and at home.

But this is not simply a story of arts organisations falling over themselves to be approved by the DCMS or the Foreign Secretary. Those driving the idea of a cultural foreign policy are often from the cultural, rather than political, world. Tessa Jowell is following where invited; the arts sector has been at the vanguard.

For some time organisations — including the Arts Council, the British Museum and the British Council — have been actively involved in political interventions in other countries, and it is a very bad development. In part this is seen as a way of gaining legitimacy for their institutions, when the pursuit of the arts is difficult to justify in its own right. As Frayling pointed out, ‘Arts and cultures are increasingly recognised as important tools for government to connect with.’ They are now seen by senior players as an instrument to create social outcomes, rather than as artistic creations. Not only are these organisations treading in areas where they are ignorant, unelected and unaccountable, they are also promoting agendas that are deeply problematic.