Diary

12 December 2009

Veronica Wadley opens her diary

I think of Ken as I travel on the tube into town. Like ex-mayors, ex-editors face problems. David Yelland admits that he turned to drink when he left the Sun; Andy Coulson turned to the Conservative party. Matching Ken’s determination to keep fighting reminds me of Eleanor Roosevelt’s comment about women and tea bags. ‘You know their strength only when in hot water.’ On my way back from the Design Museum, I pop in to see my old friend, the feisty Camila Batmanghelidjh, for an update on Kids Company and to tell her about my work for the Greenhouse Schools Project. I helped raise over £200,000 for them last year; now we need to step up the fundraising. Run by two former City men, the charity supports London by providing sport and dance programmes for schools. Disadvantaged teenagers are kept off the streets and academic results are improving. Over a cup of tea in Westminster, Iain Duncan Smith and I talk about Greenhouse. We wait to see how the Tories, if they win, will tap into charity knowhow.

All the talk is cut, cut, cut. Bradshaw’s department has told all major arts orgs to slice 10 per cent each off the next three years. The mood is grim. There is no reason this edict cannot be reversed by an enlightened Tory regime. Art should lift our eyes but it also needs a business plan. Risk, certainty and creativity need to be happy partners. At an electric dinner hosted by Rolex at the Royal Opera House on Sunday night to celebrate their Arts Initiative, many cultural heroes were speaking the new vocabulary, of ‘monetising assets’ and ‘bringing donors into the family’. But some Arts Council commissars are still fighting old cultural wars. They should listen to Kevin Spacey who saw sense on this years ago. Now Colin Tweedy of Arts&Business is on the front foot. He should update John Myerscough’s 1988 report, ‘The Economic Importance of the Arts in Britain’ and distribute it across Westminster.