‘I will take money for the arts...’: The British state as cultural patron

Students, staff and members of the public are welcome. The event will be streamed via Zoom for those unable to attend - please book an 'online' ticket to receive the link.

The talk will last for 40-45 minutes, followed by a Q&A.

The venue is ATB/042 in the Seebohm Rowntree Building, Alcuin College.

When Jennie Lee, Britain’s first Arts Minister, published ‘A Policy for the Arts’ in 1965, she cemented the state’s role as the major cultural patron of post-war Britain. It was an expansive and energising intervention.

However, as Britain entered a financial downturn, and expenditure on the arts began to face less friendly scrutiny, Lee and her collaborators were forced to grapple with the more fractious consequences of the state’s expanded responsibilities.Lee would eventually come to champion private sector involvement as a way of outsourcing contentious political, economic, and administrative judgements. For example, around how far the state’s role was positive (policy should champion this) or negative (we must preserve this).

Ironically, one of the main consequences of government becoming the major funder of cultural activity was the development of a much stronger and directive set of state expectations about the role of industrial and private individual arts patronage.

While some of the tensions embedded in the policy consensus forged by Lee would be temporarily soothed by the advent of lottery funding in 1994, recent controversies about political bias, the approach to audiences, and dependence on corporate sponsorship, illustrate that today’s ‘culture wars’ rest on the contours of the contradictory policy impulses of the 1960s and 70s.

Dr Scott Anthony is Project Lead and PI on the JPI CH funded Museums and Industry Long Histories of Collaboration (MaILHoC) project based at the Science Museum Group. He is the author of (among others) The story of British propaganda film, Shell: Art and advertising, and Public relations and the making of modern Britain.

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Host or Publisher Institute for the Understanding of the Past