The UK Arts & Culture scene has been dealt such a clinical, ‘perfect storm’ coup-de-grace from its own government’s policies that it’s becoming difficult to tell if much of the hardship inflicted is not intentional. #SaveTheArts
I suppose the first factor to take into account is:
1) For the most part, the Arts don’t vote Tory. By turning a blind eye to struggling Arts institutions/venues – letting them & the plethora of jobs/workers they support die – the Tories aren’t likely to lose many voters.
1) For the most part, the Arts don’t vote Tory. By turning a blind eye to struggling Arts institutions/venues – letting them & the plethora of jobs/workers they support die – the Tories aren’t likely to lose many voters.
2) Bending over backwards to fudge the guidelines to allow pubs to open & the Premier League to operate, the Tories are pandering to their voting base demographic. By & large the voters who gave them their current majority in Parliament are not Opera-goers of Bruckner fans.
3) Punitively excluding an enormous amount of ‘creatives’ (who are by-and-large Self-Employed) from the SEISS, high-earning successful individuals in this sector will have to declare bankruptcy, go on the dole & seek work in whatever sector that will pay them. #ExcludedUK
4) Tory ministers repeatedly make reference to their desire to ‘help’ the Self-Employed they’ve excluded ‘take the next step’ in their ‘work career’. So straight down the Joncentre with you, oh @RoyalAcadMusic-educated violin superstar. Let’s get you stacking shelves.
5) As we approach another Tory-orchestrated cliff edge – a No Deal Brexit – there is a well-documented deficit of low-skilled workers in the UK. Many heading back to EU countries. Why not allow the Arts to suffocate & repurpose those pesky lefty creatives as corporate peons?
Call me a cynic but at this point it’s becoming difficult to avoid coming to the conclusion that @CommonsDCMS, @OliverDowden, @RishiSunak & @BorisJohnson are suffocating British music/opera/theatre/art/culture intentionally with unfavourable policy & lack of support. #SaveTheArts
What would make a ‘perfect storm’ that kills UK Art, you ask?
✅ allow the ‘top’ (institutions, orchestras, venues, producers) to go bust;
✅ allow the ‘bottom’ (performers, stage/lighting/logistics) to suffocate with no support (vastly inadequate support for self-employed)
✅ allow the ‘top’ (institutions, orchestras, venues, producers) to go bust;
✅ allow the ‘bottom’ (performers, stage/lighting/logistics) to suffocate with no support (vastly inadequate support for self-employed)
From top to bottom, the entire UK arts sector is in a vice grip of despair – a ‘shit sandwich’ if you will . Where other, less profitable institutions (sport, air travel etc) have had rules relaxed for them, the gov’t are stringently not making any concessions for performers.
Music/drama/art are then being flanked by decisions in education – cut the Arts entirely from curriculum so that pupils can perpetually ‘catch up’ – on what? Presumably on chasing exam results.
These are all crippling policy decisions. It won’t be Coronavirus that cripples the Arts; it will be this government’s ‘negligence’ which causes a world-leading beacon for creative arts and culture to go dark. Other countries weathered this storm with better policy & funding.
It seems to me that this government is really only interested in leading the world in one category: Coronavirus deaths per capita. Late to react, inept messaging, a botched lockdown, restrictions lifted too early, pig-headed arrogance and stubbornness & aversion to reality.
... the ‘protective ring’ around care homes, the abandoned (crony contract) track & trace app, the inability to provide tests & PPE in the peak of the crisis, the inadequate SEISS & the premature alteration of the CJRS (which has caused REDUNDANCIES @RishiSunak, not saved jobs)
... and an inability to hold themselves to account for these catastrophic bumbling mistakes, it really makes you wonder exactly how inept these people can be. At some point the question must be asked: how much of this is intentional?
And if they are intentionally allowing UK Arts & Culture to snuff out, are they doing it to impoverish & persecute a demographic which is traditionally anti-Tory? Providing a source of cheap labour to their corporate donors now that EU migrants are relocating?
Perhaps I am giving them too much credit, and these ‘public servants’ really are THAT incompetent. They really are CRIMINALLY NEGLIGENT. If the intention isn’t there perhaps we are just collateral damage which they can gleefully accept as they shape the UK into some foul dystopia
Anyway here’s the new @idlesband tune to cheer you up: open.spotify.com/track/3oIJNO51…
‘You hear that thunder? That’s the sound of STRENGTH IN NUMBERS’
#SaveTheArtsUK
‘You hear that thunder? That’s the sound of STRENGTH IN NUMBERS’
#SaveTheArtsUK
As if by magic:
