My View: The Arts in the spotlight

Glossop Chronicle and Tameside Reporter journalist Lauren Entwistle has her own column in the paper, giving her opinion on all kinds of subjects. This week, she expresses her hope that the arts sector gets the protection and long-term support it desperately needs and deserves.

I think we often forget how much ‘art’ we are surrounded with. 

It’s often easy to just think of it hanging in galleries, beautiful and untouchable, or played out on a stage in pointe shoes and sweeping symphony. 

But it also rings out on the radio. In architecture and design, in dust jackets and screenplays - rippling through sound, image and feeling.

They are huge cornerstones within the human experience. 

But due to Covid implications, they are under threat of complete dissolution, thanks to huge losses in revenue, fundraising and a lack of funds from government and benefactors over the years – which has amplified the strain.

Last weekend the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport announced a £1.57 billion emergency arts fund to help staunch the bleeding, but for many, the impact has already proved too great.

Manchester’s own Royal Exchange Theatre had to admit that they were facing a 65 per cent permanent staff redundancy, and that it was too soon to say whether the extra cash would be able to ligature huge cuts. 

It’s a sentiment that has been echoed throughout, impacting workers and freelancers to the extent that, according to the Chair of the National Campaign for the Arts, their ‘livelihoods have crashed over a cliff.’

And the theatre is just a tiny lens in which we have to scope this problem.

As I mentioned before, the arts sector is in desperate need of long-term support. 

Much like a plaster, the fund has plugged a tiny gap. But what it really needs is a good saline drip and some TLC.

Considering the economic benefits of the arts means two million people employed and a contribution of £111.7bn to the UK economy (according to 2018 statistics) – forming not only places of community for skill-development and identity, they deserve to be protected.

Going forward, I hope these spaces get the recognition and dedicated funding streams that they deserve. 

It’s easy to think that the arts are limited to the West End, but in reality they touch programs and pathways much closer to home.

To close the curtains on it would be a disservice to us all.