Excellent article from John Tusa of the Barbican Centre:
“If the government is truly serious about the arts, it would first restore the Olympic theft. Then it would aim to keep up arts funding overall in real terms as the base of the next three-year settlement. Only then should it start to consider what extra new money it should put into the arts to showcase to the whole world how healthy, vibrant, vigorous, original, creative and dynamic the national arts scene is.
To do so requires some big ideas. Here are a few. Set the arts world the challenge of commissioning, for performance in 2012, new works in all its major fields. We deserve a 2012 portfolio of works that will be looked back on as artistic landmarks – the next great British opera, drama, sculpture, installation, public event, painting, novel, film, TV drama, TV documentary, exhibition. That would be worth funding. It would create a true legacy. It would stimulate the run-up to the legacy, the ‘pre-legacy’ as the cant has it.”
A Cultural Olympiad? Great idea – now give us the money