Brass bands or opera? The tale of arts funding

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Shipley's MP Phil Davies has highlighted a concern that many of us have raised before - the way in which arts funding is dominated by a limited number of elite arts including opera:

Philip Davies, who sits on Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport select committee, says he shares concerns that the north is being overlooked for arts funding.

He uncovered figures which show that opera is getting £347.4 million during the five years of the current Parliament, compared to just £1.8 million for brass bands. 

Now much though I like opera, I find this a shockingly disproportionate distribution - assuming we support the idea of government funding for the arts (not everyone does, I know), surely art forms like brass band music deserve a fairer share?

What is more dispiriting is that the Director North for Arts Council England (I note the pretentious styling of the organisation's titles and name) can only parrot the official line from their London press office:

There are valuable and varied accounts of the arts and culture landscape across the country and we hope that the Committee receives a range of submissions that show this diversity of experience and opinion

Wibble. The truth is that the Royal Opera House alone will receive £77.5m in Arts Council grant between 2012 and 2015. As far as I can tell this is significantly more that the entire amount of grant funding given by the Arts Council to Bradford organisations. And it dwarfs support for traditional working class arts like brass band music.

It has long seemed to me that we subsidise art for the wealthy while allowing genuine community arts to wither away for lack of support.

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Michael Dugher is right - arts funding is elitist

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Barnsley MP, Michael Dugher has focused our attention on the plight of the Grimethrope Colliery Band - one of the superstars of the brass band world:

Labour MP Michael Dugher said it was “snobbery” that the British Federation of Brass Bands, which supports bands such as Grimethorpe, got just £23,000 last year while the Royal Opera House in London got more than £26million and the English National Ballet was handed more than £6million.

Dugher is right - traditional English arts are a poor relation next to elite international arts. Even when we look at arts funding in the north, we see that it is still skewed towards those same dominating areas: classical music, opera, ballet and theatre.

The problem is that these traditions - and if Dugher thinks brass bands are hard done by take a peek at Morris dancing - are disliked by the arts establishment. In their song 'Roots', Show of Hands make this point:

And a minister said his vision of hell
Is three folk singers in a pub near Wells
Well, I've got a vision of urban sprawl
There's pubs where no-one ever sings at all

Folk music and other arts traditions are disdained by the arts elite. Funding goes to grand and exclusive establishments that make no mark on most of the population. Bands are to be tucked away out of sight brought out only when we want some sort of Northern 'authenticity' - in Bradford we built a new City Centre park. And, in a City that's home to two of the world's best brass bands, we didn't include a bandstand.

While millionaire actors and opera singers strut the subsidised stages of London, the traditional arts of England - choirs, brass bands, dance troupe, folk music - live a hand-to-mouth existence. Arts funding is overwhelmingly spent in London and directed to the preferences and interests of an arts elite rather than the mass of the population.

Michael Dugher is right - arts funding is elitist.

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