Mayor Johnson's marketing adviser Dan Ritterband talked his boss's language yesterday when speaking of his wish for cultural groups to raise more funds from sources other than the GLA. There will be workshops to help them. Should such instruction fail to result in their securing sponsorship, it would suggest that their events were not "commercially viable," he said. Grants from the GLA are to be standardised. There will be closer monitoring of where money goes.
This approach raises vexed issues. Tories always think they understand "value-for-money" better than anyone else, but often have narrow definitions of worth. Someone (who was it?) said of Thatcherites that they know the price of everything and the value of nothing. I doubt that's true of Boris Johnson or of Ritterband, but I do wonder if they recognise the connections between cultural funding, disadvantage and the role of the mayoralty in fostering community relations.
The problem with making it harder to obtain GLA financial help is that those best equipped to jump through all the hoops might be those least in need of the dough, yet most likely to end up getting it. By contrast, smaller, more marginal operations who might be the most deserving find the hoops discouraging. Same goes for community groups of whatever kind seeking support at borough level. Possible bad result? A self-fulfilling prophecy.
Ken Livingstone has a view on yesterday's meeting. In a statement he claimed it revealed an agenda for cutting the Trafalgar Square events he pioneered, a desire to exploit the square for commercial gain and an indifference to promoting cross-cultural harmony. Livingstone's critics, of course, have long complained that his funding policy was guided by favouritism and verged on a way of effectively buying votes - hence Johnson's campaign line on adviser transparency.
Wherever you stand on all that, wouldn't something be lost if the mayoralty became a less visible supporter of London's cultural mosaic and rationalised its grant allocation practices in ways that left smaller and less experienced groups out in the cold, especially at a time of recession? Discretion and accountability aren't mutually exclusive. And there's more than one way of defining value-for-money.
Update, 14.02: There's also more than one way of characterising a committee meeting!
