Project education ... the Iroko theatre company perform at a school in Wimbledon. Photograph: Garry Weaser
The announcement by the Arts Council of a new £1.5m three-year Young People's Participatory project which aims to provide support and training for those working in youth theatre is undoubtedly welcome, particularly in an area which is very much a Cinderella in the arts. But it is also a sign of an increasing trend to fund participatory projects and education work rather than art itself.
Even the Grants for the Arts section on the Arts Council's own website talks not of funding artists but of providing funding for those "who use arts in their work". Theatre companies frequently tell me that while they can access money for education and access projects or go on courses to learn how to be better bureaucrats, it is increasingly difficult to get money to make theatre. In recent years the Arts Council has taken to funding too many umbrella organisations, and not enough artists.
Nobody would want a return to an era when access to the arts was simply the prerogative of the rich and educated. Access for all is crucial, but you can't have access to something that isn't there in the first place.
The Tory approach was simply to stifle the arts by cutting off as much funding as it could, but Labour's approach has been more insidious: the Arts Council - set up to be independent and at arm's length from government--is increasingly acting as a state agency, implementing the policy of an administration that sees no intrinsic value in the arts themselves.
In theatre, projects are increasingly assessed not on their artistic merits but on their measurable outcomes, whether it is preventing teenage pregnancy or contributing to social or economic regeneration. The arts are no longer valued for themselves, but only for what they can contribute to government policy. They have been rebranded as cultural industries whose value must be measured and weighed.
This week saw an announcement of the Arts Council's priorities for 2006-8, which include participation, celebrating diversity, children, the creative economy, vibrant communities and internationalism. I can't argue with any of those, but what I would question is whether it is up to the Arts Council to be setting "the agenda", as Sir Christopher Frayling, Chair of the Arts Council, calls it.
Artists are increasingly tired of the tick-box culture that decides who does and who doesn't get the money, and what kind of art can, and cannot, be made. Surely it is up to the artists, not the bureaucrats, to set the agenda? And surely the only function of the Arts Council is to create fertile ground that allows art to flourish, then be willing to nurture the interesting things that take root?
