The government’s £1.5 billion Arts Everywhere funding announcement promises stability for culture, heritage and the arts. Across Britain, theatres are preparing to build a confident future, provided somebody can first identify which cupboard contains the extension lead.
The money, announced by Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy on 21 January, is intended to help cultural institutions keep their doors open, improve their buildings and plan beyond the next emergency grant application. This is welcome news for venues that have spent years treating a functioning boiler as an ambitious piece of performance art.
At the Department of Curtains With History, officials are understood to support the emphasis on infrastructure, although its fictional Principal Custodian of the Spare Key, Verity Grommet, has apparently begun by checking whether the kettle can be classified as a national asset. The extension lead is already being considered for a civic honour.
That stability could help galleries programme exhibitions, theatres repair buildings and community venues make room for the people the scheme is meant to reach. It might even allow a choir to buy new sheet music before the tenor prints it upside down and describes the result as a bold intervention into institutional decline.
The announcement asks national institutions to serve communities across the country, rather than behaving like particularly expensive guest rooms in London. It calls for open doors, shared effort and access to culture. This is an inspiring vision, though the local drama group may still have to rehearse beside a radiator with the emotional range of a minor Victorian villain.
There is a serious point beneath the jokes. Cultural organisations cannot offer ambitious work or wider access while spending every morning calculating whether the lights will last until the interval. Stable public investment gives them a chance to plan instead of repeatedly auditioning for the role of venue that has somehow survived another winter.
It also gives ministers a chance to prove that culture belongs everywhere, not merely wherever a ceremonial speech can find a microphone. The real test will be whether money reaches the rooms where children, audiences, volunteers and artists actually meet, rather than vanishing into a majestic report about the importance of reaching rooms.
Arts Everywhere funding gives Britain’s cultural world a chance to build something lasting. First, however, every town must find the extension lead, last seen behind a papier mâché horse in 2014 and now so historically important that removing it may require planning permission.
