With the news that the U.K. government will be progressing with their brutal 50 percent cuts to arts and design courses across higher education in England, you might ask why, in the 21st century, the year 2021, the culture sector has to keep defending its obvious value to society.
It is certainly not that the U.K. government does not understand arts and culture’s economic worth, when it adds more than £10.8 billion to the economy, and creates hundreds of thousands of jobs every year. The government acknowledged this value when it established protective measures for the sector through the Culture Recovery Fund during the pandemic. However, when workers in our sector—especially independent art workers, artists, curators, producers and academics—are barely surviving, it is clear that the government still doesn’t understand the essential role our industry plays in society.
Halving subsidies to all arts courses in higher education will save the government just over £20 million while causing long-lasting changes to the face of one of the U.K.’s most important and…
