Skip to main content

Publicly funded arts bolster the UK economy





A newspaper report(Guardian) has revealed startling information about arts funding.  It says that
spending public money on the arts was crucial, “not just for the good of society, but to nurture some of the best talent for our creative industries”.
 “There is nothing ‘nice to have’ about the arts and the creative industries, there is nothing tangential, nothing ‘soft’. They are central to our economy, our public life and our nation’s health.”
It reveals a surprising figure;
For every pound invested in arts and culture, an additional £1.06 is generated in the economy
The reports also include some striking statistics. For example:
• Arts and culture is worth £7.7bn in gross value added to the British economy – an increase of 35.8% between 2010 and 2013.
• More than one in 12 UK jobs are in the creative economy, with employment increasing 5% between 2013 and 2014, compared with a 2.1% jobs increase in the wider economy.
• Britain invests a smaller percentage, 0.3%, of its total GDP on arts and culture than other countries. Germany invests 0.4%, the EU as a whole 0.5%, Denmark 0.7% and France 0.8%.
In other words, when the government invests in art projects, it creates subsidiary jobs. E.g. If a new work is commissioned from a composer, jobs further down the line are created: the musicians who perform the new work; the staffing of the venue, catering  etc.... The report assesses that it is worth an extra 6%(of the grant given) to the economy. It makes sense when you think about it.

Popular posts from this blog

What is Stockhausen's legacy?

Karlheinz Stockhausen is one of the most important composers of the post war era. He is partially responsible for the creation of the post war modernist music.   But what is his true legacy? Was he the leading composer in his field? Did he invent the 'timbralist' idea of generating music from a single sound? Well, he did accomplish that concept with  "Stimmung'' (Voice) which is completely designed around the single chord of a B flat ninth . But he wasn't the first.  Giacinto Scelsi wrote "Quatro pezzi per orchestre" which is based a single note per movement and that work was written in 1959. Quatro pezzi per orchestre - Scelsi I seriously doubt whether Stockhausen knew about Scelsi's achievement when he wrote Stimmung in 1977. Perhaps one of his greatest works  is " Gruppen'' (Groups) composed for three orchestras. Did it change the way we use the orchestra?  He was a pioneer, especially in the early stages of hi...
Read more

Schonberg - Josef Hauer

In your blog post on "the shadow lurking behind every genius," I delved into the influences behind great composers' output, but you might have omitted a few noteworthy figures. While Arnold Schoenberg is widely recognized as the inventor of the series system in the early 1920s, it's essential to question whether he was truly the only one to devise chromatic methodology. Have you ever heard of Josef Hauer? Interestingly, Josef Hauer was a composer who also explored the concept of twelve-tone composition around the same time as Schoenberg. In fact, the last movement of Arnold Schönberg's Fünf Klavierstücke, Opus 23 (1923) marked the first instance of his 'Method of Composing with Twelve Tones which are related only with one another.' This method, known as serialism or dodecaphonic music, is significantly different from previous compositions because it exclusively employs a set of twelve different tones, avoiding repetition within the series and encompassing ...
Read more

Helmut Lachenmann

H elmut Lachen mann is relatively unknown outside of Germany.  Nevertheless , h e is a figure wh o is growing in significan ce in modern music circles.  Despite his wide experience, h is lack of broad appeal is, in my opinion, largely d ue to the individuality o f his music.  He is  not easy to categori se in an era which is   dominated by trends and cliches. A simple way of describing his music is... *"musique concrète instrumentale". The notion is the creation of a subtlety of transformation of timbre, a manipulation of a continuum from sound to noise, from pitched notes to pitchless textural exploration, and all that in the sphere of (mostly) purely instrumental music. That means that in Lachenmann's music, there's a world of sound that rivals and even surpasses what electronic and electro-acoustic composers can achieve.  -Guardian. Essentially ,  he is a acoustic composer writing electronic sounding music.  He is somewhere...
Read more