Culture

Unreliable evidence 43
In a 2001 White Paper, the department, under Chris Smith,
proposed adopting a ‘lighter touch’. 9 His successor, Tessa Jowell, has
sought to shift the department’s emphasis by insisting that it is
‘doing more’ than promoting a ‘utilitarian agenda’.
Too often politicians have been forced to debate culture in terms only of
its instrumental benefits to other agendas – education, the reduction in
crime, improvements in wellbeing – explaining – or in some instances
almost apologising for – our investment in culture only in terms of
something else. In political and public discourse in this country we have
avoided the more difficult approach of investigating, questioning and
celebrating what culture actually does in and of itself. 10
While appearing to align herself with ‘intrinsic value’ and ‘arts for art
sake’ arguments (and perhaps, thereby, find greater support from
artists), Jowell claims to be seeking a more coherent justification for
subsidy. She proposes that public funding is about facilitating
‘personal value added which comes from engagement with complex
art – or “culture” in my defined sense’. 11 This, she says, is ‘key to real
transformation in society’. 12
But, even if the arguments for the Government’s support of
culture were to formally shift from ‘utilitarianism’ to ‘what it does in
itself’, the Secretary of State’s ambition is still dominated by the need
to reduce the ‘poverty of aspiration’ and ‘transform’ individuals as
well as society. While the subtleties of her distinction between what
is ‘instrumental’ and what is ‘transformatory’ remain unclear,
accounting for its effects continues to be an issue. As she herself asks,
‘How, in going beyond targets, can we best capture the value of
culture?’ 13