The government has today launched its latest attack on young people and their right to pursue their career aspirations, and one has to assume that the degrees they are talking about that don’t have “good outcomes” are those in the arts subjects.
In the thirteen years of Tory rule, the erosion of the wonderful UK arts sector is both shocking and remarkably sad. Added to that is the constant suggestion from the government that the arts are somehow an easier subject, or are, somehow, worthless. Nothing could be further than the truth. Ironically, in the run up to the next election the Tories will once again find a use for directors, producers, writers, musicians, composers, actors, designers, artists etc when they produce their party political broadcasts. And would they have wanted the Queen’s funeral and King’s coronation to have been without contribution from the “unimportant” arts? I doubt that. For the Tories, the arts are only important when they can get something out of them.
I wonder where I would be now without the arts. When I went to high school, a new world opened up to me. Classroom music lessons exposed me to classical music for the first time. We had a wonderful music teacher who had put together such a good curriculum, with us learning about a different piece of music every half term or so – mostly tone poems in that first year. That was when my love of music really began. All I wanted was more. We couldn’t afford to buy many records, and so I would go the local library and take out a record for 20p or so for two weeks. Many had been used as frisbees by previous users, it seemed, but I didn’t care. I had no idea what I was doing, of course. I had no notion of what were classical warhorses and what was an obscurity, I didn’t care. There was also the school choir, and the school orchestra, of course. Where would I be now in relatively poor health without that love of music? Bloody miserable, to be honest – if here at all.
Likewise, we had a remarkable drama teacher who got me on stage, teaching me the core skills of performance that, again, I still use now. And teamwork, of course. There were also the English teachers who took time out to encourage my writing. There was an elderly friend who taught me just how essential to our life stories that something like cinema can be – how films can be just as much a part of those special moments in our lives as music. They are part of the fabric of our lives.
When I left school, I worked in admin at the local university, before resigning when I was thirty to do a film degree myself. Not a practical degree, but one that concentrated on film as cultural history. I had got a D and an E at A-level. I now have a PhD, which, I might add, throws into disarray the suggestion that if you don’t get good grades at school you should just give up and become a shelf-stacker in Sainsbury. It also shows that the university league tables are a complete nonsense, I might add. One of the final things I did in admin at the university I worked at was to research what results A-levels students came in with and what degrees they left with. There was no correlation whatsoever. And surely universities should be judged not on their intake but on the comparative improvements that can be seen while the student is there? Isn’t a student who got three Ds at A-level coming out with a II(i) at university far more of an achievement for a place of education than someone who came in with As and left with a first?
When my arthritis struck about ten years ago, I quickly learned that my aim of becoming a lecturer was gone. My arthritis doesn’t let me keep a regular job. But I went back to my first love of writing, and being able to do that keeps me sane. I studied film, but wrote books on music. The notion that a degree is only of use to you in the subject you studied is absolute nonsense. The transferable skills of any degree are obvious – and, ironically, the government is just as good an example of that. After all, James Cleverly has a degree in hospitality and is now foreign secretary (we won’t ask how). Justice Minister Alex Chalk, Health Secretary Steve Barclay and Jacob Rees Mogg all studied history (the humanities! how worthless, we are told); Chloe Smith (secretary of state for science and innovation) studied English literature – and others studied degrees of all kinds that, on the face of it, have absolutely nothing to do with their current job. But the skills learned at university can be used elsewhere. This, surely, should be downright obvious.
There is, of course, also the fact that the young should be allowed to study what they want and what they are good at – after all, they’re paying for it. They’re going to working until they are nearly seventy – so why shouldn’t they be allowed to study what they want for three years before the work kicks in? And I find it absolutely heinous that adults who had no restrictions on their choice of (in many cases free) university degrees are now restricting the choices that the young can make.
And, worse than that, is this preposterous belief among some that everyone should be good at the same things. The education system that the Tories have created has been formed in order to be able to churn out mindless, uncreative, even unthinking clones – the government really do want you to be unthinking. Maths and science are the important things, folks, and if you’re not any good at those, we will keep drumming them into you until you are good. Sod that. If a youngster has a gift that could end up giving pleasure to others, then they should be encouraged to pursue it, whether it’s acting or writing or art or playing an instrument. To not allow or encourage a young person to develop their natural talents is not just unfair but totally perverse.
Seeing the arts in this country collapsing is heart-breaking not just for those working in the sector, or for those who believe there is much to learn about our current state of affairs through the arts of the past, but also for those for whom the arts makes life more bearable. It’s all very well that the government thinks the sciences are more important. Of course, we need scientists. They have provided me with the meds for my own conditions. But there’s no point saving lives with science if we make those same lives utterly bereft of joy through the taking away of the arts. What seems oddly missing in the debate about the arts subjects is just how much of a difference they make to our lives. If we take film, TV, music, radio, books, newspapers, artwork, fashion designs, architecture, theatre etc out of our lives, what exactly are we left with?
The arts cuts last year were savage. They were supposedly done to level up the arts across the UK. What happened? Glyndebourne have to stop touring, and so for the first time in forty years they will not be coming here to Norwich. And I remember vividly how they would come to my school each year and do workshops etc. Likewise, the ENO got savagely cut – a company that has free tickets for all under 21s. The Britten Sinfonia, a local orchestra here in East Anglia, had its funding cut completely. So much for ensuring the arts exist outside of London.
But I find all of that less worrying than the fact that music etc has just been gouged out from the curriculum in schools. How many kids today get to have their eyes opened to a whole new world as I did? How many get to sing in choirs and play in orchestras, and learn the skills of being a team-player that way? There are other ways to learn team-building skills without standing in the rain on a rugby pitch.
The arts have become a scapegoat in this country, by a government obsessed with money rather than quality of life – a government that then has the nerve to use the creative industries for their own ends to reach out through voters each and every time it places an MP in front of a camera or a microphone.
Many on social media really do seem to think that the arts are pointless, a waste of money. I have even seen right-wing commentators on social media giving their own lists of “pointless” degrees – lists that are as startling as they are ridiculous. What’s more, they are trashing the arts subjects, and yet a couple of years ago they were bemoaning the tearing down of statues. Which are works of art. You couldn’t make it up – or perhaps you’re not allowed to make it up, as that would be creative.
My suggestion is this: if you think the creative industries and arts subjects are not important, try the following:
Turn off the TV
Don’t watch films
Don’t go the theatre
Don’t go on the internet
Don’t listen to music
Don’t sing in the shower (someone had to write that song)
Don’t play games
Throw away your mobile phone
Get rid of all the packaging for the food in your cupboard, fridge and freezer
Don’t read a book, newspaper, blog, or any websites
Don’t go on social media
Take down the art from your walls.
Tear down any wallpaper and rip up the carpets (a designer had to design those patterns)
Throw out your clothes (a fashion designer had to design them)
Leave your house (an artist and architect had to draw those plans)
Don’t use the creative industries for work purposes
Try all of that for a week…and then see if you still think the arts and creative industries are unimportant.
Somehow, though, the fightback for the arts has to start in earnest now. People have to make their opinions known now before it’s too late for their to be a recovery in their fortunes, and that would be catastrophic.
Beyond Boundaries 